Washington (CNN) -- Congress may have repealed the Don't Ask-Don't Tell law last month but it's still anyone's guess when the Pentagon actually will change its ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday the change is coming but avoided any specific timetable.
"Our goal here is to move as quickly but as responsibly as possible," Gates said Thursday. He said work is underway to finalize changes in regulations and determine how to define benefits under the new rules.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen noted that despite the fanfare last month -- when a lame-duck Congress repealed the policy and the president signed it into law -- the old rules still apply.
"Now is not the time to come out, if you will," Mullen said. "We'll get through this. We'll do it deliberately. We certainly are focused on this. And we won't -- we won't dawdle."
Meanwhile the legal and political battle over Don't Ask also are not over.
Congressman Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, is signaling that he may try to re-open the whole Congressional debate, depending on what his fellow Republicans decide on the House Armed Services Committee. A Wilson aide says Wilson would "support repeal of the repeal" if Republican leaders took on the fight.
Wilson is a 31-year veteran of the National Guard with four sons in the military and has been critical of changing the policy. Committee members like Wilson were irked that Gates and the Joint Chiefs testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in early December but not the House. The committee could try to hold their own hearings on the House side in coming weeks and try to delay any implementation.
Asked about Wilson's efforts to repeal the repeal, Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the department is moving ahead with the change. "The department is aggressively moving out to meet the president's and Congress's intent to set the conditions to repeal the Don't Ask-Don't Tell law," he said.
The government still faces lawsuits about the policy. The Justice Department filed a motion just before the end of the year, on behalf of the Pentagon to stop the case filed by the Log Cabin Republicans which, after a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs that the policy was unconstitutional, threatened to derail the slower effort by the Obama administration to change the policy through legislation.
The government motion of December 29 formally asks the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals "to suspend the briefing schedule and to hold these appeals in abeyance." Briefs were due later this month and arguments expected in May.
The case of Log Cabin Republicans v. The United States and Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been grinding through the courts since 2004, and when Obama signed the new law into force three days before Christmas it seemed as if the issue was closed.
But the policy remains in force until Obama, Gates and Mullen provide formal "certification" that the military is prepared for the change -- with no negative impact on readiness and recruitment -- and then imposes an additional 60 day period beyond that.
The Log Cabin Republicans say they are not giving up their legal battle.
"We will continue our commitment to ending this policy by all means possible," Log Cabin spokesman Christian Berle said Wednesday. "The policy is still in force and individuals can still be discharged because of their sexual orientation."
The group says it was rebuffed when it offered to agree to a halt in the court case if the Defense Department agreed to stop discharging military personnel under Don't Ask. In fact the Pentagon has tightened procedures and requires than any discharges be reviewed at the highest levels, effectively calling a time-out on the policy.
But, a memo sent out December 21 by the Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey reminds soldiers that the policy remains in force and that change will be the result of a deliberate process.
"In the interim, stay focused on your mission," the memo said. "Continue to treat your fellow soldiers with dignity and respect, and maintain the standards of conduct and discipline that have made us who we are today -- the best Army in the world."
The Pentagon released an 87-page Implementation Plan in November and is now working to transform that into a detailed plan of action.
Gates said that the first focus will be on departmental experts -- the personnel people, the chaplains, the judge advocate generals -- and then senior officers.
"My hope is that it can be done within a matter of a very few weeks so that we can then move on to what is the real challenge, which is providing training to 2.2 million people. "
"It is one of the secretary's highest priorities," Lapan said Tuesday. "Senior leaders of the department will be focused on that effort this week."
But the timing is still unknown. "He has not set a deadline -- I don't know if he will," Lapan said.
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