Activists on both sides of the debate around Don't Ask Don't Tell stepped up their efforts this week.

Six gay rights activists from North Carolina delivered plastic toy soldiers to their lawmakers Wednesday to represent the 13,500 troops who have been discharged from the military under the Don't Ask Don't Tell law.

Their request to repeal the military law came a day after 40 former military chaplains wrote a letter   to President Obama requesting that he leave the policy intact.

"If the government normalizes homosexual behavior in the armed forces, many (if not most) chaplains will confront a profoundly difficult moral choice: whether they are to obey God or to obey men," wrote the chaplains, who were organized by the conservative Alliance Defense Fund.

Matt Comer, one of the North Carolina activists pushing for a repeal of the law, dismissed their concerns, saying, "I don't know how anybody can rationalize kicking out any able-bodied person out of the military when we're clearly having recruiting problems."

Comer and his fellow activists with the Charlotte Rainbow Action Network planned to deliver 1,350 toy soldiers to each of four lawmakers' offices. Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) sit on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, and Reps. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.) and Mike McIntyre (D-N.C.) sit on the House counterpart.

Capitol Police limits on packages carried into the Congressional buildings prevented the group from delivering all of the 67,500 toy soldiers they had collected in recent months.

-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org