Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., has introduced legislation that would protect service members and chaplains who oppose gay and lesbian service members. The bill raises the long-standing question of status of chaplains as service members as well as members of religious orders.
Akin’s amendment would require the Defense Department to “accommodate the conscience and sincerely held moral principles and religious beliefs” of every member “concerning the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality.” What is most provocative the ban on an order for a chaplain to perform any duty, rite or ceremony that is “contrary to the conscience, moral principle or religious beliefs” of either the chaplain or of the faith group sponsoring the chaplain.
It raises the question of who a chaplain must serve. These chaplains don the uniform and agree to adhere to the command of the military. This includes the policies of equality and civil liberties. Clearly, a chaplain can decline to serve if principles of equality for gay and lesbian members are against their religious principles. This pits the value of religious freedom against both principles of equality and military command.
If military personnel — and chaplains — belong to religious faiths that oppose homosexuality, the order to recognize same-sex marriage would be viewed as a sin. However, to prevent such chaplains from serving would be to deny military personnel access to chaplains of their faith. While the language of this bill is vague and problematic, it is a difficult question.
One approach is to guarantee that gay and lesbian personnel have chaplains who will minister to them while allowing chaplains who oppose them. As for personnel, I do not see how the military can tolerate discriminatory actions or comments by personnel in violation of military policy and order. While there may be some need for accommodation in religious ceremonies and rites, the danger is that discrimination and harassment could be shielded as expressions of faith.
What do you think? Should there be some accommodation for anti-homosexual faiths in the military?
Source: Army Times
I agree with Michael Murray above.
Todd Akin is thought of and described in his home state as “The looney from the boonies.”
Whenever I hear him yak it makes me recall the Rosann Rosann Odana script on Saturday Night Live years ago when she derided some guy named TODD!
OT:
U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam
By Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman
May 10, 2012
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/05/total-war-islam/
Excerpt;
The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”
The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light. Danger Room received hundreds of pages of course material and reference documents from a source familiar with the contents of the class.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff recently ordered the entire U.S. military to scour its training material to make sure it doesn’t contain similarly hateful material, a process that is still ongoing. But the officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.
For the better part of the last decade, a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts has been working its way through the U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement communities, trying to convince whoever it could that America’s real terrorist enemy wasn’t al-Qaida — but the Islamic faith itself. In his course, Dooley brought in these anti-Muslim demagogues as guest lecturers. And he took their argument to its final, ugly conclusion.
“We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” Dooley noted in a July 2011 presentation (.pdf), which concluded with a suggested manifesto to America’s enemies. “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.”
Dooley could not be reached for comment. Joint Forces Staff College spokesman Steven Williams declined to discuss Dooley’s presentation or his status at the school. But when asked if Dooley was responsible for the course material, he responded, “I don’t know if I would classify him [Dooley] as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school, Maj. Gen. Joseph Ward.
That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material. In the same presentation, Dooley lays out a possible four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” (It’s an especially ironic suggestion, in light of today’s news that Saudi intelligence broke up the most recent al-Qaida bombing plot.)
International laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant,” Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about “Mecca and Medina[‘s] destruction.”
“Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., is specifically aiming to protect religious freedom by allowing service members and chaplains to openly oppose gay and lesbian lifestyles and the presence of gay people in the ranks.”
*****
And what would service members and chaplains be allowed to do in “openly opposing” gay and lesbian lifestyles and the presence of gay people in the ranks? I, too, think this legislation would be contrary to and would not promote good order and discipline in the military. The proposed legislation, in effect, says that discrimination of gays and lesbians would be acceptable and will be tolerated in the military. It could invite ill treatment of gays and lesbians. No form of discrimination should be allowed in the military.
With every day that passes, the Republicans of today reveal themselves to be more and more evil, insane and/or disgusting.
ARE: From what I know sodomy and other homosexuals acts are still a violation in the UCMJ and member can still be prosecuted for them.
First, you’re aware that sodomy is not just a homosexual act, right? Second, what you know is wrong. The law has changed. Gay people in the military are now free to be who they are under the law. You’re out of date and out of time.
Arthur Randolph Erb,
If allowing pedophile Catholic priests in the ranks doesn’t offend our military service personnel, then serving with adult gays will probably not cause irreparable harm to morale or military efficiency.
The United States has far too many military service personnel, especially flag rank officers, and so any policy that would cause half or more of them to resign would do America and the world enormous good. I’ll take my chances against Southeast Asian peasant farmers and Muslim goat herders in the valleys of the Hindu Kush. Having served in the American military, I find ts mindless military careerism more of a threat to American liberties than a protection of them.
Oh, yes. One more thing. I propose that America return to the more honest practice of calling the Pentagram the War Department instead of associating it with that Orwellian misnomer, “Defense.” Nothing that I did in Vietnam and nothing that other servicemen have done in Iraq or Afghanistan ever did one thing to protect America from anything. Our founding generation accurately predicted that a standing military would eventually corrupt and undermine our republic. American homosexuals, in or out of uniform, pose no such danger to any of us.
I’m sick and tired of Republican bigotry.
If someone enters the military as a chaplain, he or she does so with the knowledge that they will have to minister to EVERYONE no matter what faith they are or whether they are gay or straight. If they join the military, they are supposed to be fighting for OUR rights, no matter who the ‘we’ are.
To do otherwise makes a complete mockery of what they’re supposed to accomplish.
From what I know sodomy and other homosexuals acts are still a violation in the UCMJ and member can still be prosecuted for them. So it hardly seems like it would be too hard to decide. The chaplains would only be demanding that the law be followed, and those who are against it are breaking the law.
The point of the proposed law is that chaplains can be free in their thoughts and conscience which is not a problem since they will be free to not perform marriages of gays. Just as Catholic chaplains are not required to give last rites of the Catholic Church to all members, nor are they required to perform the Catholic marriage ceremony for Protestants. So I see no problem unless the gay fanatics demand that ALL bow to their demands.
In that case there may well be a problem for Catholic priests and fundamentalist Protestants who preach that homosexuality is wrong. That makes up the overwhelming majority of the military now, so the US may well find itself in trouble in the military if those priests and ministers are prohibited from espousing their religious beliefs. Since some have mentioned that the preachers can resign, I hope that they would also extend that right to ALL members of the US military who can rightfully claim that the terms and conditions of their enilstment have been changed in a fundamental way so that they should be able to get out now.
This policiy, of allowing open gays, is an ill thought out one, which is going to cause more problems than we get in gains.
they swore to obey the lawful orders of their superiors. they can either do their job or resign their commissions.
The military has generally had an arrangement with their service members as follows- don’t create an issue with your religion, and we’ll leave you and religion alone. Anything contrary to good order and discipline, we’ll squash. Of course, there’s nothing they can do about things disruptive to good order and discipline ordered from congress- except wait till an election cycle removes said disruptions from political office. And goldmans, as far as I am aware, there are no major religious beliefs regarding race and sex in military operations. There are several religions that disparage homosexuality as an entirety, however.
the FEAR =the Few Evangelical Anti-everyone else (mostly)Republicans…
the FEAR hath run amok……again…..
The spiritual leaders of the Wartocracy need some protection.
They are not saving those in their ranks who are killing more of themselves than the enemies of a decade or so have done, nor are they peacemakers.
When the armed forces were desegregated, did we accommodate the “conscience and sincerely held moral principles” of racists? When women were allowed greater access to military positions, did we accommodate the religious views of sexists?
“What do you think? Should there be some accommodation for anti-homosexual faiths in the military?”
No.
We no longer have the Draft. Don’t like the rules in the Volunteer Military, don’t volunteer.
The message of the day, re gay marriage, certainly seems well timed, or this proposed legislation is. If discrimination against gays is unconstitutional which is not an unreasonable inference, Chaplains sworn duty trumps their own hate-filled “gospel”. If they don’t like it they should not serve. But of course we know, per the incubator at the Air Force Academy, they have no intention of leaving, but are more intent on spewing and spreading their version of truth.
Nal,
They are sending messages to the members by this legislation…. Looking at what they did to Richard lugaer from IN…..
Chaplains are trained to do everything from evangelical protestant to Buddhist to Wiccan. The position should enable them to do things unique to their religions of origin that are essential for coreligionists (like a bris, e.g.). If they can’t succesfully fulfill that mission, they have no business being in the military.
Christian Chaplains already have a problem: they swore to uphold the Constitution that allows freedom of religion, yet belief in another God is a sin.
Atheists don’t believe in another God, so they’re not included.
I agree wholeheartedly that the gay members of the services deserve and are entitled to chaplains who will work with them, notwithstanding the respective churches or faiths opposiiton to gay marriage.