As Gays Serve Openly, Few Problems for Chaplains

[HillWilliam]

Link to Military.com article

WRIGHTSTOWN, New Jersey - Col. Timothy Wagoner has been an Air Force chaplain for 20 years, serving a denomination - the Southern Baptists - that rejects same-sex relationships.

Yet here he was at the chapel he oversees, watching supportively as an airman and his male partner celebrated a civil union ceremony.

"I wouldn't miss it," Wagoner said at the McGuire Air Force Base chapel, days later. "I don't feel I'm compromising my beliefs ... I'm supporting the community."

I'm shocked! I'm surprised! I'm scandalized!

Oh, wait . . .

[MADem]

1. The selection process for the Chief of Chaplains is a VERY personal one that takes place at the

highest levels of each specific service. It's unlikely in the EXTREME that anyone--religiously conservative, or otherwise--would be put in those positions if they were unwilling to "play ball," as it were. The individual Service line leader giveth, and the individual Service line leader can taketh away...flag/general flag officers who are also chaplains are like hen's teeth and that's not an accident. They don't have much clout in the rarified air. They get up in there, and they decide that they LIKE the perks, the associations with the Big Wigs, the insider information...and they'll compromise even the principles that they insist are dear to them if it means they get to keep that car and driver that comes with the job.

We are just around the corner from a fairly substantial drawdown. I would wager that the recalcitrant, obnoxious, stubborn jerkwads who refuse to "get with the program" will be high on the list to be invited to join the reserves and/or "take orders home." They can go, if they'd like, crab away with all the ex-military whiners who got mad because the invocation of JEEESUS in invocation/benediction ceremonies is perceived as non-inclusive to the Jews, Muslims, etc., and were told to keep that shit in their Sunday services. That crap was getting to a boil some twenty years ago, and they didn't get their way back then, either. That's why most of the gripers on this topic, too, are no longer on active duty.

The Chaplain in that article who was a religious conservative but who supported his fellow servicemembers and was able to parse the difference between a personal faith and his own integration into the larger community will probably get a good fitness report because he's not causing any shit for his commander. The ones with good fitness reports get to stay--the ones who are troublemakers are taking their chances.

As for the few chaplains in the story who claim that there may come a day when they have to "choose" between their allegiances? What do you want to bet (I say, cynically) that they will make that "momentous" decision the SECOND they either qualify for full retirement, or the Services offer an early retirement authority? Those guys aren't going to sacrifice their "principles" for a paycheck on the first of every month--count on it.

[cbayer]

2. Going to cross post this in religion. Thanks for bringing it here.

[joeybee12]

3. But, but, but...

We were told of the horrors that would happen when these people lost their "religious liberty"!!!!!!!