Post-DADT, military chaplains still marginalizing gay couples

Now that the abandonment of DADT has given way to new rules governing the treatment of gay soldiers, right-wing politicians and the antigay-for-pay industry have attempted to exclude military chaplains from accountability to those rules by advancing the fiction that new policies significantly threaten religious freedom in the military.
     A OneIowa tweet reminded us and its other followers of the reality check to all of that of Rachel Swarns New York Times examination of a few of myriad ways that military policies and rules still exclude gay couples from the support other couples receive:

     Nakisha Hardy spent the first nine months of her marriage on a remote Army base in Afghanistan...The strains of that separation lingered even after First Lt. Hardy returned to Fort Bragg in September. So she signed up for a military retreat to help soldiers and their husbands and wives cope with the pressures of deployments and relocations.

     But less than 24 hours after arriving at the retreat, she and her spouse were told to leave. The military chaplains who organized the program last month said that the couple was making others uncomfortable. They said they had determined that under federal law the program could serve only heterosexual married couples.

     ...Lieutenant Hardy had been assured by the chaplain’s office in the weeks before the retreat that she and her wife were welcome to attend. The chaplains said in hindsight that those assurances were given in error.

     “I felt hurt, humiliated,” said Lieutenant Hardy, 28. “These were people I had been deployed with. And they were telling me I can go to fight the war on terrorism with them, but I can’t attend a seminar with them to keep my marriage healthy.”