The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, a former Marine, hosted an offensive Values Voter summit panel on the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which featured Sgt. Brian Fleming, a young veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan and retired Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis. Maginnis recycled bogus charges that if the ban on gays serving in the military is lifted, chaplains would be required to conduct gay weddings, and therefore Bible-believing churches would no longer send chaplains to the military.
Fleming claimed to speak for 99 percent of those in the military who he said would oppose repeal (not a reality-based claim). He said that it’s important for soldiers to develop a sense of unity, but suggested that wouldn’t be possible with openly gay soldiers because you couldn’t trust their motives when they said they wanted to be your friend.
Perkins contributed his own offensive and ridiculous commentary in trying to dismiss the experience of allied armed forces that allow gays to serve. Those armies, said Perkins, “participate in parades, they don’t fight wars to keep the world free.” Um, Britain? Israel? Aren’t these the same right-wing leaders who have been slamming Obama for what they say is his disrespectful attitude toward our allies?
