Catholic Online Forum

WASHINGTON, D.C.,January 13, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Provisions that protect the conscience rights of military chaplains that were included in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are “unnecessary and ill-advised” said President Obama in a signing statement this week.

Section 533 of the defense bill was crafted in response to fears that the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy under the Obama administration would lead to reprisals against chaplains who have moral objections to the homosexual lifestyle, or who refuse to perform same-sex “weddings.”
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That section says that no member of the armed forces may “require a chaplain to perform any rite, ritual, or ceremony that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the chaplain.”

It also says that they may not “discriminate or take any adverse personnel action against a chaplain” for refusing to perform the ceremonies.

The language was introduced by former Rep. Todd Akin, R-Missouri.

While the president signed the bill with the conscience protections intact, he issued a signing statement criticizing them.

"Unnecessary" seems like a good description.

Why do you think that?

Because the President is going to ignore them like any other law that gets in his way.

Because the President is going to ignore them like any other law that gets in his way.

That is as much a fault of the citizenry and Congress as it is Obama; we do, or rather are supposed to, have a Representative Democracy.

One of the items on Obama’s second term agenda is to root out traditionally Christian chaplains from the military. He sees them as bigots unworthy of conscience protections. Like Chick-fil-A, they don’t uphold Obama’s “values.”

Obama’s mouthpieces in the military have already blurted this out. In 2010, Admiral Michael Mullen told a Christian chaplain who opposed the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that “If you cannot get in line, resign your commission.” That same year Lieutenant General Thomas P. Bostick, the Army’s deputy chief of staff in charge of personnel, said military members who dissent from Obama’s gay rights agenda should “get out.”

“Unfortunately, we have a minority of service members who are still racists and bigoted and you will never be able to get rid of all of them,” he said, as reported by the Washington Times. “But these people opposing this new policy will need to get with the program, and if they can’t, they need to get out.”

Pentagon officials go through the motions of saying that military chaplains still enjoy religious freedom. But this claim grows ever more lawyerly and narrow. When Defense Department Counsel Jeh C. Johnson testified before Congress about the implications of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy’s collapse for religious freedom, he said that it would not affect what a chaplain said in “the religious context.” In other words, chaplains would be punished for objecting to Obama’s gay rights agenda anywhere outside of a pulpit.

But even that feeble promise isn’t worth taking seriously, since Obama’s military officials have already regulated sermons from the pulpit. Last year they forbade Catholics chaplains from orally criticizing the HHS mandate, permitting only a printed objection to it. How long before the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains requires vetting of all sermons on homosexuality?

At Maoist-style reeducation sessions, soldiers and chaplains have already been told that “You remain obligated to follow orders that involve interaction with others who are homosexual even if an unwillingness to do so is based on strong, sincerely held moral or religious beliefs.”

Also, it is not even clear if military chaplains control who speaks from their pulpits. It is likely that they will have to turn them over to other ministers preaching at gay nuptials whenever the Pentagon so decrees . A September 2011 memo from DOD general counsel Johnson indicates that any chapel space on a military base can be appropriated for gay weddings, which is a blatant violation of the Defense of Marriage Act. “Determinations” of chapel space, he wrote, “should be made on a sexual-orientation neutral basis.” By 2011, in open defiance of DOMA, the military authorized ministerial training for gay marriage ceremonies on military bases.

"Unnecessary" seems like a good description.

David,



Unnecessary because it's already covered by the First Amendment?

Dean,

That is pretty well stated.