MIKEY’s OP-ED – MRFF Demands Ouster of All Homophobic Military Chaplains

However, as long as these faux “victimized” chaplains insist on accepting a government paycheck from us, the American taxpayers, while nurturing and maintaining the state of antagonism between their religion and the sexual/gender identities of servicemembers, then they don’t belong in the military. At this stage, the only honorable thing that these losers can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers, and get the hell out of the American military chaplaincy.

The clouds are parting and the sun is beginning to shine today, as great arching rainbows signal the looming departure of a long, violent storm. As anybody who has turned on the television or logged onto the net knows, today’s Supreme Court decision has cracked across America’s sky with the tremendous energy of a lightning bolt, lifting aspirations and opening vistas for the LGBTQ community.

Oh, but the ruling doesn’t simply apply to civilians alone – the Supreme Court decision will permit same-sex marriage not only in all 50 states in the union, but on ALL United States Military bases as well. For the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the only organization devoted solely to fighting the scourge of fundamentalist Christian extremism, the monumental importance of this occasion CANNOT be overstated enough. Indeed, our LGBTQ client base of over 900 servicemembers has been ecstatic, and I can scarcely write this opinion piece due to the fact that my phone is absolutely ringing off the hook with phone calls from exuberant servicemembers. Expect to hear wedding bells ring joyously across chapels as same-sex couples are joined in matrimony at military installations across the globe!

Of course, not all are celebrating the ruling. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer (a big fan of yours truly) has unleashed a torrent of hilariously outraged tweets about “Satan dancing with delight” and how, “from a moral standpoint,” June 26 is equivalent to September 11, 2001.  One Texan preacher has even sunk to the hideously pathetic depths of threatening self-immolation in reaction to the marriage equality ruling. Glenn Beck is promising the martyrdom and self-sacrifice (sound familiar?) of tens of thousands of pastors. Even a solid contingent of right-wing African-American Christian clergy are having a field day displaying their abject shamelessness, pledging “to do the same thing we did for the civil rights movement,” – basically, to begin a campaign of civil disobedience signaling their anger at “the politicians and courts…. [taking] God out of this country.”

Imagine the grinding teeth and anguished moans emanating from the benighted quarters of Christian fundamentalism within the U.S. military! What will become of their once-ironclad dominance of fundamentalist Christian privilege within the Department of Defense? After all, this same Pentagon allows the notorious anti-gay bigot and charlatan “gay conversion therapy expert” Dr. Mike Rosebush to retain employment as a civilian leader at the United States Air Force Academy. The armed forces chaplaincy is deserving of additional scrutiny – witness the fact that bitterly hateful homophobic extremists like USAF Chaplain (Capt.) Sonny Hernandez, 445th Airlift Wing Chaplain Corps was named as “Officer of the Year” just this past April. Hernandez is just one of many chaplains who feel so threatened by equality that they will bitch and moan at every opportunity about an absolutely absurd and fictitious “hostile work environment for Christians” within the military.

These pernicious bigots must stop trying to claim “Christian Victimization” when, in point of fact, what they are seeing is “Christian Equalization”.

What truly troubles these cretinous sentinels of vile prejudice and hate-mongering bigotry is the fact that this ruling will go down historically as the watershed moment which may indeed shatter the spine of the Religious Right in the U.S. military, whose prior viselike grip over the chaplaincy has formed the key obstacle to social progress within the Armed Forces. Cry us a river!

Nobody is arguing that these losers don’t have a right to their religious beliefs – that right is sacrosanct, and is backed by the highest law of the land – the U.S. Constitution. However, as long as these faux “victimized” chaplains insist on accepting a government paycheck from us, the taxpayers, while nurturing and maintaining the state of antagonism between their religion and the sexual/gender identities of servicemembers, then they don’t belong in the military. At this stage, the only honorable thing that these losers can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers, and get the hell out of the American military chaplaincy. If they are unwilling or too cowardly to do so, then the Department of Defense must expeditiously cleanse itself of the intolerant filth that insists on lingering in the ranks of our armed forces.

The extreme religious right’s resistance to today’s landmark Supreme Court ruling reminds me of the almost identical opposition, also speciously based on bible-based religious grounds, which President Truman faced from within the U.S. military when issuing Executive Order No. 9981, Desegregating the Military on July 26, 1948.  Order 9981 stated “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin”. If it was wrong for military chaplains to protest Truman’s desegregation order in 1948 (and it obviously WAS), then it is just as equally wrong now for them to oppose gay marriage/rights in today’s military.

The struggle doesn’t end here. Illustrating the towering challenges to justice that lie ahead, the Supreme Court ruling that signaled the triumphant right to marriage equality comes on the heels of the tragic suicide of U.S. Air Force Veteran Jess Shipps, a 31-year old transgendered woman who was an active leader in SPARTA, a support and advocacy group for transgendered servicemembers. Her death was largely borne of the type of bigotry enshrined into Department of Defense regulations, specifically DoD Instruction 6130.03, which deems those undergoing gender-confirming treatment to be medically non-adaptable to military environments.

However, today we celebrate. Witness how the tide turns when those suffering from oppression persistently demand and fight for their rights, regardless of the hatred and animosity they face as a result of their unwillingness to tolerate the intolerable! Lady Liberty is truly beaming with PRIDE today.

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