Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has “raised a few eyebrows” recently, according to the Associated Press, when he’s chosen some unusual people for whom to name US Navy vessels (previously noted here):

Why, critics questioned, would he name a ship in honor of the late gay rights leader Harvey Milk or after former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords when there are plenty of military heroes to choose from?

The answer? Mabus says he’s trying to “connect” people with the US Navy and Marine Corps by highlighting “heroism” outside of the naval services.

Retired VAdm Doug Crowder noted Mabus had the “right” to name the ships, but he runs an “inherent risk” in trying to make “political statements” with the honor. In fact, it might even hurt the Navy he claims he’s trying to help:

“It just doesn’t help at all for what the basic sailor or officer thinks of his chain of command, up to the secretary of the Navy.”

The Navy Secretary defended his naming choices by noting he has chosen some actual heroes as well:

Mabus noted that he’s naming nine ships after Medal of Honor recipients, including World War II Marine John Basilone.

John Basilone was awarded the Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism during World War II. (You can read his impressive citation here.) He subsequently returned to the war — at his own repeated requests — and was killed in combat on Iwo Jima.

It would seem the Secretary of the Navy — who previously appeared to equate religious Sailors with bigots and racists — appears to now be equating Basilone’s level of self-sacrifice and service to the country with Harvey Milk, who did nothing more “heroic” than the act of being a homosexual.

Sexual behavior that was once widely recognized as a vice has become accepted, supported, celebrated, and now even honored within the US military.  To some this is shocking.  Regrettably, many seared consciences in society today don’t even register the moral conflict.

Perhaps fittingly enough, religious exercise — once widely recognized as a virtue and still presumably protected by the US Constitution — has plunged in the opposite direction of social acceptance, such that religious expression seems to be increasingly restricted within the US military, whether tacitly or explicitly.

In an indicator of the conflict, homosexual activists — who are also members of the US military — have even targeted their fellow Christian troops, filing complaints and implying misconduct for nothing more than holding and expressing mainstream Christian beliefs.

Maybe that Paul guy was on to something.

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God…

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
2 Timothy

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