As others have pointed out, the Obama administration’s legal attack on the Defense of Marriage Act, which partially relies on the move to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” lacks controlling legal precedent or persuasive moral reasoning.  That alone is sufficient reason to oppose it.  But the President’s use of DADT repeal to attack DOMA is wrong for two other important reasons.  When President Obama rammed repeal through the lame-duck Congress, he did so while relying heavily on the existence of DOMA to ward off many of the problematic implications of repeal.  Moral concerns about marriage and religious liberty, along with fiscal concerns about benefits and housing, were rejected as irrelevant because DOMA allegedly prevented many of them from materializing.  Effectively, Congress was told to accept DADT repeal based on DOMA’s authority, all while the President was just a month away from launching an unprecedented attack on DOMA as soon as he secured DADT repeal.

But the actual situation now is much worse than a regrettable tale of political shenanigans and hypocrisy.  The military’s attempt to brace service members for repeal—via painfully inadequate PowerPoint training slides—still relies on DOMA’s existence to answer many controversial problems.  Thus, our troops are having a radical change imposed on them during a time of war by a Commander-in-Chief who is training them to rely on a law that his administration is actively trying to subvert.  This is wrong.  Misleading Congress is one thing.  Misleading the men and women in harm’s way who must follow his leadership is a wholly indefensible other thing and should not be tolerated.  Congress should demand that the President explain his duplicity to it and stop his mistreatment of our troops.

Join the conversation: Facebook.com/SpeakUpChurch
Sound off – post a comment below.

Recently the Washington Times featured an article that spotlights what ADF has been predicting for some time: using the forced acceptance of open homosexual behavior in the military (which has been disguised as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal) to attack the federal Defense of Marriage Act.  As we said then:

[P]erhaps the only institution more deeply respected and widely recognized as the training ground for inculcating societal values than the military is marriage.  And normalizing homosexual conduct in the military will not only—as an ACLU attorney recently stated—be a cultural precursor to normalizing homosexual “marriage,” it will actually create the perfect storm for destroying the primary federal law protecting marriage—the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”).

Basically, it will go like this: a same-sex couple will get “married” in a state like Massachusetts. One or both members of the couple will be in the military, and will press for married couples’ benefits, like housing and medical coverage, arguing that the military cannot discriminate against homosexual “marriages.”  And when the military denies the request based on DOMA, that Service member will sue in a sympathetic federal court to get DOMA declared unconstitutional.  And, quite possibly, the only federal bulwark against a nationwide redefinition of marriage will be breached.  Sound far fetched?  The first part of the strategy is already happening: a soldier in a homosexual relationship applied for married housing just after Defense Secretary Gates announced the goal of repealing current policy.

The Obama administration’s startling duplicity since that prediction makes the strategy to attack DOMA via the military all the more clear.  In a recent letter to Congress, Attorney General Holder cited the move to force open homosexual behavior on the military as evidence that the time-honored and logic-based definition of marriage in the Defense of Marriage Act must be abolished as unconstitutional.  Mr. Holder’s Department of Justice then followed that radical position up by filing an anti-DOMA brief in ongoing litigation that even sympathetic observers have called “a gay rights manifesto.”

The President is using one time-honored preserver of our country—the military—to attack another—marriage.  Defenders of marriage, though, should not be surprised.  Marriage is so foundational an institution that it is related to most facets of life.  Thus, for instance, defending marriage also means defending religious liberty.  Now, due to the creativity of marriage’s attackers, it means defending the military itself.

Join the conversation: Facebook.com/SpeakUpChurch
Sound off – post a comment below.

Since well before he became our military’s Commander-In-Chief, President Obama has insisted on the immediate demise of the military policy against open homosexual behavior.  Given his lack of experience with or connection to military policy, one might have expected the awesome weight of sending our warriors into harm’s way might have made him reconsider his call for radical change.  After all, the reason the military has closely regulated sexual conduct for centuries—just like it closely regulates other aspects of service member’s lives—is to ensure it can do its incredibly difficult and dangerous job.  But one would have been wrong.

After entering office, the President remained insistent that the mores of sexual behavior in the military, which have successfully benefitted our country in one capacity or another since the founding era, be turned on their heads.  And, over the combined objections of the Chiefs of the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines—not to mention over a thousand retired high-ranking officers and a large group of decorated veteran chaplains—he got his wish with a law that set a sexual revolution in the military into motion.

One might think, then, that the President would be delighted that a federal court more or less finished the job for him recently by allowing a worldwide ban on the policy to go into effect.  One would again be wrong.  Almost immediately, the Department of Justice filed an emergency request that the court undo what the President has demanded be done for so long.  This request said that “significant immediate harms” would occur if the President’s campaign promise became overnight the new worldwide policy for the U.S. military, citing the need to give combat units time to “prepare themselves” for “any challenges they may face after repeal [of the policy].”  Fortunately, the court granted the emergency request.  But this panicky response shows that changing the policy will not be the smooth sailing that the President promised.

All along, the President has argued that repeal of the policy known as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would simply benefit military “integrity” and not harm the military mission at all.  But even his pro-repeal Secretary of Defense spoke of repeal in terms of attempting to “mitigate[], if not eliminate[], to the extent possible, risks to combat readiness, to unit cohesion and effectiveness.”  That is, trying to keep a clearly politically-motivated move from harming the military too much.

Similarly, in the President’s own “study” of the military (the pro-repeal spin of which has since been revealed as a sham by the Inspector General), for every service member that predicted repealing DADT would be beneficial, more than two said it would be harmful.  Indeed, the vast majority of combat troops polled opposed repeal because of this anticipated harm.  This, of course, is common sense, as most Americans understand that injecting a politicized sexual agenda into the military is not a winning formula for maintaining maximum troop readiness.

All this leads one to wonder: if this change is risky enough that even the President scrambles to prevent it from happening “too quickly,” the Secretary of Defense who championed it focuses on limiting damage wrought by it, and most combat troops anticipate harm from it, why are we forcing it on our service men and women at all?
______________________________________________

Join the conversation: Facebook.com/SpeakUpChurch
Sound off – Leave a comment below.

ADF Senior VP; Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb writes:

A half a century ago, the United States lent a hand to the struggling nation of South Vietnam as its freedom was threatened by the Communist North Vietnamese regime and its Viet Cong allies. But by the mid-70s, the war whimpered to defeat: radical leftists won the day and the so-called “peace” movement forced American withdrawal and the inevitable, bloody collapse of South Vietnam.

Tens of thousands were slaughtered and more imprisoned in “re-education camps” as victorious Communists spread their brand of “freedom” through the land. And at the same time, thousands of freedom-loving South Vietnamese fled the country.

Most fled by boat, in harrowing ventures across the open sea to an uncertain fate—all the more uncertain as would-be host nations often turned back the “boat people,” or made their lives intentionally miserable to discourage others.

Among those refuges was 10-year-old Viet D. Dinh, who, through Providence and perseverance, found himself in America—and more amazingly, not living from hand to mouth but serving his new homeland as the senior partner in the esteemed firm of Bancroft Associates.

So what does a former “boat boy” turned attorney have to do with saving marriage? The answer is rooted in President Obama’s flip-flop on marriage, where he abandoned his campaign promises and decided that marriage between one man and one woman is somehow unconstitutional—then told the Department of Justice stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act. In response, the House of Representatives acted to defend DOMA itself.

To that end, House leaders hired Paul Clement, a noted Supreme Court lawyer at the “big law” firm of King and Spalding, to present the case for marriage in court.  But within a few days, homosexual activists leaned on the firm so hard that it turned tail and bailed out of the case.

But Mr. Clement did not flee with his firm. Instead, he resigned his position so that he may continue to represent the House and give voice to the pro-marriage arguments. And he did so as firmly as he did graciously, in a letter of resignation that profiles moral courage.

But a lawyer alone is still a lawyer alone. On a case like this, he needs help—a host of professional colleagues—with whom to go to war.

And with delicious, made-in-America irony, it was a refugee from the war lost by the American left—Mr. Viet D. Dinh—who welcomed Paul Clement to Bancroft Associates—who will be his “band of brothers” in this battle against the left’s effort to redefine marriage.

ADF commends Paul for his principled decision, and honors Mr. Dinh for enabling the defense of marriage—that unique bonding of a man and a woman, hopefully for life, that provides the procreative potential and nurturing that undergirds every civilization. Defending marriage is a high calling—and it certainly looks like the best and brightest have answered that call!

Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts or follow us on Facebook to join the conversation. http://www.facebook.com/SpeakUpChurch

 ADF Senior VP; Senior Counsel Gary McCaleb writes:

The 1960s blockbuster movie Seven Days in May  recounted a fictional plot by military leaders to overthrow a president who pushed for nuclear disarmament. It is a classic anti-military screed that embodied some of the worst far-left thinking of the sixties.

The movie was pure fiction.  But the leftist thinking behind the movie was unfortunately real.  And as we verge on another May, that bad thinking is incarnated in a real president who is bent on overthrowing the moral standards of our military—standards that have seen this Nation safely through centuries of peace and war.

In May 2011 President Obama will keep after his goal of forcing bisexual and homosexual behavior on the military by repealing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy—not just so a few individuals may serve, but to enforce the homosexual agenda by force of law and military regulation.  When he rolled the idea out in his inaugural address, it seemed like a done deal. But in the wake of the 2010 elections in which he lost control of the House of Representatives, it is no longer a sure bet.

Recently, House committees have been asking hard questions of some generals and admirals on April 1st and 7th—and much to their shame, those active duty commanders tap danced around the hard truths that were set forth months ago by almost 1200 senior veteran officers—retired flag and general officers who can speak without career fears hanging over them. 

But the commanders’ evasion did not go unnoticed, and now some of the best minds in America are rebelling against this radical “repeal” of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Renowned author and Christian leader Chuck Colson—who once commanded a platoon of Marines—pungently points out that forcing errant eros into the band-of-brothers military culture will have devastating impacts.  Chuck Donovan, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, calls out Congressional and military leaders for indulging in shoddy politics that elevate a wrongheaded “sexual liberty” over real military needs.  And of course, ADF has spoken forcefully on the religious freedom aspects of the issue.

This resistance is good news, and it is growing. One hearing already led to a second, and those inspired these incisive commentaries. And if you act swiftly by letting your Senators and Representatives know today that the repeal is wrong and must be stopped, then this May may bring real hope to our stressed and deeply endangered troops.

Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts or follow us on Facebook to join the conversation. http://www.facebook.com/SpeakUpChurch