Recently, an Army chaplain, [Captain Erick Barrett] performing his assigned duty, gave a policy briefing to the soldiers in his unit on the Army’s new policies on transgender soldiers
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But now Chaplain Barrett has incurred the wrath of Captain Sonny Hernandez, a “Bible-believing” Air Force Reserve chaplain, prolific anti-LGBT blogger — and self-appointed arbiter of what all other Christian military chaplains should do and say.
Writing on barbwire.com(which also just published his new book, Homosexual Agenda and the US Military), Chaplain Hernandez judgmentally lamented that Chaplain Barrett did not use this policy briefing as a platform to deliver a sermon:
“Chaplain Barrett’s ‘transgender policy briefing’ was godless. There was no reference of Scripture, God, Jesus, repentance, or faith, which would be expected of an ecclesiastically endorsed evangelical who claims to be a Christian."
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Chaplain Hernandez continued his barbwire.com post by pontificating with his own “transgender policy briefing” for the members of Chaplain Barrett’s unit, which begins: “To start, there is no such thing as transgenderism.”
But it was how Chaplain Hernandez became aware of Chaplain Barrett’s “sinful” policy briefing that brings us to the glaring double standard that fundamentalist Christians like Chaplain Hernandez have when it comes to who has a legitimate right to be offended when they feel like their rights of conscience are being violated.
It was a soldier in Chaplain Barrett’s unit who contacted Chaplain Hernandez. This soldier — a Christian who considers transgenderism to be a sin — requested a religious accommodation to be excused from attending the policy briefing (which was denied), claiming in his request that “participation in such training will bind my conscience to another religion, thus violating my conscience and faith tenants [sic].”
Really? Simply having to be present and listen to something can bind a soldier’s conscience to another religion? Then Chaplain Hernandez — and all the other like-minded fundamentalist Christians who believe that a soldier’s conscience would be bound to another religion by merely having to listen to something that conflicts with their beliefs — would certainly have to agree that merely having to listen to the prayers and other Christian evangelizing that service members are regularly forced to listen to at mandatory military events binds the consciences of atheist and other non-Christian service members to a religion that conflicts with their beliefs, right? Of course not!
When an atheist or other service member feels that their rights of conscience are violated by being forced to listen to prayers or evangelizing, they’re just too easily offended! But, in the double-standard-ridden minds of fundamentalist Christian zealots like Chaplain Hernandez, a Christian soldier merely having to listen to something about transgender soldiers — at a policy briefing that included nothing whatsoever about any religion — binds the conscience of that soldier to another religion!
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