Pace Remarks Renew ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Debate

MARGARET WARNER:

Earlier this week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace provoked controversy in a taped interview with the Chicago Tribune. He was defending the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy toward gays in their ranks.

PETER PACE, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs: I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the Armed Forces of the United States are well-served by saying through our policies, "It's OK to be immoral in any way."

MARGARET WARNER:

Yet just two weeks earlier, Democratic Congressman Martin Meehan introduced a bill to abolish the policy and let gays serve openly.

REP. MARTY MEEHAN (D), Massachusetts: Today, I am reintroducing the Military Readiness Enhancement Act. It will be an uphill climb.

MARGARET WARNER:

Those strikingly different views dramatized the deep divisions that persist over the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. For 14 years, gay men and lesbians have been able to serve in the U.S. military if they keep their sexual orientation private.

One academic study estimates there may be as many as 60,000 gays serving. The policy was crafted in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, as a compromise with top Pentagon brass and congressional conservatives who wanted to keep a blanket ban on gay servicemembers.

BILL CLINTON, Former President of the United States: Servicemen and women will be judged based on their conduct, not their sexual orientation.

MARGARET WARNER:

Recruits are no longer asked their sexual orientation. But nearly 11,000 servicemen and women have been thrown out after disclosing it or having it discovered.

The discharges hit a peak of more than 1,200 in 2001, but have been declining since then, to just over 720 in 2005. Now, with the Armed Forces stretched thin, there are renewed calls to abolish the policy altogether.

Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili, in a January opinion piece in the New York Times, said he had, quote, "second thoughts on gays in the military."

"I now believe that, if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military," he wrote, "they would not undermine the efficacy of the Armed Forces."

Congressman Meehan argued last month that the policy itself is actually undermining the military by robbing it of good people.

REP. MARTIN MEEHAN:

While we struggle to find and keep soldiers we need, to the point of lowering our recruiting standards and allowing people with criminal records to enter our Armed Forces, we're actually turning away highly effective people because of a policy of discrimination. This is a matter of our own national security interest.

MARGARET WARNER:

Beside him was Marine Staff Sergeant Eric Alva, badly wounded in the Iraq invasion four years ago. He was awarded the Purple Heart by President Bush and then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

FORMER STAFF SGT. ERIC ALVA, U.S. Marine Corps:

There are people like myself among the ranks of men and women of the Armed Forces that have served to protect this nation, but I ask that you give them the chance to serve openly.

MARGARET WARNER:

The current secretary of defense, Robert Gates, was asked after Pace's remarks this week for his personal opinion of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy.

ROBERT GATES, Secretary of Defense: I think personal opinion really doesn't have a place here. What's important is that we have a law, a statute, that governs "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." That's the policy of this department, and it's my responsibility to execute that policy as effectively as we can.

MARGARET WARNER:

Though more than 100 members of Congress have co-sponsored legislation to overturn the policy, no hearings have been scheduled.