{"id":124,"date":"2010-11-30T23:37:47","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T23:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/chaplains-v-dont-ask-dont-tell.html"},"modified":"2010-11-30T23:37:47","modified_gmt":"2010-11-30T23:37:47","slug":"chaplains-v-dont-ask-dont-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/chaplains-v-dont-ask-dont-tell.html","title":{"rendered":"Chaplains v. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Defense Department’s superb report<\/a>
\non Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell includes an interesting contrast between the
\nracial integration of the U.S. military in the late 1940s and early
\n1950s and the current homosexual integration. Then, when the military
\nwas out in front of the rest of the country, the chaplaincy corps was
\nstrongly supportive of integration. Now, many military chaplains
\n“express opposition in religious terms to
\nallowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military.”
\n 
\nWhat’s changed? Back then, most military chaplains were mainline
\nProtestants and Catholic clergy whose racial views were at the liberal
\nend of the spectrum. Today, the chaplaincy is dominated by white
\nevangelicals–the only religious grouping in America opposed<\/a>
\nto gays serving in the military. Of course, it would be
\nunacceptable–indeed, a violation of the Establishment Clause–for the
\ngovernment to allow DADT to continue on religious grounds.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, DADT supporters in the military would like to wrap
\nthemselves in the Free Exercise Clause–as in the following statement
\nquoted in the report:<\/p>\n

“If the state favors the demands of the homosexual
\nactivists over the First Amendment, it is only a matter of time before
\nthe military censors the religious expression of its chaplains and
\nmarginalizes denominations that teach what the Bible says about
\nhomosexual behavior.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But chaplains are not obliged to serve in the military, and
\ntheir religious rights are not the same as they would be if they were
\ncivilians. They are hired by the government to serve the free exercise
\nneeds of those in uniform. <\/p>\n

Those chaplains who told the drafters of the report that they “would
\nrefuse to in any way support, comfort, or assist someone they knew to be
\nhomosexual” should seek another place of employment. As the report
\nproperly declares, if DADT is repealed, the DOD must “direct the
\nServices to reiterate the principle that chaplains, in the context of
\ntheir religious ministry, are not required to take actions inconsistent
\nwith their religious beliefs, but must still care for all Service
\nmembers. Evaluation, promotion, and assignment of chaplains must
\ncontinue to be consistent with these long-standing Service policies.”
\n 
\nTension between evangelical chaplains and the military is longstanding,
\nas historian Anne Loveland has demonstrated in her book, American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942-1993<\/i><\/a>.
\nThe persistent impulse to proselytize has always been at odds with the
\nrequirement that chaplains respect the spiritual needs of those whose
\nbeliefs differ from their own. The idea that some would refuse to help a
\nknown homosexual is no less unacceptable.<\/p>\n

What’s disturbing is not that there should be a significant number of
\nchaplains who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds. It’s that they
\nshould fail to grasp that their desire to promote an anti-homosexual
\nviewpoint is an inappropriate basis for keeping gays in the military
\ncloset. In a country where anti-sodomy laws have been declared
\nunconstitutional by the Supreme Court, where many states and
\nmunicipalities prohibit discrimination against gays, where civil unions
\nand same-sex marriages are increasingly the law of the land, and where
\nAmericans by a more than 2-1 majority support the right of homosexuals
\nto serve openly in the military, the readiness of chaplains to impose
\ntheir minority morality betrays a strange, sectarian view of the
\ncountry’s armed forces.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Defense Department’s superb report on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell includes an interesting contrast between the racial integration of the U.S. military in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the current homosexual integration. Then, when the military was out in front of the rest of the country, the chaplaincy corps was strongly supportive of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nChaplains v. Don't Ask, Don't Tell - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/chaplains-v-dont-ask-dont-tell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chaplains v. Don't Ask, Don't Tell - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Defense Department’s superb report on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell includes an interesting contrast between the racial integration of the U.S. military in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the current homosexual integration. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}