In the wake of the U.S. Senate repealing former President Bill
Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule, Christian voices from a wide swath of
denominations are protesting the decision.
The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell restricts United States military from
efforts to discover or reveal gay, lesbian or bisexual members or applicants.
The military still bans applicants who are openly homosexual or bisexual.
Eight Republicans and independent Joe Lieberman agreed with the
Democratic Party to repeal the legislation by a 65-31 margin last week.
President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law before the end of
2010.
“Gay and lesbian
service members—brave Americans who enable our freedoms—will no longer have to
hide who they are,” Obama said in an e-mailed statement to supporters. “The
fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this
one.”
Alliance
Defense Fund (ADF) Litigation Counsel Daniel Blomberg says
the Senate’s cave-in to
pressure from activists to impose homosexual behavior on our military will
place our troops’ religious liberties in unprecedented jeopardy.
“Indeed, the first
official casualty of this hurried vote may well be the religious freedom of
chaplains and service members,” Blomberg says. ”No Americans, and
especially not our troops, should be forced to abandon their religious
beliefs. We hope that our nation’s leaders will work to ensure that none
of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are ever made to choose between
serving their country or obeying their God as result of this damaging policy
decision. And ADF stands ready to defend service members if they are ever
unconstitutionally required to make that choice.”
After delivering
205,000 fax petitions to Congress against open homosexual service in the
military, former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt called
on the new Congress to pass strong laws protecting the rights of Christian
troops—and chaplains—to openly speak their opinions about what the Bible calls
sin, to refuse common showers, sleeping quarters and “social re-education”
without repercussion.
Klingenschmitt
says, “If free speech and free religion rights of Christian chaplains and
troops are not protected, then the military is not ready to certify or
implement repeal, and will quickly begin to persecute good people of Christian
conscience.”
