Senior aides to
the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff said
Tuesday that Marine Corps general Peter Pace won't
apologize for calling homosexuality immoral, an
opinion that gay advocacy groups deplored. In a
newspaper interview Monday, Pace had likened homosexual
acts to adultery and said the military should not condone it
by allowing gays to serve openly in the armed forces.
''General Pace's
comments are outrageous, insensitive, and disrespectful
to the 65,000 lesbian and gay troops now serving in our
armed forces,'' the advocacy group Servicemembers
Legal Defense Network said in a statement on its Web
site. The group has represented some of the thousands
dismissed from the military for their sexual orientation.
Pace's senior
staff members said Tuesday that the general was expressing
his personal opinion and had no intention of apologizing.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were
not allowed to speak on the record.
Rep. Martin
Meehan, who has introduced legislation to repeal the current
policy, criticized Pace's comments. ''General Pace's
statements aren't in line with either the majority of
the public or the military,'' said the Massachusetts
Democrat. ''He needs to recognize that support for
overturning [the policy] is strong and growing'' and that
the military is ''turning away good troops to enforce
a costly policy of discrimination.''
In an interview
Monday with the Chicago Tribune, Pace was asked
about the ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy that allows
gays and lesbians to serve if they keep their sexual
orientation private and don't engage in homosexual acts.
Pace said he supports the policy, which became law in
1994 and prohibits commanders from asking about a
person's sexual orientation.
''I believe
homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that
we should not condone immoral acts,'' Pace was quoted as
saying in the newspaper interview. ''I do not believe
the United States is well served by a policy that says
it is OK to be immoral in any way.''
Pace, a native of
Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 1967 graduate of the U.S. Naval
Academy, said he based his views on his upbringing. ''As an
individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay
behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want
it to be our policy that if we were to find out that
so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we
would just look the other way, which we do not. We
prosecute that kind of immoral behavior,'' he said.
The newspaper
said Pace did not address concerns raised by a 2005
government audit that showed some 10,000 troops, including
more than 50 specialists in Arabic, have been
discharged because of the policy.
Louis Vizcaino,
spokesman for the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign,
said Pace's comments were ''insulting and offensive to the
men and women...who are serving in the military
honorably.''
''Right now there
are men and women that are in the battle lines, that
are in the trenches, they're serving their country,''
Vizcaino said. ''Their sexual orientation has nothing
to do with their capability to serve in the U.S.
military.''
''Don't ask,
don't tell'' was passed by Congress in 1993 after a
firestorm of debate in which advocates argued that allowing
gay people to serve openly would hurt troop
morale and recruitment and undermine the cohesion of
combat units.
John
Shalikashvili, the retired Army general who was Joint Chiefs
chairman when the policy was adopted, said in January that
he has changed his mind on the issue since meeting
with gay servicemen. ''These conversations showed me
just how much the military has changed and that gays
and lesbians can be accepted by their peers,'' Shalikashvili
wrote in a newspaper opinion piece. (Pauline Jelinek,
AP)
