Concerns rise with pending Senate vote, disparaging comment by top Army personnel official

Friday, September 17, 2010

WASHINGTON — The number of highly distinguished veteran chaplains expressing religious liberty concerns over any dismantling of the military’s policy against openly practiced homosexual behavior has increased with the addition of numerous signatures to a letter to President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates. The 66 signers, up from 41 in April, have given a combined total of nearly 1,700 years of U.S. military service.

• Additional resources (including video presentations) on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and religious liberty
• Pronunciation guide: Blomberg (Blahm-burg)

By Alexander F.C. Webster

Published: August 24, 2010

President Barack Obama’s initiative to rescind the “don’t ask, don’t tell” statute of 1993 will, if Congress yields to him later this year, shred the social and moral fabric of our armed forces. The experiment will also test the mettle of the chaplain corps in each of the military services — Army, Air Force and Navy (including the Marine Corps and Coast Guard). Fortunately for the nation and its military defense, many chaplains and their civilian faith group leaders are beginning, at last, to push back on the issue.

Having taken numerous showers in open bays during 12-month-long deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq while serving on active duty as a U.S. Army chaplain since August 2005, I know firsthand how expendable the personal privacy of heterosexual males (and females, I presume) would be in a new homosexual-affirming military. It’s quite obvious to most Americans why we do not permit male and female soldiers to shower together or to sleep in co-ed pairs in close quarters. That same principle applies to the homosexual parallel. It’s not a matter of “gay rights,” as if a willed sexual behavior has the same moral and legal standing as race, ethnicity or chromosomal sexual identity. What’s at stake instead is the moral imperative to honor the dignity, privacy preferences and needs of the vast majority of servicemembers.

If the president ultimately has his way, “don’t ask, don’t tell” should be renamed “don’t ask, don’t tell — or don’t shower!” Perhaps the co-ed military shower scene in the campy 1997 sci-fi film “Starship Troopers” was more prescient than preposterous. A universal vulgarity and coarsening of military decency may soon await our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, and brothers and sisters in uniform.

The pragmatic arguments against the president’s proposal concerning unit morale, cohesion and readiness are well-known. Not so the following slippery slope. A “nondiscrimination” policy would surely mutate into approval and celebration of the “gay” lifestyle, followed by “affirmative action” recruitment of homosexuals, politically correct ideological indoctrination throughout the armed forces including family members, and, finally, active discrimination against — and persecution of — those who dare to express a dissenting opinion.

The latter scenario figures prominently in a remarkable open letter to Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates co-signed on April 28 by 41 retired U.S. military chaplains including two brigadier generals (James Hutchens and Douglas Lee). Those Protestant former chaplains (soon to be joined by additional Roman Catholic and Orthodox signatories, including me) argue that the normalization of homosexual behavior in the U.S. armed forces would pose a profound dilemma to chaplains similar to that which the earliest Christians faced in the pagan Roman Empire: whether to obey God or men.

Specifically, chaplains from the morally conservative faith groups and denominations — significantly, the vast majority at present — might be cowed into silence on the issue to preserve their chosen vocations or to avoid clashing with official policies or the commander in chief himself. Their preaching, teaching, counseling, worship leadership and pastoral care — so vital to the free exercise of religion by our troops, especially in wartime — would suffer immeasurably, and their particular contributions to a genuinely pluralistic religious mix would be needlessly lost. Chaplains who balk at performing homosexual “weddings,” sharing pulpits with openly homosexual clergy, including homosexual pairs in married couple retreats, or hiring “gay” civilian workers to engage in youth ministry might be subject routinely to the potentially career-ending consequences of a discrimination complaint. Anyone who has served as a senior military officer knows how easy it is to punish chaplains or other subordinate officers who are deemed inadequate as “team players” through a negative or even lukewarm efficiency report, or by undesirable assignments designed to thwart their career progression.

Confronted with such a dim future, many chaplains might retire early, resign their commissions in protest, or decline to serve in the first place. More drastically, the bishops, boards or other religious judicatories whose approval is indispensable for clergy to be commissioned as officers might withdraw their official endorsements and pull their chaplains from military service.

In a recent letter to the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, my own bishop, Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) of the Orthodox Church in America, has promised to do precisely that, if any of the two dozen priests under his care “were in any way forced to minister the sacraments” to active, unrepentant homosexuals, or “forced to teach that such behavior is good or acceptable, or prohibited from denouncing such behavior as sinful and self-destructive,” or regarded as purveyors of “prejudice” or “hate language.” It’s at once inspiring and reassuring as a retired chaplain to know that Metropolitan Jonah has, in the peculiar parlance of troops in combat, “got our back.”

Nor is Metropolitan Jonah alone on this issue. The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resounding resolution of support for “don’t ask, don’t tell” in June. Meanwhile the 800-member Rabbinical Alliance of America has called for a filibuster by U.S. senators opposed to change in the law. And Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Roman Catholic Military Archdiocese issued a pro-“don’t ask, don’t tell” statement in June that urges the U.S. military to “develop strong prohibitions against any immoral activity that would jeopardize morale, good morals, unit cohesion and every other factor that weakens the mission.”

The battle lines over active homosexuality in the U.S. armed forces are clearly drawn. Supporters of traditional sexual morality have now begun to field an army against the advocates of radical social engineering. Many Americans may not recall that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was a compromise between full acceptance of homosexuality in the military and perpetuation of the traditional strictures against even the mere presence of homosexuals in uniform, whether sexually active or celibate.

This time, however, there can be no compromise. Despite the widely reported insistence of Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the issue is not already settled. Now is the time for citizens to impress upon our representatives and senators in Congress — the final legislative arbiters — the dire consequences of the elimination of “don’t ask, don’t tell” for our military and our nation.

Father Alexander F.C. Webster, Ph.D., an archpriest in the Orthodox Church in America, retired in June as an Army Reserve chaplain at the rank of colonel after more than 24 years of military service. He is a traveling professor with University of Maryland University College (Asia Division) and the author or co-author of four books on topics of social ethics, including “The Virtue of War: Reclaiming the Classic Christian Traditions East and West” (2004). Reprinted with permission.

At the Military Culture Coalition news conference on February 18, 2010, Jordan Lorence, Senior Counsel of the Alliance Defense Fund, announced that his widely respected legal group has sent a formal letter to President Obama and congressional leaders expressing concern about the effects of the proposed LGBT law on the religious freedom of chaplains:

Change in military policy on homosexual behavior could affect chaplains

In this article published by the Daily Caller on August 6, 2010, Daniel Blomberg of the Alliance Defense Fund has highlighted new information about the threat to religious liberty in the military that could result in the voluntary and involuntary losses of thousands of people of faith, starting with chaplains who oppose homosexuality on moral grounds:

Mounting Religious Liberty Concerns in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Attack Grow With New Revelations from Active-Duty Chaplain

Excerpt:

“The harm to military religious liberty posed by the possible dismantling of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is only recently starting to get the kind of attention it needs. If the military is forced to normalize homosexual conduct, service members’ religious beliefs that such conduct is immoral and harmful will likely be a casualty of the political push to radically alter military personnel policy. This likelihood is demonstrated by the nationwide assaults on religious beliefs in the civilian world and by new evidence from an active-duty chaplain that is being revealed for the first time here.

“And now new evidence has come to light that these concerns are true."

“Since the beginning of the most recent round of this debate, the militaries of foreign countries that have allowed homosexual behavior to be practiced openly have been touted as proof that the U.S. military can adopt their practices and still be an effective fighting force. But a recent account from an active-duty U.S. chaplain working with one of those militaries shows religious liberty will not fare well in the face of normalized homosexual conduct."

“The U.S. military operates what might best be called an “exchange program” that allows chaplains to become functioning members of foreign military chaplaincies. One such U.S. chaplain—whose name and the distinctive aspects of his service must be withheld to avoid censure—recently discovered when his faith contradicts the military’s endorsement of homosexuality."

“…Since homosexual behavior is not a morally or religiously neutral subject (unlike, for instance, race), forcing the military to normalize that behavior will have significant effects on the morality and religion of our service members. If anything, given the military’s unique demands for strict discipline and low threshold for dissent, the assault on service members’ religious liberty will be even worse. That was certainly the experience of the active-duty U.S. chaplain discussed here."

“Like a point man on patrol, our Chaplaincy Corps will likely be the first to draw fire if the current military policy is dismantled. And thus, like a point man on patrol who wants to protect himself and the men relying on him, chaplains are the ones sounding the alarm of the danger ahead. Hopefully, politicians will listen. Hopefully, the rights of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines—the same rights they fight and die to protect for us—will not be sacrificed to accomplish a political agenda.”

Daniel Blomberg serves as litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, (www.telladf.org), a legal alliance employing a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

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On April 28, the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) and Family Research Council (FRC) conducted a news conference featuring legal experts and former military chaplains who discussed the dilemmas military chaplains would face if they are ordered to accept the LGBT agenda in the military and teach it to others in counseling and education programs if the LGBT Law is passed. They also released a persuasive letter signed by 41 distinguished retired chaplains:

Repeal of 1993 Law Threatens Religious Liberty in the Military

Writing in Town Hall, Daniel Blomberg highlighted reasons why members should seriously consider the moral dilemmas that chaplains would face if the 1993 law is repealed:

Chaplains Get It Right About Dangers of Normalizing Homosexual Behavior in the Military

FRC President Tony Perkins on religious liberty:

My Take: Ending DADT Would Undermine Religious Liberty

The issue of religious freedom in the military is emerging as another major reason why the 1993 law must not be repealed. This article quotes Richard Thompson, President of the Michigan-based Thomas More Law Center and attorney Arthur Schulz who represents the International Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers─both of whom have been working with CMR and the Military Culture Coalition (MCC). They commented on the statement from Catholic Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who heads the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA:

National Catholic Register: DADT: Archbishop for the Military Voices Opposition

Archbishop Broglio’s Statement on Proposed Legislation

This article posts video testimony from several former military chaplains who are concerned about this issue:

Speak Up: Faith Under Fire: “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and Religious Liberty