Army secretary won't enforce gay ban

Army Secretary John McHugh on Wednesday said he has spoken with gay soldiers about their experience in the military and has no plans to initiate disciplinary action against them for disclosing their sexual orientation.

McHugh said the conversations were part of a broad effort to get the force's pulse on President Obama's effort to work with Congress to repeal the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" law that bars admitted homosexuals from serving in the military.

Under the law, military personnel cannot be asked about their sexual orientation, but individuals who acknowledge they are gay must be discharged from the armed services.

"The secretary of the Army is probably not going to go out and initiate an action against an individual soldier who, in the conversation about how do you feel about 'don't ask, don't tell' identified themselves as gay," McHugh said during a breakfast with reporters. "I just thought it would be counterproductive ... in engaging the force to take disciplinary action against someone who had spoken to me openly and honestly."

McHugh, a New York Republican who served on the House Armed Services Committee when the controversial law was approved 17 years ago, said that most of the gay soldiers he spoke with talked about wanting to serve their country. But they also discussed being troubled by serving under the current law, he said.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced last week that the Pentagon is relaxing enforcement of the law to make it tougher to discharge service members for being gay, including placing higher-ranking officers in charge of investigations and raising the bar for what constitute credible information and reliable third-party sources.

The new policy ends investigations prompted by anonymous outings by requiring third parties to give their complaints under oath.

But neither Gates nor the White House has formally suspended enforcement of the law and Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Johnson said last week the new policy did not amount to a moratorium on discharges under the law. The Pentagon has begun to review how the military would implement a repeal of the law and plans to report their finding by the end of the year.

Also Wednesday, McHugh said the Army will not take punitive action against Lt. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, who this month penned a letter to Stars and Stripes urging troops to oppose a repeal of the ban on gays.

McHugh said he plans to talk on Wednesday to Mixon and acknowledged that the letter was "beyond the norm for senior leaders." But he said Mixon will not be fired or formally reprimanded for speaking out.

"We will consider this matter closed as of today," McHugh said.