Just days after a Pentagon study concluded gays could serve openly in the U.S. military without harming its ability to fight, the services' top uniformed officers planned to tell a Senate panel they are not so sure.
The U.S. Marines commandant and chiefs for three other service branches were widely expected to say Friday that they remained reluctant to lift the ban on openly gay service because the troops who expressed the gravest concerns are the ones fighting on the front lines of combat.
The congressional testimony by the four branch leaders -- Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead -- will be the first since Tuesday's release of the Pentagon study on the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays in military.
The study found that most troops surveyed felt the ban could be repealed without causing serious problems.
At the same time, almost 60 percent of those in the Marine Corps and in Army combat units, such as infantry and special operations, said they thought allowing gays to be open about their sexual orientation would hurt their units' ability to fight on the battlefield.
"There's risk involved; I'm trying to determine how to measure that risk," Amos said last month in San Diego, California. "This is not a social thing. This is combat effectiveness. That's what the country pays its Marines to do."
Marine Gen. James Cartwright, the No. 2 officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also was expected to testify Friday. But he probably will support the repeal. Cartwright and other Pentagon leaders have said they prefer Congress to a court order if there is to be a change in policy.
Earlier this fall, a federal judge in California shook the Pentagon by ruling the ban unconstitutional and ordering the military to cease enforcement. Defense officials said the sudden policy switch, in place for eight days before an appeals court granted a stay, created confusion and uncertainty among troops.
"Bringing this into force quickly means that we have to do some of this in the battlefield. Probably doable, but it's a bigger challenge than we really want to have to take," Cartwright said in an interview this week.
On Thursday, Senate Republicans led by Arizona Sen. John McCain dug in their heels against repeal.
McCain, a Naval officer who was captured and tortured during the Vietnam War, blamed politics for pushing the matter during wartime. He predicted that soldiers and Marines would quit in droves if they had to serve next to gays open about their sexual orientation. He scoffed at testimony by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, who said concerns among some combat troops could be handled with time and training.
"We send these young people into combat," said McCain. "We think they're mature enough to fight and die. I think they're mature enough to make a judgment on who they want to serve with and the impact on their battle effectiveness."
Gates and Mullen cited findings in the survey that experience with gay troops mitigated most concerns; 92 percent of troops who believed they had served with a gay person did not believe that person's sexual orientation negatively affected unit morale or effectiveness. That number stayed high even among Marine combat arms units, at 84 percent.
The Senate proposal would not lift the ban until the president, Gates and Mullen certified that doing so would not hinder combat effectiveness.
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