Obamao Targets First Amendment Rights And Religious Freedom Of Our Military Folks

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Mathew D. Staver, Founder and Chairman

Liberty Counsel

6/27/2013

In what amounts to religious persecution in our nation’s armed forces, President Obama has targeted the First Amendment rights of our military personnel by restricting their free exercise of religion and freedom of speech.

Liberty Counsel will not tolerate Barack Obama’s anti-religious assault on the military and we are calling for strong congressional action against the Obama mandates!

This vital issue is one of many that are being overshadowed by yesterday’s misguided rulings on same-sex “marriage” by the United States Supreme Court. Please be assured that we are intensely involved in developing a powerful plan of action to defend natural marriage in this nation and are doing so in a positive, hope-filled manner. But we must also remain fully engaged in defending our liberties on other fronts!

Please see my important update on the Obama administration’s assault on religious freedom in our armed forces below – Mat.

There’s no better way to say it: The Obama administration has declared war on the religious liberties of our servicemen and women.

This is yet another in a long series of actions by this administration to silence the voices of people of faith. Such unlawful restrictions are clear violations of our service members’ individual rights as Americans.

Service members turning to God and relying on their faith for personal strength in times of danger is a practice as old as mankind itself, yet our President has deemed that expressions of faith somehow undermine “good order” in the military!

Congressman John Fleming, M.D. (R-LA) and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) released the following statement about their companion congressional Religious Liberty Amendments (RLA) to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which will further protect our troops’ First Amendment rights…

“For many of our men and women in uniform, their faith and religious beliefs are what sustain them through the enormous pressures and stresses of the battlefield. If an environment is created where those service members feel that expressing their religion could be found in violation of military policy and grounds for reprimand, it will have an unsettlingly negative effect on our military.

Our servicemen and women put their lives on the line every day in order to protect our constitutionally guaranteed rights, including the expression of our beliefs. Congress must ensure that we are protecting them as well.”

We are calling for the Senate to pass the Religious Liberties Amendment as proposed by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), amending the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The House overwhelmingly passed the RLA as authored by Congressman Fleming with a bipartisan vote.

President Obama has threatened to veto the bill if passed by the Senate!

We need to force him to make good on that outrageous promise or back down when the opportunity arises! That’s why we are aggressively calling for a bipartisan passage of the Religious Liberties Amendment in the United States Senate.

We have drafted a petition which will be delivered to leaders in the United States Senate boldly declaring, “I Support the Religious Liberties Amendment” and we need your name to be included.

I urge you to take a minute right now and support our military in this tangible way by defending their rights – even as they fight to defend ours.

Click here to add your name to this important petition:

http://www.libertyaction.org/385/petition.asp

In case you missed my prior message, below are a number of examples of the assaults on our troops’ religious liberties as reported by Fox News’ Todd Starnes...

• An Air Force officer was told to remove a Bible from his desk because it might give the impression he was endorsing a religion. He said there are other reports of Christian service members and chaplains being punished for their faith.
• The Air Force censored a video created by a chaplain because it included the word “God.” Air Force commanders feared the word might offend Muslims and atheists.
• A service member received a “severe and possibly career-ending reprimand” for expressing his faith’s religious position about homosexuality in a personal religious blog.
• An enlisted service member received a career-ending punishment for sending personal invitations to his promotion party which mentioned that he would be providing Chick-fil-A sandwiches due to his respect for the Defense of Marriage Act.
• A senior military official at Fort Campbell, KY, sent out a lengthy email officially instructing officers to condemn “the Religious Right in America” as a “domestic hate group” akin to the KKK and Neo-Nazis because of its opposition to homosexual behavior.
• A chaplain was relieved of his command at a military chapel because, consistent with Defense of Marriage Act’s (DOMA) definition of marriage, he would not allow same-sex weddings to take place in the chapel.
• An enlisted service member was threatened and denied promotion by a senior NCO for expressing – during a personal conversation – his religious belief in support of traditional marriage.

Starnes also said this to his Fox Radio News listeners:

“Last month Coast Guard Rear Admiral William Lee told a National Day of Prayer audience that religious liberty was being threatened by Pentagon lawyers and service members are being told to hide their faith in Christ.

Admiral Lee said, ‘Leaders like myself are feeling the constraints of rules and regulations and guidance issued by lawyers that put us in a tighter and tighter box regarding our constitutional right to express our religious faith.’”

++Our troops must not be forced to surrender their rights!

Senator Cruz said this about the Religious Liberties Amendment to the NDAA…

“Freedom of religious expression is vital to our military culture, and I am deeply concerned by recent reports that servicemen and women have been prevented from exercising this fundamental constitutional rights. No soldier should fear a court martial for expressing his or her faith or made to fear negative reprisals for reporting threats to their freedom to worship God.

The men and women of the military risk their lives every day to protect our Constitutional rights, and they should not be forced to surrender their religious liberty to do so.”

We must resist the Obama administration’s war on religious liberty! Please take a minute to add your name to this important petition on behalf of our troops:

http://www.libertyaction.org/385/petition.asp

God bless you for taking this important action with me!

Mathew Staver, Founder and Chairman

Liberty Counsel

P.S. If you are one of the many thousands of signers of this petition to pass the Religious Liberties Amendment, please consider sharing this link on your social network pages:

http://www.libertyaction.org/385/petition.asp