Mark Green Withdraws from Nomination for Secretary of the Army

Tennessee state senator Mark Green has withdrawn his name from consideration for the position of Secretary of the Army.

“To meet these challenges, there should be no distractions. And unfortunately due to false and misleading attacks against me, this nomination has become a distraction,” [Mark Green] said in his statement.

“Tragically, my life of public service and my Christian beliefs have been mischaracterized and attacked by a few on the other side of the aisle for political gain,” he continued. “While these false attacks have no bearing on the needs of the Army or my qualifications to serve, I believe it is critical to give the President the ability to move forward with his vision to restore our military to its rightful place in the world.”

Score:

  • Those who hold certain religious beliefs: 0.
  • Those who like to participate in specific sexual behaviors: 1.

What a backwards world we live in — but that should be no surprise.

You will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
Matthew 10:22 (ESV)

As initially reported at The Tennessean.  Also at FoxNews and the Stars and Stripes.

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20 comments

  • Steven Schwartz

    Those who hold certain religious beliefs, and give every reason to believe that, contrary to the laws and standards of the current culture, they will act upon them: 0

    Those who’ve been historically oppressed, 1.

    If he didn’t want to be thought an enemy of transgender rights, perhaps he should not have referred to being transgendered as a disease, (demonstrating either extreme ignorance or falsehood), and should not have said it was his duty to “crush evil” by, among other things, preventing transgendered folk from using bathrooms appropriate to their presentation. (Indeed, the complete lack of matching means to ends in bathroom legislation is a good reason to think he *would* use his position to discriminate.)

    If someone had said “I think Christianity is a disease”, I suspect somehow you’d be raging against them being appointed to a position of supervision over Christians, especially if a Christian presence were still controversial there.

    Fortunately, he’s gone, and perhaps Trump can find someone who isn’t a religious bigot to fill that role.

    • @Steven Schwartz
      The ability to take action against people based on future crimes was the premise of a Tom Cruise movie, not normal American jurisprudence.

      When a legislator proposes to allow a male the “right” to invade the privacy of a female, that legislator discriminates against females. You assert a law protecting the constitutional right to privacy is also discrimination. If that’s true, either course of action results in discrimination. That kind of undermines the moral high ground of your “he’d discriminate!1!!” argument.

      Everything Mark Green said was consistent with the standard tenets of the Christian faith. By calling him a bigot, you call a great many Christians bigots.

      Incidentally, you should look up the definition of “bigot,” because it doesn’t appear you’re using it correctly. In fact, your irrational intolerance for someone else’s beliefs could put you in a glass house.

  • Steven Schwartz

    “The ability to take action against people based on future crimes was the premise of a Tom Cruise movie, not normal American jurisprudence.”

    And I certainly would not convict Mark Green of a hate crime. However, appointments to positions of great responsibility and trust use different standards than “Can we convict this person of a crime in court?”

    “When a legislator proposes to allow a male the “right” to invade the privacy of a female, that legislator discriminates against females.”

    As I said in a different comment, your definition of “male” and “female” is partially at the root of the problem here, and at the root of Green’s problem. You both simply *deny* the existence of transgender people, which, to my lights, isqualifies you from holding positions where you would have to implement policies for their protection. It’s rather like appointing someone who doesn’t believe that women can be doctors to be the head of the CDC — your views and reality will come rapidly into harsh disagreement.

    “Everything Mark Green said was consistent with the standard tenets of the Christian faith.” One interpretation thereof, yes. But by no means the only one.

    “By calling him a bigot, you call a great many Christians bigots.”

    If they refuse to acknowlege the existence of transgender folks, and are willing to write laws to specifically allow discrimination against non-heterosexuals, then I am prepared to call them that. Being religious does not protect you from bigotry; I hope you would agree with me that the Southern Baptists who split off in order to defend slavery, on the grounds of a religious belief in white supremacy, were bigots.

    I also know a great many Christians who aren’t bigots; it’s a very large descriptor, despite the desires of some who want to narrow it for their own rhetorical purposes.

    • @Steven Schwartz
      Your reply is simultaneously hilarious and tragically depressing. And you probably don’t even know why.

      Welcome to the new “reality”, boys and girls.

  • Steven Schwartz

    Oh, I suspect I know why you think it is; because, as I said, you deny the very existence of transgender people, like Green, and therefore everything becomes quite simple to you. Wrong, but simple.

  • Green’s Christian beliefs are hateful and seek to oppress others. Specifically, that oppression is not allowing LGBT people to openly serve their country. That’s what free people can do in a free society. Adding “Christian” doesn’t give hate a free pass, especially when “Christians” can’t even agree what “Christianity” is. Your religious freedom literally ENDS the moment it oppresses someone else, but you’re the Christian taliban so you don’t understand that.

    Unfortunately for you and your biased ilk, the military is a meritocracy, not a theocracy. The best person for the job is the best person for the job. PERIOD (re: Goodwin). Why are you obsessed with other people’s sex acts? Gross.

    I’m an AF LtCol well under the bar and I work closely with my EO counterparts to remove hatemongers like you from our military and educate our Airmen on equality, oppressed groups, hate speech (like yours), and meritocracy. Keep doing what you’re doing though, it’s great you have passion.
    fnafgg. 2003. Bong!

    • @Freedom Guy

      The contrast between your username and your words is entertaining.

      beliefs are hateful and seek to oppress others…not allowing LGBT people to openly serve their country.

      You would say that homosexuals whose beliefs did not allow a Christian to serve his country, a la Mark Green, are also “hateful,” “oppress[ive],” and “hate,” because you’re consistent, right? “The best person for the job is the best person for the job. PERIOD (re: Green)?”

      I’m an AF LtCol…work[ing] to remove hatemongers like you from our military

      Declaring you’re an officer actively trying to illegally discriminate against others? Nice.

    • You sound like you are in the LGBT community and on an illegal agenda. If you are in fact an AF Lt. Col., then You are a disgrace to the uniform and rank and I would consider bringing you up on an article 32 hearing. I have found that those in the LGBT community have no moral compass.

  • If there is a new definition of “female” that doesn’t involve female reproductive organs, I want to know what it is so that I can know whether it applies to me, a person with female reproductive organs but no subjective mental sense of gender.

    If it no longer applies to me because it has something to do with feminine feelings in a man’s head, then I would like to know whether private facilities in public spaces will ever again be available for the people formerly known as women.

    Must uterus-bearers simply stay at home now if we want privacy from sperm-producers while we are taking care of the functions required of our physical bodies?

    I do not identify as being in the same category as any person who has ever produced a sperm cell for purposes of bodily privacy because such a person cannot comprehend my embodied experience. That he identifies with me is of no consequence to my own identification as fundamentally unlike him.

    Dr. Green’s withdrawal is terrible news.

    • Steven Schwartz

      As I said to @JD above: You don’t believe in the existence of transgender or intersex individuals. (I wonder where non-uterus-bearing people with externally female genitalia are supposed to go to the bathroom, for example. Such people do exist.)

      You’re allowed not to believe in them. However, your views are now in a significant minority, and you do not get to determine gender for everyone.

    • I am aware of disorders of sexual development.

      A person with external female genitalia but no uterus claiming to be female is different from a person with a fully functional male reproductive system claiming to be female. It is disingenuous to imply that these cases are the same. I would treat them differently.

      You answered none of my questions and addressed none of my concerns, you simply made an appeal to authority (of the supposed majority).

      What is the new definition of “female”?

  • Steven Schwartz

    @JD “You would say that homosexuals whose beliefs did not allow a Christian to serve his country, a la Mark Green, are also “hateful,” “oppress[ive],” and “hate,” because you’re consistent, right?”

    Mark Green’s welcome to serve his country, though I suspect he’s a bit old to enlist. But if you have a religious view that gets in the way of other people’s rights, you have to accept that there are consequences for that view. For example, I presume you’d view a person who was racist based upon their religious views as problematic, no?

    And yet that was once considered a “standard Christian position”, backed up by Scripture, etc.

    No one has a “right” to be Secretary of the Army.

    • @Steven Schwartz

      No one has a “right” to be Secretary of the Army.

      No one suggested such. Yet another false argument on your part. Since you brought it up, though:

      no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States

      To assert that a Christian cannot serve in public office because of their beliefs is to contradict the US Constitution.

  • Steven Schwartz

    @TJ “I have found that those in the LGBT community have no moral compass.”

    And I have found otherwise. Fortunately, your beliefs are not controlling.

    (And since, in the bit JD carefully cut out, Freedom Guy said he “work(s) closely with my EO counterparts” — I suspect he’s doing his job in dealing with those who would cause problems and illegally discriminate within the ranks.)

    • Steven Schwartz

      @JD You claimed that Mark Green was not allowed to serve his country. He is, just not in a position where he would be responsible for the well-being of people he has demonstrated massive disdain and disapproval of.

      And the Religious Test clause is generally interpreted to mean that one may not be required to be *of* a religion; not that one’s religious beliefs must be accepted.

      Again — were someone moronic enough to appoint a Christian Identity believer to government, their racist views would *definitely* be subject to objection, wouldn’t you agree?

    • @Steven Schwartz

      You claimed that Mark Green was not allowed to serve his country.

      Nope. False argument again.

      He is [allowed to serve], just not in a position where he would be responsible for the well-being of people…

      If you are making the assertion that Mark Green is not allowed to serve in a public office because of his religious beliefs, your position is counter to the US Constitution. You can’t parse your way out of that.

      Your understanding of the religious test clause is absolutely backwards. You should read up on the Constitution a bit.

  • Steven Schwartz

    @JD: “Nope. False argument again.”

    “.. beliefs did not allow a Christian to serve his country, a la Mark Green, ”

    That’s saying that Mark Green wasn’t allowed to serve his country.

    “If you are making the assertion that Mark Green is not allowed to serve in a public office because of his religious beliefs, your position is counter to the US Constitution.”

    The religious test clause was put into place to require people to adhere to certain religious beliefs, therefore banning others from serving.

    I notice you keep deleting my challenge to you in re: religious racism. And yet, it is precisely analogous: a person’s personal religious views would make them violate other’s rights; where is their right, then, to practice their religion? Modern jurisprudence does not support their religious claim.

    • @Steven Schwartz

      That’s saying that Mark Green wasn’t allowed to serve his country.

      No, it isn’t. You cut the phrase from the middle of a question to someone else. It made no assertion of fact.

      The US Constitution says NO religious test. It doesn’t say “except for religious tests Steve says are ok.”

  • Steven Schwartz

    @DB “I am aware of disorders of sexual development.”

    I am glad to hear it. The fact that even physical presentation of sex, let alone “gender”, does not fall neatly into the binary that both you and JD wish to fit it should be sufficient, but apparently not.

    If you are going to be strictly genital-essentialist, then no, I can’t guarantee that everyone’s genitals around you will match what you would prefer; nor do I think it’s society’s role to do so. There is ample scientific and psychological evidence to match the notion that gender is more than genitalia; if appealing to that is an “appeal to authority”, then so be it.

    Oh — and would you, then, BTW, approve of single-sex single-stall bathrooms only? It’s become an increasingly wide-spread solution, and one that, I would imagine, would deal with everyone’s concerns when they are, indeed, “What are the genitals of the person in the stall next to me” as opposed to wishing to restrict/restrain/eliminate trans folk.

    (And, as a side note: I presume that you would be OK with uterus-having men like Loren Cameron in your bathroom?)

  • Steven Schwartz

    “No, it isn’t. You cut the phrase from the middle of a question to someone else. It made no assertion of fact.”

    So you *don’t* think that Mark Green was not allowed to serve his country. Thank you for not being terribly clear, but coming down on the right side of the question. :)

    “The US Constitution says NO religious test. It doesn’t say “except for religious tests Steve says are ok.”

    So, since you’ve now cut this question at least three times: Do you think that someone whose religious views were openly racist should therefore not be denied government appointment despite those views?

    If you can’t answer that, it should tell you something about the absolutism you’re trying to project.