So, a military leader gets to say that the rules of who may or may not serve our country in a time of desperate need — depends upon his personal upbringing?

Let us take this proposal to its logical conclusion.  If each official’s personal upbringing gets to be a basis for hiring policy, then the military will have to ban pork-eaters, and those who work on the sabbath too….Sure, Pace grew up in a community which taught him that homosexuality is immoral.  I am betting that same community also taught him that many other things are immoral.  Are any of those other things bases for being excluded from military service by the United States government? 

When Pace compared homosexuality to adultery, many LBGT activists have responded, “how dare you compare those two things!” — what if instead we ask: Go Ahead!! Compare those two things.  Throw all the adulterers out of the military.  Make a new law that people who commit adultery LOSE THE LEGAL RIGHT TO MARRY.  Try treating adulterers the way you have been treating gay people.  You would have no one left in the military, and mass public outcry.

My problem is not with the fact that Pace was raised to believe in certain moral guidelines.  I also was raised to believe in certain moral guidelines.  But if I used my position of public power to enforce my moral guidelines — there would be and should be mass opposition.

I am a public official over an agency with 3,000 employees.  What if I proposed a policy that “employees who eat pork will be fired”? What if I explained it by saying “I was raised to believe eating pork is immoral”?

Would people accept that as a basis for a hiring policy of a public agency?  I doubt it.  I sure hope not.

-Reb Kaplan
http://www.peopleoft…