Bill Clinton: “Absolutely not, because a lot of ministers of the gospel believe that homosexuality is morally wrong and, therefore…”

“Absolutely not, because a lot of ministers of the gospel believe that homosexuality is morally wrong and, therefore, that ground alone is enough to justify the ban. Let me tell you why I favor lifting it very briefly. We have now and everyone concedes we have always had homosexual men and women in the military service. I received a letter from a retired officer, a woman, the other day who told me she left the service because she could not be honest about her sexual orientation, even though she was a distinguished officer with a remarkable service record, one of many such letters I have received. Your Government spent $500 million to get rid of about 16,300 homosexuals from the service in the 1980's. Now, here's my position. If there are homosexual men and women in the service anyway, if we know they have served with distinction and they have always been there, the issue is should you be able to say what you are and not be kicked out. This is not about conduct. This is about status. I believe there ought to be the strictest code of behavioral conduct applicable here. I also believe there ought to be an even stricter code applicable to sexual harassment, whether homosexual or heterosexual. The biggest sexual problem in the armed services, according to the men and women who talked to me, involves heterosexual harassment. I think there ought to be a tough code of conduct. If people do wrong, they ought to be gotten out. But I think people should not be asked to lie if they're going to be allowed to serve, because the question is not whether they should be there or not. They are there. So the narrow question of this debate is should you be able to stay and admit it. The military itself has admitted they should stop asking people when they join. That's the position of the Joint Chiefs. So the only question here is should you be able to say that you're a homosexual if you do nothing wrong. I say yes. Others say no. The military is studying the practical problems about duty assignments and other things, and we'll revisit this in about 6 months. Mr. Bonds. I want to advise my stations along the link-up that it's time for us to take a break here. They'll be taking a break. Speaking about the military, we have military forces in the Persian Gulf. We have military forces still in the Kuwait area. Are we going over to Bosnia- Herzegovina? And we'll be back with that question for you, Mr. President, in just a moment. [At this point, the television stations took a commercial break.] Mr. Bonds. I appreciate your enthusiasm. I think we'd save a little time if we'd hold the applause to the end so that you could get more questions in, the President of the United States could get more answers in. So you do what you want to do, but we feel it would be better that way. We have troops in the Middle East; we have troops in Somalia. Are we going to go into Yugoslavia? That's this young lady's question. Bosnia”