Christian chaplains opposing same-sex relationships are being asked by a homosexual advocate to be removed from the United States Armed Forces.
In a strongly worded opinion piece published on the Daily Kos website following the Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex marriage throughout the country, Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) even described chaplains who practise their Christian faith and object to homosexuality as "losers."
However, Brig. Gen. Doug Lee, chairman of the executive committee for the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, said that Weinstein's remarks "are hardly worth responding to."
"I don't think he understands that the job of chaplain exists in a pluralistic military so that people have religious support, and to do away with a certain group of chaplains in its entirety is just ridiculous," Lee said.
In his editorial piece, Weinstein said "the only honourable thing that these losers can do is to fold up their uniforms, turn in their papers, and get the [expletive] out of the American military chaplaincy."
"If they are unwilling or too cowardly to do so, then the Department of Defense must expeditiously cleanse itself of the intolerant filth that insists on lingering in the ranks of our armed forces," he added.
Weinstein also implied that Christian chaplains who oppose same-sex marriage are promoting "Christian fundamentalism."
"Imagine the grinding teeth and anguished moans emanating from the benighted quarters of Christian fundamentalism within the US military! What will become of their once-ironclad dominance of fundamentalist Christian privilege within the Department of Defense?" the gay advocate said.
He also accused Christian military chaplains of bigotry and prejudice against homosexuals.
"What truly troubles these cretinous sentinels of vile prejudice and hate-mongering bigotry is the fact that this ruling will go down historically as the watershed moment which may indeed shatter the spine of the Religious Right in the US military, whose prior vise-like grip over the chaplaincy has formed the key obstacle to social progress within the Armed Forces," Weinstein said.
