An article from the northwest highlights the “training” on DADT repeal that occurred at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, which one Captain said was “not a lot of change.”

Captain Ben Schneller, who delivered the briefings as an Army company commander, also expressed a bit of confusion after giving the training:

Schneller sounds confident…but he’ll have to work through a few gray areas that are arising because of the Defense of Marriage Act…

For example, line commanders will have to decide whether to grant emergency leave in certain situations for gay soldiers if their partners become seriously ill. Schneller says he faces the same choice with any soldier whose relatives fall sick.

The article contains the first reference to the Department of Defense officially endorsing the “loophole” groups have advocated to allow homosexuals into base housing (as well as access to other benefits).

Its briefings to soldiers included role-playing instances…such as a lesbian officer asking for housing benefits after having a child with her partner. That would be permissible because the officer could designate her partner as a primary caregiver to their child.

What was once dismissed as moot due to DOMA is, as predicted, the very thing that has occurred.

The Alliance Defense Fund recently published a letter to Speaker Boehner and Senator Reid that cited a similar ambiguity caused by the apparent failure to specifically protect religious liberty or define guidelines:

President Obama’s group that studied repeal…admitted that current statutory and regulatory military religious liberty protections create “boundaries that are not always clearly defined…”  This system burdens local commanders with a task for which they have neither relevant experience nor any set guidelines…

Chaplains and service members will be chilled from freely and fully exercising their faith because, for instance, they cannot know whether a commander in Fort Lewis will view religious and moral expression on sexuality more restrictively than one in Fort Bragg.

Effectively, service members will know that there is a cliff ahead of them but be deprived of having any way to know where it is. Like any reasonable person faced with such circumstances, they will cease moving forward confidently and will instead haltingly slow, stop, and perhaps even retreat.

Read the full letter at the ADF website.

Via the ADF.