Aides: Pace Won't
Apologize for Gay Remark
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web, March 13, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Senior aides to
the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday that Marine Gen.
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 homosexuals 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.
On the Net: Chicago Tribune:
www.chicagotribune.com
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network
www.sldn.org
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