Christian Groups React to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal

In the wake of the U.S. Senate repealing former President Bill Clinton’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell rule, Christian voices from a wide swath of denominations are protesting the decision.

The Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell restricts United States military from efforts to discover or reveal gay, lesbian or bisexual members or applicants. The military still bans applicants who are openly homosexual or bisexual.

Eight Republicans and independent Joe Lieberman agreed with the Democratic Party to repeal the legislation by a 65-31 margin last week. President Barack Obama is expected to sign the bill into law before the end of 2010.

“Gay and lesbian service members are brave Americans who enable our freedoms will no longer have to hide who they are,” Obama said in an e-mailed statement to supporters. “The fight for civil rights, a struggle that continues, will no longer include this one.”

Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) Litigation Counsel Daniel Blomberg says the Senate’s cave-in to pressure from activists to impose homosexual behavior on our military will place our troops’ religious liberties in unprecedented jeopardy. 

“Indeed, the first official casualty of this hurried vote may well be the religious freedom of chaplains and service members,” Blomberg says. “No Americans, and especially not our troops, should be forced to abandon their religious beliefs. We hope that our nation’s leaders will work to ensure that none of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are ever made to choose between serving their country or obeying their God as result of this damaging policy decision. And ADF stands ready to defend service members if they are ever unconstitutionally required to make that choice.” 

After delivering 205,000 fax petitions to Congress against open homosexual service in the military, former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt called on the new Congress to pass strong laws protecting the rights of Christian troops and chaplains to openly speak their opinions about what the Bible calls sin, to refuse common showers, sleeping quarters and “social re-education”  without repercussion.

Klingenschmitt says, “If free speech and free religion rights of Christian chaplains and troops are not protected, then the military is not ready to certify or implement repeal, and will quickly begin to persecute good people of Christian conscience.”