Reconciliation meeting between Halutz, gay reps

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3310757,00.html

week after saying things that angered the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz met with representatives of the community for a reconciliation meeting Tuesday evening. At the conclusion of the meeting Halutz ordered to appoint a person to be in charge of complaints based on sexual orientation in the army.


Halutz Made his controversial statement during a farewell ceremony from the chief of staff's advisor on women's issues. In the ceremony, the army chief said that "there are two genders: Men, women, and there are those we cannot speak about." The words caused an uproar in the gay community in Israel, whose members said that "there are things that we shouldn't laugh about."



During the meeting, which was aimed at reconciling the differences, Halutz said that in his words he was not referring to the people of the gay community and that he did not mean to hurt them. "The last thing I thought about when I was speaking was about the gay community. I did not mean your community or any other community for that matter," he said.