Sounds pretty extreme to me. If an Air Force officer thinks women ruling over them/us will bring down God’s judgment on them/us, what does he perforce think of women Air Force officers, Air Force generals, Defense Dep’t secretaries*, Senators, or a woman President? :smack: Sounds like he considers them illegitimate. And you’ll excuse me if I’m made nervous by a military officer who thinks the legitimate officials above him aren’t.
*The cabinet minister kind, not the “take dictation and book my lunch meeting” kind.
That raises the question of how the Armed Services handled the issue of Fraudulent Enlistment when homosexuality was dropped as a disqualifying characteristic for eligibility to serve. During (and before) the tenure of DADT, discovery of a servicemember’s homosexuality resulted in separation from the service under the UCMJ provisions for fraudulent enlistment (that is, the servicemember had falsely claimed to not be disqualified by his/her sexual orientation). When sexual orientation was officially dropped as a bar to eligibility, there were presumably some gay servicemembers who wanted to come out of the closet and get on with their military careers with that much less stress.
But, technically speaking, these members were all serving while having fraudulently enlisted. It strains plausibility that the branches of the military were told to simply disregard any instances of fraudulent enlistment which were brought to light (because, IME, the military doesn’t adopt new policies without having an implementation procedure). Does anyone know how the branches (or possibly the DoD) implemented this policy change without running into a UCMJ-mandated mess?
ISTM that the answer to this question is the rebuttal to Hernandez’s objection.
This is incorrect (at least under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell years). Homosexuality was its own unique basis for separation and always required evidence of homosexual conduct, not mere orientation. For example, an old overview of Army Regulation AR 635-200 on enlisted separations can be found here that examines the (now rescinded) chapter on separation due to Homosexual conduct. Sexual orientation under the DADT years was explicitly treated as a private matter not subject to any official action under there was some accusation or proof that it was manifested in homosexual conduct. Here is the applicable (now-rescinded) part of the Air Force regulation.
This was because sodomy, whether committed with someone of the same or opposite sex, was (and still technically is, though almost never prosecuted unless it is non-consensual) a violation of the UCMJ punitive articles (Article 125).
The problem here is the reverse – the military is telling them that something (public expression of contempt for a superior officer) is not allowed while their religion is telling them it is allowed. Obviously, this should lead them to either refrain, to leave the service, or to suffer the consequences of deliberately violating military discipline.