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Oceanside, Calif. • They are the few, the proud and perhaps the military's biggest opponents of lifting the ban on openly gay troops.
A recent 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 Corps is the youngest, smallest and arguably the most tightknit of the enlisted forces, with many of its roughly 200,000 members hailing from small towns and rural areas in the South.
"We've never changed our motto. We've never changed our pitch to new recruits. We have hardly changed our formal uniforms in 235 years," said Marine Reserve Lt. Col. Paul Hackett, 48, who has been in the Corps for 25 years.
Much has been said about the Marine "mystique," the almost cultlike bonds developed among a force known historically to have higher casualty rates because it is considered the "tip of the spear," or the first to respond to bloody conflicts. Marine officers say that kind of unit "cohesion" — fostered through close living quarters — can literally mean the difference between life and death when headed into battle.