Top General Calls Homosexuality Immoral

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he considers homosexuality to be immoral and the military should not condone it by allowing gay personnel to serve openly, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Marine Gen. Peter Pace likened homosexuality to adultery, which he said was also immoral, the newspaper reported on its Web site.

"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 told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview Monday.

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.

He said he supports the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell policy" in which gay men and women are allowed in the military as long as they keep their sexual orientation private. The policy, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, prohibits commanders from asking about a person's sexual orientation.

Pace 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.

"For the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to make this kind of statement is somewhat alarming," says CBS News military affairs consultant Mike Lyons. "If he felt this way when he took the job, perhaps he should have had second thoughts, because it's this kind of feeling that he knew would get him into trouble politically."

"It's bad enough that he thinks that. It's even worse that he would be foolish enough to say that publicly," Arlene Isaacsen of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus told CBS radio station WBZ-AM. "It is crass prejudice, crass bigotry, and brazen ignorance, and it's disgraceful to think that someone in his position would think in these terms."

With Democrats in charge of Congress, Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., has introduced legislation to reverse the military's ban on openly serving homosexuals.