NO GAY SOLDIERS FIRED IN LAST MONTH

The Pentagon has confirmed that no US military personnel have been fired because of being gay or lesbian in the last month.

This after the military earlier made it more difficult to dismiss service members under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) ban by only giving three senior officials the power to do so.

The US is embroiled in a contentious national debate over the Obama administration’s efforts to repeal DADT.

On Sunday, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that he believed it was time to end the ban, telling ABC’s Christiane Amanpour: “From my personal perspective, absolutely.”

He said, however, that Congress is the best place to do so, warning that if the matter was decided in the courts it would “not give us the right amount of time to implement it”.

A report based on a massive Pentagon survey of service members about ending DADT is expected to be made public and handed over to the US government by the end of the month. Leaked results suggest that most military personnel would not oppose the lifting of the ban.

DADT was enacted during the Clinton presidency in 1993 and over 13,000 gay or lesbian service members have been fired from the US military since.