They're following lawful orders. If the order was illegal, then they'd be justified in disobeying it. Unfortunately, as someone pointed out above, elections have consequences, and the consequence of the last election was a legal order from the President to integrate.
The honorable course for Officers who don't feel they can carry it out that order is to resign.
But I wouldn't recommend that. As best as I can tell, there is no law saying that gays must be integrated. It's just that the prior law was repealed, which theoretically should return this policy to the discretion of the President. If we elect a new President, that policy may change.
That's what I've advised my son. Especially in light of the way that combat Marines have been cut loose by some of their operational commanders to the jollies of JAG officers prosecuting them for making war. Not talking about drug dealing or theft or murder but war and combat situations with ROE that take us out of offensive and into a probing defensive posture.
We OWN the night, we own comms, our fitness and fire discipline is second to none. I have and I would gladly allow my fire teams and those of Marines to cover me into any fight, but I sure wouldn't want to face a bunch of REMF prosecuting me when a bad guy says that I 'murdered' some civilians that he's using as cover or other such BS.
War sucks, combat sucks, but having Obamalama ding dong looking up from his NCAA basketball brackets and sports prognostications to "tsk-tsk" about my son or my brothers dying in combat...or Hillary waddling about and pretending she has even a basic concept of asymmetrical warfare and counter insurgency explaining herself to the MSM makes me want to puke.
Never going to happen. It's still a free country and my advice to mine is to find something you're good at and stick it to the bureaucrats every chance you get. The good news is that I've got 4 kids and they want big families, liberals are either too busy killing their baby's and the homosexuals aren't able to make 4-5 clones of themselves...babies take the attention away from them and people with gender identification issues, poor impulse control and narcissistic sociopathic tendencies don't do well with large groups of people sharing or losing their "identity" to become part of a unit. They want to be the star... no stars in the Marines. We're all the same.... miserable turds trained to kick somebody's a##.
The way the pink Marines and other gay activist joining the service are going to work this is service related disabilities. Mark this and bank on it. Once one homosexual sets up shop, he/she/it is going to have a treadmill of fellow travelers that will form pink palaces like what happened to the Catholic church in the late 50's-60's.
Remember, they're not "pedophile" priests...they are "male homosexual predators". That's what they do, it's just a natural thing that is now going to be protected by the DOJ, JAG and UCMJ. Well see how this all shakes out in about 10-15 years.
Have fun fellas, Semper Fi.