Defense Secretary Robert Gates said
Tuesday the Pentagon is looking into ways to make its ban on open gay
service “more humane.”
Speaking aboard a military plane on its
way to Germany Tuesday, Gates told reporters “one of the things
we're looking at is, is there flexibility in how we apply this law.”
The military gay ban, known as “don't
ask, don't tell,” prescribes discharge as the remedy for service
members who do not remain closeted or celibate. But Gates suggested
he disagreed with discharges in cases where service members were
maliciously outed.
According to a transcript released by
the Department of Defense, Gates said, “What we have is a law –
be it a policy or regulation – and as I discovered when I got into
it, it's a very prescriptive law. It doesn't leave much to the
imagination for a lot of flexibility.”
Gates questioned the need to take
action against service members when they've been outed out of
vengeance or after being jilted.
“If someone is outed by a third party
… does that force us to take an action?” he asked.
“That's the kind of thing we're
looking at to see if there's a more humane way to apply the law until
the law gets changed,” Gates added.
In April, Gates said altering the law
was not under consideration. Speaking on Fox News Sunday,
Gates told Chris Wallace: “I think the president and I feel like
we've got a lot on our plates right now and let's push that one down
the road a little bit.”
The Obama administration is facing
increasingly louder demands from gay groups to end the 16-year-old
law that candidate Obama promised to repeal. According to the
Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that lobbies for repeal
of the law, 275 service members have been discharged under Obama's
watch.