Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The folks at Liberty Counsel are quite upset about an email sent by a lieutenant colonel which called out anti-gay groups, and as you might expect, Matt Barber is already blaming the incident on the “homosexualization of the United States military” that began following the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Barber, an ardent supporter of the military’s then-ban on gay service members, also told Faith & Freedom cohost and Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver that the email is part of a “Marxist” attempt “to marginalize people with whom they disagree.”

Watch:

After losing his bid for a second term in Congress, despite a more favorable district, Allen West is continuing his work as a fulltime conservative blowhard (but without a taxpayer-funded salary). West is working at PJ Media and appeared yesterday on Washington Watch with Family Research Council leaders Tony Perkins and Jerry Boykin, where he criticized the lifting of the bans on women in combat and gays and lesbians in the military.

West told Boykin that “the liberal progressive left” is “coming at the military so viciously and vehemently because they want to tear down that ‘last bastion of strength, honor and moral fortitude,’ things that they really don’t understand,” lamenting that the generals haven’t stopped them.

The former congressman pointed to the election of Ashley Broadway, who is married to Army Lt. Col. Heather Mack, as Fort Bragg’s 2013 “Spouse of the Year” in a Military Spouse magazine poll. Broadway had previously been turned away from joining the base’s spouses club. West said Broadway’s story will undermine military’s resolve and strength.

He added that if he was an “enemy propagandist and I look at the lifting of this combat exclusion ban I’m going to turn that my benefit.”

West: The Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy and now this policy about lifting the exclusionary ban, people are starting to ask: what are the Generals in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps thinking about in not challenging to say, ‘this can’t be done.’

Boykin: I think your points are very well taken because I think one of the consequences of this will be a further erosion of the credibility of the General officer corps in the military and all services, as well an erosion of a confidence of the Americans in our military. You know the military has always been sort of the keepers of the keys of traditional American values and I think people are starting to question it and I think that’s what you were saying.

West: You are absolutely right and you know that from firsthand experience. I believe that is a reason why the liberal progressive left are coming at the military so viciously and vehemently because they want to tear down that ‘last bastion of strength, honor and moral fortitude,’ things that they really don’t understand. Look at just recently happened at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the ‘Military Spouse of the Year’ for Fort Bragg, North Carolina is a lesbian partner to an Army Lt. Colonel or a Colonel. These are the type of things that are starting to happen which is going to question people’s resolve as far as, what are we doing to our military? Are we focused so much on winning social engineering points for special interest points or are we supposedly focused on what we should be doing which is going out there and fighting this very strong, very vicious, very determined radical Islamist enemy. If I’m an enemy propagandist and I look at the lifting of this combat exclusion ban I’m going to turn that my benefit and my messaging is going to be: the American men don’t want to fight us so they’re turning to their women.

Meanwhile, Perkins once again said that the “social engineering that has gone on in the military” and “tampering with the military environment” under President Obama “could very well lead to a draft.”

Perkins: What you have seen since you left the military but in particular under the four years of the Obama administration, I don’t think anybody could argue with the social engineering that has gone on in the military. My concern here in part is with all this tampering with the military environment that it’s going to have an effect—might be ten years until we see the total effect—it’s going to have an effect on retention, recruitment and this could very well lead to a draft once again because the volunteers are not going to be there in this environment which has been so damaged by these policies.

We’re used to hearing claims by right-wing activists that gay rights supporters are “heterophobic.” Former chaplain and gay-exorcist Gordon Klingenschmitt argued along those lines in an interview today, where he maintained that same-sex partner benefits represent “discrimination against heterosexuals.”

While speaking with OneNewsNow, an affiliate of the American Family Association, Klingenschmitt criticized Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s decision to offer some — but not all — military benefits to same-sex spouses. Klingenschmitt said such a move will give gay service members “bonus pay and more benefits when all the rest of our troops are getting less benefits, less armor, less weapons and less ability to fight wars.”

Sources say Panetta has not made a final decision on which benefits will be included, but the Pentagon is likely to allow same-sex partners to have access to the on-base commissary and other military subsidized stores, as well as health and welfare programs.

The military is likely to require that some type of document be signed to designate the military member's partner as a legitimate recipient of the benefits. But Gordon Klingenschmitt, a former Navy chaplain who now runs The Pray In Jesus Name Project, tells OneNewsNow that "this is not equality."

"This is now discrimination against heterosexuals, because when I was dating my girlfriend -- even when she was engaged to be married to me -- she was not allowed to enter the commissary or even get on the military base until we were legally married," he recalls.

And Klingenschmitt says this move is especially outrageous in light of the Defense Department budget cuts that are coming.

"When [Panetta] talks about sequester and cutting the Pentagon budget by 22 percent, apparently those cuts don't apply to homosexuals, because they're getting bonus pay and more benefits when all the rest of our troops are getting less benefits, less armor, less weapons and less ability to fight wars," the chaplain reasons.

He concludes that all this has come about because the people of the United States elected -- and then re-elected -- Barack Obama as president.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is now recycling the exact same talking points against allowing women the opportunity to serve in combat that he used opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT).

While none of the dire predictions Fischer warned about regarding the end of DADT ever materialized, Fischer made similar warnings while speaking yesterday with Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness. Like with the DADT’s repeal, Fischer predicted that the policy will undermine readiness, cohesion, security and performance, possibly leading “to a reinstatement of the draft.”

While Donnelly avoided Fischer’s question about reinstating the draft, she claimed that women will now have to register in the selective service system and said the policy will “harm women, men, infantry battalions and the national security of the United States.”

Donnelly said that sexual assaults may increase because male soldiers will resent the easier “double standards” for women, warning that now the whole military will “fall apart.”

Fischer: There’s also the issue of sexual tension and sexual misconduct, the potential for that is going to be introduced.

Donnelly: If you want to make that even worse than what we’re seeing now, and the rates keep going up and up it’s getting worse and worse, put women into direct combat units, adjust the standards to make it work and then just sit back and watch everything fall apart because double standards are so corrosive to morale. It increases resentment, resentment leads to sexual harassment, assaults or worse, this is a poisonous kind of atmosphere.

Later, Fischer warned of a “complete sexual meltdown” occurring due to “predatory women” trying to sleep with officers, citing CIA head David Petraeus’s affair with a reporter.

But a caller insisted that maybe the Obama administration decided to end prohibitions on women and openly gay service members so they can share foxholes together, an idea Fischer loved: “Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen.”

Fischer: I just think having women in uniform is just a bad idea and here we are seeing one of the reasons. You have got subordinates serving powerful supervisors, you’ve got predatory women, it’s just a recipe for complete sexual meltdown and that’s why we are seeing General Petreaus being a key example of that.

Let’s go to Lee, Bluefield, Virginia.

Caller: I’m gonna have to do something I thought I would never do. I am going to have to give President Obama credit for having a long-range strategy because I just realized why he wanted soldiers to be able to serve in the military and be openly gay, because when it comes time to share a foxhole he will put the openly gay soldiers in the foxhole with the women and that way they’ll both be safe.

Fischer: So Lee’s saying this is a brilliant strategy on the part of President Obama to eliminate sexual tension in the military. Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen. There won’t be any sexual misconduct. That’s President Obama thinking outside the box.

Religious Right activist and gay exorcist Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt continued his venomous anti-gay campaign attacking Sen. Al Franken’s Student Non-Discrimination Act on City on a Hill Radio, which he argued would “homosexualize our schools” and “promote sodomy in our public school systems.”

Al Franken should not be in the U.S. Senate but anyway he’s promoting what they call, it’s misnamed, the ‘Safe Schools Bill’ which really is a ‘Sodomite Schools Bill,’ he’s trying to recruit and enforce homosexual education standards upon all fifty states to require that teachers facilitate what they call tolerance of sodomy, of sin, in the public school classroom. They want to teach children, not just in health education classes but as young as kindergarten, as young as first grade, that homosexuality is really not a sin, that it’s okay, that we should be tolerant, and if the teachers don’t teach those lectures they would lose their public school funding. So this is already a bill that’s gaining steam in the United States Senate, I think he has forty-two cosponsors who are U.S. Senators who are trying to homosexualize our schools, and we are demanding, in fact we are petitioning Congress and sending faxes after faxes, to stop the homosexual agenda and kill the Al Franken bill that would promote sodomy in our public school systems.

He warned that the Obama administration will soon allow gay and lesbian service members in relationships to collect “homosexual bonus pay” and “homosexualize base houses” and “have gay pride parades on the flight line” on air force bases. Klingenschmitt went on to maintain that gay couples adopting children are committing “child abuse” and only adopt with the goal of “recruiting them into the homosexual lifestyle.” “That’s why they’re trying to get into our kindergarten books and trying to take over our public schools and homosexualize our public education so that they can recruit children into homosexuality and maintain their pool of available sex partners for their own progeny,” he said, “which is our children that they are stealing and warping their minds.”

Right now as it is homosexual spouses for lack of a better word, what they think are spouses God thinks is an abomination, are not allowed to live in base housing, but you know the Obama administration is going to push for that in these next four years, they’re going to push for homosexual bonus pay. By the end of these four years if the Obama administration has their way and if the Republicans in Congress don’t stand up against this, they are going to homosexualize base houses, they’re going to have gay pride parades on the flight line, who knows what they’re going to be doing on air force bases and places around the world. I’m very concerned of course; adoption of any child by a homosexual couple is child abuse and children need to be protected from that. There have been studies out now that say up to twenty-eight percent of children who are raised by homosexual couples will become homosexual themselves so that’s a recruiting effort, it’s warping the minds of our younger generation, it is directly recruiting them into the homosexual lifestyle. Why? Because if they don’t recruit the children of heterosexual couples, they cannot replenish their population.

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The only way they have children is to recruit or in this case adopt the children of heterosexual couples which amounts to child abuse and child recruiting. That’s why they’re trying to get into our kindergarten books and trying to take over our public schools and homosexualize our public education so that they can recruit children into homosexuality and maintain their pool of available sex partners for their own progeny, which is our children that they are stealing and warping their minds.

Truth in Action Ministries has released their “2012 Issues Guide for Christian Voters” [PDF], which argues that federal spending on social services “goes against what the Bible says about caring for one’s own and others” and pushing for bans on abortion rights, stem cell research and emergency contraception. The group also warns of “radical judges” and an “out-of-control judiciary,” the “dangerous and destructive” health care reform law and the “false religion” of environmentalism.

But of course, no Religious Right voter guide goes without a section on gay rights, and Truth in Action Ministries tells members that END will “impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace” and that the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has started “Maoist-style ‘re-education’ in ‘diversity.’” The group also claims the repeal law will “violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually” and “jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS”

In 1996, Congress overwhelmingly enacted the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). But in 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court struck down the state’s marriage law, and the state began issuing same-sex “marriage” licenses six months later, despite no change in the law. And in May 2012, a federal appeals court in Boston declared DOMA unconstitutional.

All candidates should be asked how they will defend marriage from this radical assault. It’s not enough to say they favor marriage if they also support same-sex “civil unions,” “domestic partnerships,” or “sexual orientation” laws, all of which incentivize homosexual relationships and devalue marriage. They should also be questioned about:

• The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which would impose the homosexual political agenda on the workplace;

• A constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union only of one man and one woman;

• New policies giving marital benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.

Servicemen and women put their lives on the line. They deserve policies that ensure maximum military readiness and the best chance to win wars and return home alive. That’s why Congress overwhelmingly passed a law in 1993 incorporating as policy the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s ban on homosexual sodomy. But now the federal government has overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” We believe this is profoundly immoral on several levels. It would:

• Hurt unit cohesion, morale, retention, and recruitment;

• Violate the rights of those serving by forcing them to cohabit and shower with people who may desire them sexually;

• Jeopardize the military’s health and blood supply, since homosexual men are far more likely to be promiscuous and to have STDs, including HIV/AIDS;

• Force chaplains to resign or to jettison God’s Law in favor of political correctness;

• Subject all personnel to Maoist-style “re-education” in “diversity.”

Likewise, Congress should resist any effort eliminate women’s combat exemption.

On this day last year, the military certified the repeal of the discriminatory Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy after Congress overturned the policy. Religious Right activists warned that the military will suffer as a result, however, their ominous predictions failed to materialize as studies show that the new policy is working and benefiting the military.

Consequently, it wasn’t a surprise that anti-gay groups were largely quiet today on the anniversary as their warnings about an exodus of soldiers, a drop in enlistments and a return of the draft were clearly wrong.

Ron Crews of the Chaplains Alliance for Religious Liberty released a statement that the “radical sexual agenda in our military” is leading to significant “negative consequences,” citing one example of possible sexual harassment, same-sex ceremonies on bases and the supposed “silencing” of chaplains and DADT supporters:

No Cause for Celebration: DADT Repeal Immediately Creates Major Problems for Service Members

Approaching the first anniversary of the repeal of the so-called DADT policy, mounting evidence demonstrates the negative consequences of implementing a radical sexual agenda in our military.

“The American armed forces exist to defend our nation, not as social experiment lab in which our troops serve as human subjects,” said Chaplain (Colonel Retired) Ron Crews, ED of CALL. ”While many will ignore the negative impacts, or pretend that they don’t exist, threats to our troops’ freedom are mounting.”

…

“This list of problems and incidents that have arisen mere months after this administration imposed its will on the armed forces is disturbing to say the least, and we know it is only the beginning,” said Crews. “Compounding the outrage, service members are not free to speak out about these matters. This ensures that distrust in the ranks will increase and morale will decrease as the number of silenced victims grows.”

Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink also said in a post quoting Crews and calling for Congress to pass a GOP-backed bill banning same-sex ceremonies on military property, which they said would preserve religious freedom by barring all chaplains from performing such ceremonies:

Crew said that a military religious freedom act introduced in January, House Resolution 3828, would help military personnel greatly.

“It’s a right-of-conscience clause that would provide protection to military personnel, so they would not be affected by their opposition to the repeal,” he explained.

If passed, H.R. 3828 would protect members of the Armed Forces who hold religious or moral convictions concerning “the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality” from discrimination or punishment for their beliefs.

The bill seeks to protect chaplains from being ordered to perform any services or ceremonies contrary to their faith, while preventing any same-sex marriage ceremonies from being performed on military posts, in accordance with the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council, who predicted an increase in rape if the policy was repealed, pivoted away from his group’s hysterical claims to instead focus on possible same-sex marriages in the military, a result of the “radical sexual and social agenda” pushed by “homosexual activists.” Sprigg also cited a survey from the Military Times, but didn’t mention that the same poll found negative views of the repeal among service members are declining.

He also dismissed claims that the military would have “completely collapsed in the first year after repeal” since “our service members are too professional to allow that to happen,” but FRC president Tony Perkins did in fact predict the reinstitution of the draft and that congressmen who voted for the repeal will have “blood on their hands.”

Since eight servicemembers reported harm from both circumstances (a homosexual “coming out” and one joining their unit), a total of 36 separate individuals reported such harm. The Palm Center chose to emphasize that this was only 4.5% of all those surveyed—failing to mention that it represents twenty percent of those who had a homosexual “come out” or join their unit. Twenty percent represents a significant risk of harm for the units involved—merely to advance the goals of the sexual revolution. Damage to good order, discipline, morale, and unit cohesion need not be universal to be unacceptable.

In the same Military Times survey, 8.4% of respondents said that repeal made them less likely to remain in the military, while only 3.3% said it would make them more likely to remain.

The Palm Center report almost completely ignores the most significant harms that have become immediately apparent in the first year since repeal. Predictions that the use of the military to advance a radical social/sexual agenda would place us on a “slippery slope” have clearly come true. Furthermore, assurances given in the November 2010 report of the Pentagon’s Comprehensive Review Working Group (CRWG) regarding the limited impact of repeal have not been fulfilled. Since the CRWG report was to a large extent the basis for the Congressional vote for repeal in December of 2010, it can even be argued that repeal was adopted under false pretenses.

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Has America’s military completely collapsed in the first year after repeal? Of course not—our servicemembers are too professional to allow that to happen. The military is clearly being used, however, to advance a radical sexual and social agenda. The Palm Center cited one individual who stated that repeal “will help facilitate the slow cultural change towards greater acceptance” of homosexuality.

The purpose of our armed forces, however, is not to “facilitate cultural change.” It is to fight and win wars. By demanding that it do more than that, homosexual activists have undermined the single-minded focus that is necessary for military effectiveness.

As Republican leaders express their outrage at service members marching in a San Diego pride parade in uniform, Religious Right activists aren’t holding back either. In her radio alert yesterday, Mission America’s Linda Harvey accused the military personnel who marched in the parade of bringing “disgrace to the uniform and to America”:

Harvey: The San Diego homosexual pride parade on Saturday, July 21st, broke new ground. For the first time the Pentagon allowed members of the military to dress in full uniform at an event with a political agenda, and what an agenda it is. If you haven’t been to a pride parade recently, or ever, it’s not anything to be proud of. The uniform of our country was allowed to honor a display featuring men dressed as women, people in virtually no clothing at all and in your face advocacy of every aspect of homosexuality. How low will this present administration stoop before Americans say ‘we’ve had enough’? Here’s how the decision went down: there were concerns that some military members would march in uniform with or without permission so the big brass caved and said OK. Now think about that, because men and women who have taken an oath were planning to disobey standing protocol, their superiors decided to let them. The Pentagon says the exception is only for this parade but do any of us truly believe that?

This signals much more than an endorsement of deviance, it signals a breakdown of order. It’s also an exception that would not be extended to any groups but those on the left, could conservative soldiers appear in uniform at a Tea Party rally? Of course not, it’s only the homosexual lobby that gets this kind of deference. There were approximately three hundred service members signed up to march in this parade, that friends is a disgrace to the uniform and to America.

No debate about the military’s approach to gay and lesbian service members can be complete without a comment from Elaine Donnelly, who told Janet Parshall yesterday that participants wearing the uniform brought “discredit upon the Armed Forces”:

Later, Donnelly said the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell undermined the military’s commitment to “selfless service”:

Donnelly: Connect the dots here, how far is the military going to go with this? Well, frankly, they don’t know. Because the administration is saying that LGBT equality is a paramount concern, it is actually a political concern, the President is trying to deliver on political promises to his LGBT base, the left if you will, and the Pentagon is helping him do it.

Parshall: So stunning that there has been a historic set of rules of deportment of where and when that uniform can be used, and it seems to me and you have made this point several times over the last few years, that we are kind of making it up as we go along.

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Donnelly: This is a special interest faction. We don’t have in our military, we shouldn’t have, special interest factions. We don’t have labor unions either. You don’t have groups that are more interested in their own interests than they are in the selfless support for the institution, for the mission. Selfless service is what the military is all about. When you start dividing up into special interest factions that start saying ‘we want this and we want that and we are different from everyone else and we are more special than everyone else,’ that’s when you really invite problems. So Janet, this is just beginning, this is LGBT law in the military.

Bob Maginnis of the Family Research Council spoke to Lee Webb of CBN News this week about the Defense Department’s decision to recognize June as Gay Pride Month, warning that it is part of a plan by gays and lesbians “to advance their radical agenda.” The FRC senior fellow began the interview by falsely claiming that a Pentagon survey “found that there would be many that would leave and some that would reconsider” if Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is repealed, however, the survey actually noted that very few service members would consider leaving the military and an Army Times survey following the policy’s repeal found that number to be even lower. Maginnis went on to claim that “if homosexuals want to parade their homosexuality as their defining characteristic of who they are rather than that they’re a soldier or sailor” it would lead to “dysfunction” and undermine “cohesion, trust” and “morale” by upsetting those who believe gays are “not pleasing to God.”

Watch:

Webb: Is it your prediction that many in the service, not just chaplains but those who are religiously opposed, morally opposed to homosexual behavior will be leaving the ranks soon because of this?

Maginnis: Certainly the survey that the Pentagon did found that there would be many that would leave and some that would reconsider. A lot depends upon what the homosexual community does within the ranks of the military, are they going to use this to advance their radical agenda or are they going to be quiet about it and blend in? Keep in mind, the military is about removing distinctions among people, we works as teams, we try to accomplish things as crews and units and not as individuals. Unfortunately, if you stick out, if you make your particular behavior or profile to be an anomaly in a unit, whether it be homosexual or anything, you’re really not a team member, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Webb: In keep with what you just said, it seems like they are not willing to be part of a unit if they are seeking recognition through a Gay Pride Month, is that the way you’re seeing this?

Maginnis: I am concerned about the conformity to military standards because after all the military is about removing those distinctions, fighting and being prepared to fight across the world as one type of unit. If homosexuals want to parade their homosexuality as their defining characteristic of who they are rather than that they’re a soldier or sailor, then that’s dysfunction. It undermines cohesion, trust and confidence; it undermines morale. Of course, for those in the military that are people of faith, it also runs contrary to that very faith. I am very concerned about the promotion of homosexual marriage, about the removal of the idea that heterosexuals and homosexuals are different, well in fact they are and those of us of faith have reason to believe that those distinctions are not pleasing to God.