{"id":39988,"date":"2017-02-22T00:20:12","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T03:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/?p=39988"},"modified":"2017-02-22T09:05:31","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T12:05:31","slug":"chaplain-strengthens-marriage-as-army-ends-strong-bonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/22\/chaplain-strengthens-marriage-as-army-ends-strong-bonds\/","title":{"rendered":"Chaplain Strengthens Marriage as Army Ends Strong Bonds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US Army Chaplain (LtCol) Kevin Leideritz is the first permanently assigned chaplain to US Special Operations Command-Europe. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dvidshub.net\/news\/223920\/first-soceur-chaplain-builds-unit-resilience\">recent article<\/a> describes his hosting of a marriage retreat at Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch, Germany, at the end of January.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Leideritz&#8230;seized the opportunity to work with couples to better understand their individual personality traits, their partner\u2019s love languages and ways to enhance a more healthy relationship during the three-day retreat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In an interesting twist, the article made a couple of references to &#8220;strengthening bonds&#8221; without using the actual name &#8220;Strong Bonds,&#8221; the Army&#8217;s long-running program of marriage enrichment retreats. It may be an early indicator of what inside sources have already revealed: Strong Bonds is ending.<\/p>\n<p>It seems the chaplaincy resiliency program is falling victim to <!--more-->two ongoing issues: The first, the obvious lack of military funding. Garmisch, like many of the posh retreat centers, is not a cheap endeavor, despite its support to a program that adds immense value to the Army mission.<\/p>\n<p>The second obstacle to Strong Bonds? Sexuality.<\/p>\n<p>It seems political sensitivities to the integration of homosexuals into chaplain marriage programs is contributing to the end of the programs. The Army can&#8217;t balance the problem of finding a chaplain who will host an LGBT-affirming Strong Bonds, the problems of troops who won&#8217;t attend an LGBT-affirming Strong Bonds, and the public relations disasters of trying to host the more popular\u00a0<em>non<\/em>-LGBT affirming Strong Bonds.<\/p>\n<p>The solution? End Strong Bonds.<\/p>\n<p>Still, permitting open service by homosexuals has had no negative effect on the Army. Right?<\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-layout=\"standard\" data-action=\"like\" data-size=\"small\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-share=\"true\"><\/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>US Army Chaplain (LtCol) Kevin Leideritz is the first permanently assigned chaplain to US Special Operations Command-Europe. A recent article describes his hosting of a marriage retreat at Edelweiss Lodge and Resort in Garmisch, Germany, at the end of January. Leideritz&#8230;seized the opportunity to work with couples to better understand their individual personality traits, their partner\u2019s love languages and ways [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5284,442,6118,3499,83,2,167,616],"class_list":["post-39988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chaplain","tag-homosexual","tag-kevin-leideritz","tag-love-language","tag-marriage","tag-military","tag-resilience","tag-strong-bonds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39988","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=39988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}