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Chaplain Offers Incomprehensibile Rationale Offered For Why DADT Should Stand

06/03/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Apparently, Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt is not happy that the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell appears to be going forward despite the fact that more than forty retired military chaplains have complained about the repeal. Of course, given that they are retired chaplains and not active duty, one has to wonder just how in touch they are with the modern military. After all, there was a letter from a lot more retired generals that did not work out too well with regards to stalling DADT’s repeal. According to Klingenschmitt:

“By raising homosexual behavior to the same protected status as innate, innocuous characteristics like race and gender, the armed forces will cast the sincerely held religious beliefs of many chaplains and Service members as rank bigotry comparable to racism,” the letter said.

“Put most simply, if the government normalizes homosexual behavior in the armed forces, many (if not most) chaplains will confront a profoundly difficult moral choice: whether they are to obey God or to obey men,” the letter said. “This forced choice must be faced, since orthodox Christianity — which represents a significant percentage of religious belief in the armed forces — does not affirm homosexual behavior.

Of course, the fact that religion is also a protected status and that chaplains have already had to begin dispensing advice with regards to pagan faiths which many Christian faiths find as unholy, it seems rather strange that religion will be a huge problem in the long run.

Chaplain Klingenschmitt goes on to give four rationales for why DADT should not be repealed:

1) Allowing open homosexuality especially hurts unit cohesion and would cost American lives in war, damaging the trust shared in close proximity, common sleeping quarters and showering facilities that are unavoidable in close combat.

2) Men and women do not share the same showers for obvious reasons, so why force men to share showers with openly homosexual men? This fact alone would hurt recruiting.

3) The rampant spread of the HIV-AIDS virus contaminates the blood often shared by necessity on the battlefield. Soldiers requiring blood-transfusions and medics would be immediately endangered.

4) “Gay promotion quotas” would soon be forced upon presently impartial promotion boards, causing a burdensome rise in sexually-charged “equal opportunity” complaints against commanders, especially those who offend gays by inadvertently speaking of their traditional Judeo-Christian faith.

Recent studies have shown that those militaries where lesbians and gays were allowed to serve openly had an increase in unit cohesion, not a decrease. The fact that gay and straight men and lesbians and straight women already share the same showers does not seem to quite compute with Klingenschmitt either, nor does the fact that anyone with HIV/AIDS has to be given a medical discharge from the military for the safety of the other troops. The fourth point is also baffling since there do not seem to be any quotas with regards to the promotion of African-Americans, Hispanics or women. Of course, Klingenschmitt and his group does not like women serving in the military either. It is baffling that Klingenschmitt is so incapable of coming up with an actual reason why lesbians and gays should not be allowed in the military other than what appears to be a defense of prejudice and homophobia. It seems to amount to him being terrified of having to admit that lesbians and gays exist on an equal or superior level to him.

Of course, Klingenschmitt is rather hung up on the idea of deception and lying. He often talks about how Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Michael Mullen are have deceived the deceptive Congress in order to follow the “gay agenda”. Of course, his citation for all of this is Biblical:

The Bible describes homosexual liars: “Who changed the truth of God into a lie…women did change the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error.” (Romans 1).

He goes on to attack Lt. Choi for being a liar:

As a USAF Academy graduate knowing the honor code, I now personally confront Choi as a liar, who now openly violates his honor oath, since he deceives himself and the world, by claiming to be feminine, when God created him masculine, with a male body. LIAR. Choi should immediately be thrown out of the Army, not merely for sexual perversion, but for DISHONESTY AND LYING. The only reason he graduated West Point is that he never lied by openly claiming to be feminine while a cadet, when God created him to be masculine. THIS PROVES DON’T ASK DON’T TELL IS THE MOST HONEST POLICY, because it encourages people with sexual perversions not to openly lie about their sexual identity. But if DADT is repealed by Congress, men will claim to be women, and women will claim to be men, and the open season of dishonesty and lying will begin.

Um…ok. Lt. Choi is not feminine. Sleeping with men does not a woman make. That is, unless, one is a Fundamentalist Christian who is so angry at the idea that his puritanical beliefs are not being listened to, nor is society today following his belief system. In fact, Lt. Choi has never claimed to be feminine. He may have indicated he was the savior of the LGBT cause, but never did he claim to be feminine. If anything, Lt. Choi is butch. In fact, it is rather interesting that Klingenschmitt is so willing to rant on about Lt. Choi, one has to wonder if the chaplain is trying to get Choi booted from the services because he harbors a crush on the National Guard lieutenant. Klingenschmitt certainly does seem to confuse gay men with transwomen in a manner which seems completely illogical and even incomprehensible. There is nothing logical or even thought out here. All this seems to be is irrational fear of a group of people.

Perhaps Klingenschmitt is jealous that Choi can be openly gay and he cannot.