WASHINGTON, March 25, 2010 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today announced changes to the Pentagon’s regulation on homosexuals serving in the military that he said make the Defense Department’s enforcement of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law “fairer and more appropriate.”
The changes include:
-- Only a general or flag officer may separate an enlisted member believed at the conclusion of an investigation to have engaged in homosexual conduct. Under previous policy, a colonel -- or for a captain in the Navy and Coast Guard – could order separation.
-- A revision in what’s needed to begin an inquiry or a separation proceeding. Information provided by a third party now must be given under oath, “discouraging the use of overheard statements and hearsay,” Gates said.
-- Certain categories of confidential information -- such as information provided to lawyers, clergy and psychotherapists -- no longer will be used in support of discharges. Information provided to medical personnel in furtherance of treatment, or to a public-health official in the course of seeing professional assistance for domestic or physical abuse also is excluded, as well as information obtained in the process of security-clearance investigations, in accordance with existing Pentagon policies.