Peter Pace

General Peter Pace (b. 1945) is the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Bush Administration beginning in October 2005. A Vietnam veteran, he is the first U.S. Marine to hold that top post.

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Gen. Pace in Dress Uniform

In an interview by the Chicago Tribune on March 11, 2007, Pace reportedly said:

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 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.

Liberals immediately criticized his remarks:

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) said, "We need the most talented people; we need the language skills. We need patriotic Americans who exist across the board in our population. We don't need moral judgment from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs."

• Rep. Martin Meehan, D-Mass., who sponsored a bill to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, declared, "Our military is struggling to find and keep the soldiers we need. We are turning away good troops to enforce a costly policy of discrimination."

General Pace refused to apologize for his remarks, saying only that "I should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views."