{"id":34364,"date":"2016-01-04T00:30:48","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T03:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=34364"},"modified":"2016-11-24T22:19:06","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T01:19:06","slug":"pentagon-leads-on-sexuality-and-gender-defers-on-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/04\/pentagon-leads-on-sexuality-and-gender-defers-on-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon Leads on Sexuality and Gender, Defers on Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When dozens of retired\u00a0General Officers lobbied Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/2015\/11\/17\/generals-call-on-us-military-to-allow-sikhs-to-serve\/\">lift restrictions on Sikhs<\/a> serving in the US military, the DoD had a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.military.com\/daily-news\/2015\/12\/25\/pentagon-defers-to-services-on-letting-sikhs-wear-turbans-beards.html\">somewhat odd response<\/a> [emphasis added]:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A Pentagon official speaking to Military.com on background said <strong>there is no Defense Department policy on Sikhs<\/strong>&#8230;<strong>to review<\/strong>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The Defense Department issues standards that the <strong>individual services may interpret broadly and implement on their own<\/strong>, with no service bound by a decision made by another&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In essence, the DoD said it <em>doesn&#8217;t<\/em> have a policy preventing\u00a0<!--more-->Sikhs from\u00a0serving without abandoning the articles of their faith. Rather, the Pentagon lets each of the services do what they want when it comes to religion &#8212;\u00a0including treating people with the <em>same<\/em> religious requests <em>differently<\/em> within the same service.<\/p>\n<p>By contrast, Defense Secretary Ash Carter:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>ordered the entire US military to permit women in combat roles &#8212; &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.defense.gov\/News-Article-View\/Article\/632536\/carter-opens-all-military-occupations-positions-to-women\">without exception<\/a>&#8221; by <em>service<\/em> or within the <em>services<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>ordered a review of the implications of &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2015\/07\/13\/carter-defense-transgender-policy\/30104403\/\">welcoming transgender persons to serve openly<\/a>,&#8221; and elevated dismissal of identified transgenders to <em>above-service<\/em> level.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Previously, following the orders of the President, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered <em>all of the services<\/em>, without exception, to permit homosexuals to serve.<\/p>\n<p>Advocates for Sikhs implied a very interesting question: Why is the US military disposed to making DoD-wide policies on sexuality and gender, but not religion?<\/p>\n<p>Interesting, indeed.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When dozens of retired\u00a0General Officers lobbied Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to lift restrictions on Sikhs serving in the US military, the DoD had a somewhat odd response [emphasis added]: A Pentagon official speaking to Military.com on background said there is no Defense Department policy on Sikhs&#8230;to review&#8230; The Defense Department issues standards that the individual services may interpret broadly [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[134,88,3472,219,442,2,17,10,171,334,59],"class_list":["post-34364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-air-force","tag-army","tag-ashton-carter","tag-dadt","tag-homosexual","tag-military","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-robert-gates","tag-sikh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34364","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=34364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}