FRC Fails With Military Bill

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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Posted in: FRC,hate groups,military,Tony Perkins

Gay Wedding Video Of The Day

Via press release:

A gay military couple has released a one-of-a-kind video citing their journey of love that lead to their marriage and covers their euphoric feelings about the historic steps the LGBT military community has taken in these short three years. The video is titled Jonathan & Dwayne | A Story About Love. The video features Jonathan and Dwayne Beebe-Franqui. They tied the knot not too long ago and show the unique moment of their engagement - the historic 2012 Uniformed Military March in San Diego Pride. The march made national headlines and global news due to the Pentagon issuing a blanket ruling for all LGBT service members and allies to march in uniform for the first time in a Pride parade in United States history.

You might need a tissue.

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Posted in: gay weddings,military,San Diego

Google Buys Battle Robots Company

Clip description:

Google has purchased the cutting-edge robotics firm which supplies mobile research robots for the Pentagon. The tech giant is keeping secret what it will produce with the acquired technology. Boston Dynamics, an engineering company that designs robots like BigDog, Cheetah, WildCat, and Atlas, is now the eighth robotic company to join Google's ranks in the last six months, the company confirmed Friday, according to The New York Times. The robotics company - based in Waltham, Massachusetts - is known for its fascinating robots that have a sense of balance and can walk and run on almost any kind of terrain.

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Posted in: Google,military,Pentagon,robots