{"id":19513,"date":"2012-09-12T00:39:19","date_gmt":"2012-09-12T03:39:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=19513"},"modified":"2013-11-01T23:02:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T02:02:52","slug":"senators-introduce-military-religious-freedom-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/12\/senators-introduce-military-religious-freedom-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Senators Introduce Military Religious Freedom Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) have introduced<\/a> the “Military Religious Freedom Act” (PDF<\/a>) which would impact the issue of homosexual marriage and chaplains<\/a> within the US military:<\/p>\n

Specifically, the bill would (1) prevent military chaplains from being forced to perform a marriage ceremony if the chaplain objects for reasons of conscience and (2) prohibit marriage or marriage-like ceremonies at military facilities that are not a union between one man and one woman.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is the Senate version of the House companion act<\/a>\u00a0that was referred to committee in January of this year.<\/p>\n

Critics will rightly point out there is currently no requirement that chaplains be forced to perform a marriage ceremony.\u00a0 As the sole reason for opposing\u00a0the bill, however, the premise defies logic.\u00a0 Conduct contrary to a proposed law need not be taking place for the law to be valid or necessary.\u00a0 The law would prevent such a requirement from being emplaced within the military.\u00a0 It would also prohibit\u00a0any <\/em>repercussions should chaplains decline to perform a ceremony merely because the participants are homosexual — something viewed as actionable discrimination in other forums.<\/p>\n

The Senators note the law would more explicitly explain how the Defense of Marriage Act, which is a federal law, would apply to the US military, which is a federal institution.\u00a0 (DOMA is currently being defended by the US House in court, as the Executive Branch declined to defend the law.)<\/p>\n

While those are certainly the controversial points of the law, it is actually more broad:<\/p>\n

The armed forces shall accommodate the conscience and sincerely held moral principles and religious beliefs of the members of the armed forces concerning the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality and may not use such conscience, principles, or beliefs as the basis of any adverse personnel action, discrimination, or denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Senators propose an explicit protection against adverse action merely because a person opposes (or supports) homosexuality for moral or religious reasons.\u00a0 Such a paragraph seems entirely consistent with those who trumpet the need for protection of “civil rights.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senators Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) have introduced the “Military Religious Freedom Act” (PDF) which would impact the issue of homosexual marriage and chaplains within the US military: Specifically, the bill would (1) prevent military chaplains from being forced to perform a marriage ceremony if the chaplain objects for reasons of conscience and (2) prohibit marriage or marriage-like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5284,219,1744,442,795,83,2,3217,17,10,171,430],"class_list":["post-19513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chaplain","tag-dadt","tag-doma","tag-homosexual","tag-james-inhofe","tag-marriage","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-act","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-roger-wicker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}