Note 3rd last paragraph - On base housing is coming next.
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Wall Street Journal
October 1, 2011
Pg. 3
Military Lets Chaplains Perform Gay Marriages
By Julian E. Barnes
WASHINGTON—Military chaplains will be allowed to preside over same-sex marriages on military bases, the Pentagon said on Friday.
The announcement followed the lifting this month of the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on gays serving openly in the military, an 18-year practice under which more than 14,000 service members were discharged.
In a pair of memos, top Pentagon officials said military chaplains could participate in private same-sex-marriage ceremonies on or off military installations. The ceremonies must not be official Defense Department events and can't be held in violation of local laws. The decision came over the objection of Republican lawmakers.
Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department general counsel, wrote in one memo Friday: "Private functions are not official activities of the Department of Defense. Thus, the act of making DoD facilities available for private functions, including religious and other activities, does not constitute an endorsement of the activities by DoD."
In another memo, Clifford Stanley, the undersecretary of defense for personnel, said the ceremonies would be allowed on any military base, except where local law explicitly prohibits such private ceremonies. Six states the District of Columbia currently allow gay marriage.
The Department of Defense initiated a review earlier this year of whether chaplains would be allowed to perform same-sex marriages. Republican lawmakers objected, saying such ceremonies would violate the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts federal recognition of same-sex marriages.
The Family Research Council, a conservative group that lobbied against the repeal of the ban on gays serving openly in the military, criticized the Pentagon announcement. Tony Perkins, a Marine veteran and the council's president, said the new policy clearly violated the Defense of Marriage Act.
"It is outrageous that only ten days after repeal of the law against homosexuality in the Armed Forces, the Defense Department is already pushing the military further down the slippery slope," Mr. Perkins said in a statement.
Mr. Perkins said the law repealing the ban on gays serving in the military didn't authorize chaplains to conduct same-sex weddings. "The Defense of Marriage Act remains the law in America, defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman for all purposes under federal law," Mr. Perkins said.
Gay rights organizations immediately hailed the decision, saying it would preserve religious freedom for chaplains and give equal access to gays and lesbians at many military bases.
"As we move into a new era of open service, today's decision by the Department of Defense ensures that all military families, including lesbian and gay military families, have equal access to military facilities," said Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for gay rights.
Defense officials noted that neither memo released by the Pentagon mentioned marriage, instead speaking generically about ceremonies. Officials said that as long as the Defense Department didn't explicitly call the ceremonies "marriage," there wouldn't be in violation of the Defense of Marriage Act.
The officials said chaplains wouldn't be under any restrictions about how they referred to the ceremonies and, if their faiths allowed, they could refer to same-sex unions as marriage.
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