Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, is taking unfriendly fire for calling homosexual acts "immoral" and likening them to heterosexual adultery.
“I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Pace told the Chicago Tribune on Monday. "I do not believe that the armed forces of the United States are well served by saying through our policies that it’s OK to be immoral in any way.
“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.”
Pace's comments were met with immediate demands for an apology from homosexual activists like Steve Ralls, director of communications for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, which has represented members of the armed forces dismissed for homosexuality. He said the remarks were “disrespectful” to gay and lesbian service members, which his organization numbers at 65,000 on active duty.
Even Sen. John Warner, R-Va., ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, rebuked Pace, according to the Tribune.
“I respectfully but strongly disagree with the chairman’s view that homosexuality is immoral,” Warner said. “In keeping with my longstanding respect for the Armed Services Committee hearing process, I will decline to comment on the current policy until after such hearings are held.”
Warner’s reference was to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy adopted by President Clinton, under which servicemembers who keep their homosexuality to themselves are left alone. Some congressional liberals are looking to rescind the policy legislatively.
Pace, apparently feeling the heat, issued a statement today, saying he regretted having stirred up the controversy and that he should have confined his remarks to official policy and “less on my personal moral views.” In the Monday remarks he attributed his views to his “upbringing.”
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, said calls for an apology from Pace are “absurd,” noting that the 1993 Homosexual Conduct law, which bans homosexuals in the military, is still in effect.
“He doesn’t need to apologize for supporting that law,” she said.
Donnelly said the ban on homosexuals serving in the military, she added, exists to protect good order, discipline and unit cohesion in “conditions of forced intimacy” in which military personnel may have little or no privacy from others who might be sexually attracted to them.
“The activists who are demanding an apology from General Pace have an agenda," Donnelly said, "an agenda that should not be imposed on the armed services, the Marine Corps or any branch of the military."
Kim Trobee contributed to this story.
