Obama to call for repeal of DADT in State of the Union

[DinoDoc]

You seem to be expending large amounts of effort argueing with someone that by and large seems to agree with your position on that matter of DADT remaining law or not. Do you simply enjoy seeing your name next to posts or have I missed some larger point you are making?

 

[Formaldehyde]

Note: The spoilers only contain selected quotes from the articles.

Backward Christian soldiers

Spoiler :

If you heard it said that America’s military was being taken over by agents of apocalyptic Christianity, you might think it the fiction of some leftwing alarmist. But what if it came from a man who said, “I never thought, coming from a conservative military Republican family filled with [US Air Force] Academy graduates and people that have been in so much combat, that at this point in my life, after being a White House lawyer, a lawyer for a Texas billionaire, a businessman, that I’d suddenly become this political activist”?

“We are facing a national security threat in this country that is every bit as significant in magnitude, width and breadth internally as that presented externally by the now-resurgent Taliban and al-Qaeda. And it is the destruction of the US constitutionally mandated wall separating metaphysical and physical, spiritual and non-spiritual, church and state, in the technologically most lethal organisation every created by humankind, which is our honourable and noble military. I’m here to report to you today that that wall is nothing but smoke and debris. We are facing an absolute fundamentalist Christianisation – a Talibanisation – of the US Marine Corps, Army, Navy, and Air Force.”

Weinstein says that these groups exist on every one of the almost 1,000 US military bases around the globe. He has said his inside military sources indicate 30 per cent of the US military are now fundamentalist Christians. He guesses the Dominionists in the military reflect the national figure of 12 per cent of the population.

Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military

Spoiler :

Humphrey had been in Samarra for a month, and until that day his stay had been a quiet respite in one of the world’s oldest cities. Not long before, though, there had been a hint of trouble: a briefing in which his squad was warned that any soldier caught desecrating Islamic sites—Samarra is considered a holy city—would fall under “extreme penalty,” a category that can include a general court-martial and prison time. “I heard some guys were vandalizing mosques,” Humphrey says. “Spray-painting ’em with crosses."

The rest of that Easter was spent under siege. Insurgents held off Bravo Company, which was called in to rescue the men in the compound. Ammunition ran low. A helicopter tried to drop more but missed. As dusk fell, the men prepared four Bradley Fighting Vehicles for a “run and gun” to draw fire away from the compound. Humphrey headed down from the roof to get a briefing. He found his lieutenant, John D. DeGiulio, with a couple of sergeants. They were snickering like schoolboys. They had commissioned the Special Forces interpreter, an Iraqi from Texas, to paint a legend across their Bradley’s armor, in giant red Arabic script.

“What’s it mean?” asked Humphrey.

“Jesus killed Mohammed,” one of the men told him. The soldiers guffawed. JESUS KILLED MOHAMMED was about to cruise into the Iraqi night.

What men such as these have fomented is a quiet coup within the armed forces: not of generals encroaching on civilian rule but of religious authority displacing the military’s once staunchly secular code. Not a conspiracy but a cultural transformation, achieved gradually through promotions and prayer meetings, with personal faith replacing protocol according to the best intentions of commanders who conflate God with country. They see themselves not as subversives but as spiritual warriors—“ambassadors for Christ in uniform,” according to Officers’ Christian Fellowship; “government paid missionaries,” according to Campus Crusade’s Military Ministry.

"The Crusade for a Christian Military”: Are US Forces Trying to Convert Afghans to Christianity?

Spoiler :

The former prime minister of Afghanistan, Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai, has called for an investigation into allegations that US soldiers are trying to convert Afghans to Christianity. He said, quote, “This is a complete deviation from what they are supposed to be doing.”

His comments come after a report on Al Jazeera showed footage of soldiers at Bagram Air Base discussing how to distribute Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari. The US military is denying it allows its soldiers to proselytize to Afghans. The military claims the Bibles shown in the video had been confiscated and destroyed and were “never distributed.” Admiral Mike Mullen told a Pentagon briefing Monday, quote, “It certainly is, from the United States military’s perspective, not our position to ever push any specific kind of religion, period.”

The Pentagon has also sharply criticized Al Jazeera for releasing the year-old footage, which was shot by filmmaker and former soldier Brian Hughes. Military spokesperson Colonel Greg Julian said, quote, “Most of this is taken out of context. This is irresponsible and inappropriate journalism. There is no effort to go out and proselytize to Afghans.”

Well, on Tuesday, Al Jazeera released unedited footage of the US soldiers’ Bible study in Bagram to counter the Pentagon’s allegations. These excerpts from the unedited video show military chaplain, Captain Emmit Furner, leading the discussion on the definition of the US Central Command’s General Order Number One that explicitly forbids active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion.

I think that’s anything but the truth. You know, what we see on that videotape is really just the tip of the iceberg. When Mikey Weinstein, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, came to me and said, “You know, you should be writing about this subject,” I was a little skeptical that it could be as widespread as they said. But in more than a hundred interviews at every rank, I encountered that same kind of thinking. And the same kind of thing that you see there on display with Lieutenant-Colonel Hensley is replicated over and over and over, from private to general. But most frighteningly, it’s concentrated in the Officer Corps.

You know, I would have thought that was—this guy was just a kind of a rogue, a maverick, if I didn’t speak to so many other officers with just the same attitude. In the story, I talk about Lieutenant-Colonel Bob Young, who is also in Afghanistan at Kandahar Air Base, and he was quite plain in boasting about a PowerPoint presentation he had given to Afghan warlords explaining that American government was based on Christianity, that our Christian god was what made it great, and Afghanistan had a choice if it wanted to achieve democracy. And of course that choice was going to be for Jesus.

These people don’t even know that they’re crossing the line between church and state.

When they came under attack, the Special Forces, Army Special Forces to whom he was assigned, had their Iraqi translator, an Iraqi American Christian, paint in giant red Arabic letters on the side of a Bradley fighting vehicle the words “Jesus killed Mohammed.” Then, while they put the translator on the roof with a bullhorn, shouting in Arabic, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” and then training their guns, training American guns on anybody who responded, the Bradley fighting vehicle rolled out into the city of Samarra and drawing fire everywhere it went, leading the Special Forces to conclude that every single Iraqi who took offense at these words, “Jesus killed Mohammed,” was part of the enemy and therefore needed to be destroyed.

US military accused of harboring fundamentalism

Spoiler :

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Since his last combat deployment in Iraq, Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall.

"A senior ranking staff sergeant told me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," Hall, a 23-year-old US army specialist, told AFP.

Later, Hall was confronted by a major for holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment.

"He said: 'You guys are being a problem and problems can be removed,'" Hall said. "He was yelling at us and stuff and at the very end he says, 'I really love you guys, I want you to see the light.'"

Now Hall is suing the major and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, accusing them of breaching his constitutional rights. A campaign group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is waiting for the Pentagon to respond to a lawsuit filed in a Kansas federal court on Hall's behalf.

It alleges a "pernicious pattern and practice" of infringement of religious liberties in the military.

 

[DinoDoc]

Now we've added the equivilant of Vanity Fair to the list. I commend you for getting a news source (the AFP story) this time though I would caution against reading too much into a story hyped by someone who makes his living overhyping such things especially given the militaries rules against the conduct he's claiming.

 

[bhsup]

Individual soldiers do not lose their rights to freedom of religion and if that makes atheists jumpy, tough communion wafers.

 

[RedRalph]

Individual soldiers do not lose their rights to freedom of religion and if that makes atheists jumpy, tough communion wafers.

Individual soldiers do not lose their rights to freedom of sexuality and if that makes homophobes jumpy, tough local sports teams.

 

[bhsup]

But I support scrapping DADT!

So tough pots of gold at the end of the rainbow on you!

 

[Formaldehyde]

Now we've added the equivilant of Vanity Fair to the list.

That must mean the facts they presented must be fake.

 

[RedRalph]

But I support scrapping DADT!

So tough pots of gold at the end of the rainbow on you!

I apologise

 

[MobBoss]

Note: The spoilers only contain selected quotes from the articles.

More bias. What better resource to turn to about religion in the service than an atheist website....

The uniformed services consist of the active, reserves and national guard. This puts somewhere in the area of 1.5 million people in uniform at any particular time. Your links and storys have given examples of a very, very, very, small number in comparison to how many there actually are.

The military caters to a very wide demograph of people of different races, cultures, religions. To try and say its run by a bunch of fundamental christians is just hogwash.

In consideration of DADT I am willing to bet you would probably classify him as a fundamental christian as well since it was him that effected the policy.

Bill Clinton = homophobe?

 

[BasketCase]

What makes Americans incapable of acting reasonably, when there is no such violence problem in the military forces of almost every other developed nation?

That I've heard of. In the past year, do you know how many times I've seen news reports of gay-bashing in the United States military?

None. How many actually happened? Several thousand. It happens in my own nation and I never hear about it. Maybe the reason you don't see a problem is because you didn't look. Or because your military trains the troops to not discuss the topic of who's straight and who's fruity.

Your tone also suggests you don't think any gay people should be out of the closet in day to day life either.

They shouldn't. I don't walk around telling everybody I'm heterosexual; it serves no purpose, makes guys uncomfortable, and makes women think I'm hitting on them.

 

[warpus]

They shouldn't. I don't walk around telling everybody I'm heterosexual; it serves no purpose, makes guys uncomfortable, and makes women think I'm hitting on them.

Yeah, but you must have put up a poster of a girl somewhere at some point. That's the same thing. You're telling people "I like girls"

 

[PiMan]

They shouldn't. I don't walk around telling everybody I'm heterosexual; it serves no purpose, makes guys uncomfortable, and makes women think I'm hitting on them.

Being out of the closet doesn't necessarily mean talking like the stereotype, walking around in arseless chaps and participating in the Mardi Gras.
For most gay people, it at the very least means being able to talk about your life in the same way straight guys can. So gay guys can talk about their boyfriend in the same way straight guys talk about their girlfriend (and the reverse for women). A young couple in love should be able to have public displays of affection (within reason) no matter what gender the two of them are.

 

[The Imp]

I think the last few pages (and moderator actions) are a good illustration of why we should definitely NOT repeal DADT. Because the mere discussion of the subject causes people to lose their heads and get homicidal on each other. As a race, humans are not ready to deal with this topic rationally. Mix gays and straights openly, and there will be violence.

That's why the solution is simply to keep your damn mouths shut. If we don't mention the topic, there can't be an argument. DADT allows gays to serve in the military, without causing them to decapitate each other with E-tools.

Under that logic, Racial segregation of the military should not have been stopped until nobody cared.

 

[Gustave5436]

Under that logic, Racial segregation of the military should not have been stopped until nobody cared.

And the military should still ban women from serving because so many people are still unwilling to see them in that organization.

 

[Lone Wolf]

If you abstain from any measures that have a high controversy-generating potential, your country will end up like Poland-Lithuania .

Amusingly enough, I'm posting that from an internet cafe in Krakow.

 

[Formaldehyde]

I don't walk around telling everybody I'm heterosexual; it serves no purpose, makes guys uncomfortable, and makes women think I'm hitting on them.

Are you claiming you never talk about sex, even with your friends? Or that you don't date people you are attracted to in public?

I'm sure there are plenty of rules in the military already in place dealing with sexual harassment. AFAIK nobody is advocating the removal of those rules. Just DADT.

 

[Karalysia]

Are you claiming you never talk about sex, even with your friends? Or that you don't date people you are attracted to in public?

Forget that, how about talking about your girlfriend? Or keeping a picture of her on your desk?

 

[The Imp]

And the military should still ban women from serving because so many people are still unwilling to see them in that organization.

So you thought Truman was wrong?

 

[Formaldehyde]

SNL on DADT.

 

[Cutlass]

"Here's what's next: NAMBLA."
-- Oliver North on the consequences of ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell