The Marine Corps' top officer said he would not force straight Marines to share rooms with gay service members if Congress repeals the "don't ask, don't tell" law and allows gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces. Gen. James T. Conway, the commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Web site military.com in an interview published Friday that an "overwhelming

The Marine Corps' top officer said he would not force straight Marines to share rooms with gay service members if Congress repeals the "don't ask, don't tell" law and allows gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces. Gen. James T. Conway , the commandant of the Marine Corps, told the Web site military.com in an interview published Friday that an "overwhelming " number of Marines would be opposed to bunking with someone of a different sexual orientation. As a result, he said, the Corps might have to ditch its double-bed rooms and offer single rooms to everyone. "We want to continue [two-person rooms], but I would not ask our Marines to live with someone who is homosexual if we can possibly avoid it," Conway told the Web site. The Marine Corps is the only branch of the armed services that requires its unmarried members to share rooms, a policy meant to foster unit cohesion.

Why the Marines are different On Tuesday, he offered some thoughts on why the Marines seem more averse than the Army, Air Force, or Navy to having openly gay troops in their ranks. He said it involved recruitment and the reputation of the Marines as a tough fighting force. While he disputed the notion that it’s “a macho thing," he added: “We recruit on a warrior ethos…. We live hard, we train hard. We do tough things,” he said. “We recruit men and women for that kind of ethos." “It’s never, ‘We’re going to give you a college education,’ ” he added. “We never say that.” Recruits who sign up for the Marines come in with “expectations,” Amos argued. “I can’t explain what the expectations are. I can’t explain what they think might happen.” For his part, Gates has argued that he would prefer an orderly repeal passed by Congress to an abrupt reversal by the courts – a scenario Gates called a "nightmare" that could cause mass confusion in the military. Amos said Tuesday: “I don’t know how dangerous a court ruling would be." But should the law be overturned, either by court ruling or by Congress, Amos said he respected civilian control of the government and would obey the decision. He recounted an answer he gave some young Marine lieutenants earlier in the day when they asked him what would happen if the ban was lifted. “Don’t make it too hard,” he told them. The answer, he added, is “actually easy. I’m going to get in step and do it smartly.” In such a case, it’s not a matter of “let’s reconsider it,” Amos said. “It’s a matter of ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

But in the end, Lt. Col. Hackett says every good Marine follows orders, and "if that's what the president orders, I can tell you by God we're going to excel above and beyond the other services to make it happen and be damn good at it."

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — They are the few, the proud and perhaps the military's biggest opponents of lifting the ban on openly gay troops. Most of those serving in America's armed forces have no strong objections to repealing the "don't ask, don't tell" law, according to a Pentagon survey of 400,000 active duty and reservists that is scheduled for release Tuesday. But the survey found resistance to repealing the ban strongest among the Marines, according to The Washington Post. It's an attitude apparently shared by their top leader, Commandant Gen. James Amos, who has said that the government should not lift the ban in wartime. The Senate is supposed to consider repeal during its lame duck session in December, with many legislators favoring changing the law to allow gays to serve openly. A few staunchly oppose it, however, and both sides are expected to cite the survey in arguing whether to move forward with repeal. The Corps is the youngest, smallest and arguably the most tight-knit of the enlisted forces, with many of its roughly 200,000 members hailing from small towns and rural areas in the South. Marines are unabashed about distinguishing themselves from the rest of the military, with a warrior ethos and a religious zeal for their branch of service that they liken to a brotherhood. "We've never changed our motto. We've never changed our pitch to new recruits. We have hardly changed our formal u

changed our formal u niforms in 235 years," said Marine Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Hackett, 48, who has been in the Corps