29 April 2010

Are Military Chaplains Being Muzzled Over DADT?

Are they really being muzzled?

A group of retired military chaplains and lawyers gathered at the conservative Family Research Council on Wednesday to speak out against repealing the military policy on homosexuality, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), and suggested that current chaplains were being kept from doing the same.
Arthur Schultz, a former Army chaplain who now is legal counsel to the National Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers, told reporters that servicemen overseas have been told not to speak in support of DADT.
“One of the chaplains . . . spoke to me, who recently came back from overseas from a major command, and he said that the word is out to chaplains: don’t speak about this and particularly, don’t raise issues about why you can’t support it,” Shultz told reporters. “And so that’s the unofficial, ‘official’ language to say, ‘Keep your mouth shut, or else.’
“(The chaplain) implied or he told me that it was made clear that it would be damaging to anybody who raised his head above the parapet, so to speak.”
Under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, which was created by the Clinton administration, the military will not ask directly about a service member’s sexual orientation. But if that orientation is made public, it is grounds for dismassal from the service.


Or are the being treated like every other servicemember and being instructed to keep their opinions about policy to themselves?

By: Brant

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