As I've reported several times this year, the Family Research Council has been pushing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (a spending bill) which would have barred military commanders from taking disciplinary action against soldiers who abuse and harass gay soldiers on the basis of "sincerely held religious beliefs." Last night the Senate approved the NDAA, but it includes a very weakened version of the amendment originally backed by the FRC.
Here's the final language of the amendment:
"Unless it could have an adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, and good order and discipline, the Armed Forces shall accommodate individual expressions of belief of a member of the armed forces reflecting the sincerely held conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the member and, in so far as practicable, may not use such expression of belief as the basis of any adverse personnel action, discrimination, or denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment."
As you can see, there are no real protections for those that abuse gay soldiers, but that hasn't stopped Tony Perkins
from declaring victory.
I commend the overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress for protecting the right of service members to freely practice and express their faith. Congress acted appropriately after investigating numerous incidents involving service members who have had their careers threatened, and harassed simply for practicing their faith in a real and tangible way. The religious liberty violations have grown so frequent in recent years leading many service members to report being too fearful to share their faith.
The pro-gay Military Religious Freedom Foundation has
taken great pleasure in pointing out that anti-gay groups like the FRC have suddenly changed their talking points. Go read their lengthy and very informative breakdown of how the amendment morphed from the extremely anti-gay House version into the compromise version approved yesterday.
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