During this evening’s Delaware Senate debate, Christine O’Donnell — who has a spotty record on LGBT rights — repeatedly compared allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military to “adultery” and condemned the recent court decision which banned the military from enforcing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy:

O’DONNELL: A federal judge recently ruled that we have to overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. There are a couple of things we need to say about that. First of all, judges should not be legislating from the bench. Second of all, it’s up to the military to set the policy that the military believes is in the best interest of unit cohesiveness and military readiness. The military already regulates personal behavior in that it doesn’t allow affairs to go on within your chain of command. It does not allow it you are married to have an adulterous affair within the military. So the military already regulates personal behavior because it feels that it is in the best interest of our military readiness. I don’t think that Congress should be forcing a social agenda on to our military. I think we should leave that to the military.

Pressed by debate moderator Wolf Blitzer about why the United States is one of the few NATO members to prohibit open service, O’Donnell reiterated her offensive simile and added, “If the heads of all four branches of the military said [they favored repeal], then it would be up to them, not me as U.S. Senator to impose my social agenda wether it’s for or against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

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O’Donnell recently dodged a question about DADT at a town hall event, but it’s still more likely that she’d support strengthening the ban against open gay and lesbian service than vote for legislation repealing it. After, all how can she allow gay people to serve openly if she believes they suffer from a psychological disorder?

“People are created in God’s image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It’s an identity disorder,” O’Donnell told the Washington Post four years ago, taking a position that has been universally rejected by science and psychology since the early 1970s.

O’Donnell’s opponent Chris Coons, meanwhile, likened the push for open service to the civil rights movement and President Harry Truman’s executive order desegregating the armed forces.

This afternoon, in a conference call with progressive bloggers, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joined a growing number of Democrats in calling on the Department of Justice not to appeal yesterday’s court ruling prohibiting the implementation of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. “I hope, I haven’t really heard officially that the administration is going to appeal this, but in any event, I hope they don’t,” she said in reply to a question from AmericaBlog’s John Aravosis. “I myself have always wanted a moratorium on any discharges.”

Pelosi, who celebrated the ruling in a tweet yesterday, reiterated that the House passed legislation ending the ban with a 40 vote margin and stressed that this “is not an issue for us, it’s a value that we mustn’t cede on.”

She predicted that the House could also pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that has yet to be marked up before the House Education and Labor committee, if “we could hold our members” on the motion to recommit — a tactic under which the GOP could conceivably introduce an alternative that does not offer protections to transgender people and peel off several Democratic votes.

“It’s a choice, it’s a choice,” Pelosi stresseed, speaking to disheartened LGBT voters. “We all haven’t gotten everything we want, but everything we got on these issues came from the Democrats and so that’s what I would say to them.” “It’s a fight and again, we don’t intend do lose it.”

Just a day after a federal judge ordered the military to stop enforcing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reiterated his belief that abruptly ending the policy would have “enormous consequences” for the troops:

“I feel strongly this is an action that needs to be taken by the Congress and that it is an action that requires careful preparation, and a lot of training,” Gates said. “It has enormous consequences for our troops.”

Gates’ comments suggest that President Obama and DOJ will be under some pressure to appeal yesterday’s broad injunction, despite pleas from Democratic lawmakers to allow the decision to stand.

According to the Advocate’s Kerry Eleveld, at a White House press gaggle this morning, Robert Gibbs said that the courts have demonstrated that the time is ticking on the policy and that Obama believes that repeal most occur in an orderly fashion. “We want the Senate that didn’t act…to act,” he reportedly told Eleveld.

Asked if Obama believed that the policy was constitutional — he had previously indicated that it is — Gates said he and Obama had not discussed the issue.