National
Will defense bill bar chaplains from marrying gay couples?
House, Senate legislation have provisions related to Pentagon guidance
House and Senate lawmakers are set to hammer out a final version of major annual defense policy legislation to send to President Obama — and the ability of military chaplains to officiate over same-sex weddings will be part of the discussion.
Late Thursday, the Senate approved by a 93-7 vote its version of the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization bill, which authorizes $662 billion in spending for military programs and troop compensation. The House passed its version of the bill in May, which authorizes $690 billion in defense funds.
The bills diverge in numerous ways and the conference committee will have to resolve the differences. But one issue in particular that is stirring up social conservatives and LGBT advocates is the involvement of military chaplains and facilities in same-sex weddings.
On Wednesday, the Senate approved by voice vote as part of its version of the bill an amendment by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) allowing military chaplains to opt out of performing same-sex marriage ceremonies.
“A military chaplain, who, as a matter of conscience or moral principle, does not wish to perform a marriage may not be required to do so,” the amendment states.
The amendment is apparently in response to guidance the Pentagon issued on Sept. 30 permitting chaplains to officiate over same-sex weddings if they so choose. On the same day, the Defense Department issued guidance saying military bases could be used for same-sex weddings, although the Wicker amendment makes no mention of the use of military facilities.
Wicker’s measure is likely an attempt to appease social conservatives, who have been riled up over the guidance since it was made public. Just Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee held a closed briefing with Pentagon general counsel Jeh Johnson and Navy counsel Paul Oostburg Sanz on the legal rationale that led to the Pentagon guidance.
But the Wicker amendment won’t produce any change because it reiterates the administration’s policy of giving chaplains the option of whether or not to take part in same-sex weddings.
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said the passage of the amendment into law wouldn’t change anything.
“This amendment does nothing new as it relates to the rights of chaplains,” Sarvis said. “Indeed, the new Senate language is a restatement of the protections and guarantees that have always been there.”
In a statement, Wicker said the amendment would be a way to “protect” chaplains from being involved in same-sex weddings.
“This amendment will allow the chaplains of our armed forces to maintain the freedom of conscience necessary to serve both their nation and their religion without conflict,” Wicker said. “Protections for military chaplains should be guaranteed in any policy changes being implemented.”
But the amendment stands in contrast to a measure in the bill passed by the House, which would have an impact on a chaplain’s ability to conduct weddings.
Language that was inserted by House Armed Services Committee Chair W. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) during committee markup outright prohibits military chaplains or civilian Pentagon employees from assisting with or officiating at a marriage ceremony. The same provision also prohibits the use of military bases for these purposes.
Conferees will have to decide whether to address the issue by agreeing on either the House or Senate language, or by including no language at all related to military chaplains and facilities in the final bill.
Michael Cole-Schwartz, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, said his organization wants conferees to omit any language related to military chaplains.
“We want to see the [defense authorization bill] signed into law without any language that would harm LGBT service members or restrict the religious liberties of chaplains,” Cole-Schwartz said. “We’ll be working with our allies on the conference committee toward that outcome.”
But social conservatives seem bent on pushing for the more restrictive provision in the House version of the legislation.
Steve Taylor, an Akin spokesperson, said his boss will push for his language in the report that will be produced by conferees.
“The two amendments are similar but not equivalent so it is fair to say the congressman still wants to see his amendment prevail,” Akin said.
House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) has previously said he’d rather see no defense authorization bill pass than one that didn’t include language prohibiting military chaplains from participating in same-sex weddings.
Asked whether the Senate language would be sufficient, McKeon spokesperson Claude Chafin said he’s “bound by a policy not to discuss conference items ahead of the conference.”
The timing isn’t yet known for when the conferees will complete their work on the defense authorization bill, but the issue related to same-sex weddings is just one issue among others that conferees will have to resolve. And it’s possible Congress could send a defense authorization bill to the president that he’ll ultimately veto.
The White House issued a veto threat over the Senate version of the bill over the inclusion of an amendment that would require military custody of terrorist suspects and allow indefinite detention of some without trial.
In the House bill, the Obama administration objects to provisions that would require military trials for suspected terrorists, limit the president’s authority to transfer terrorist suspects from the naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to U.S. installations, and make it difficult for the administration to move detainees to foreign countries.
And military chaplains conducting same-sex weddings isn’t the only LGBT-related issue. The Senate bill contains language that would repeal Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the long-standing military law classifying consensual sodomy for both gay and straight service members as a crime.
The Pentagon called for repeal of the sodomy ban in the report issued last year on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The Senate bill has the repeal language, but it’s not found in the House legislation, so conferees will have to hammer out the difference.
The House bill also contains language reaffirming that the Defense Department abides by DOMA in regulations and policies. However, the provision, inserted by Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), wouldn’t affect anything because the Pentagon as an arm of the federal government already has to comply with DOMA.
Additionally, the House bill has language that would expand the requirement for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal certification beyond the president, the defense secretary and the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to include input from the four military service chiefs. But the issue is moot because “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal certification has already happened and the military’s gay ban was lifted on Sept. 20.
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a bill that reopens the federal government.
Six Democrats — U.S. Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), Adam Gray (D-Calif.), Don Davis (D-N.C.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), and Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) — voted for the funding bill that passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Republicans — Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Greg Steube (R-Fla.) — opposed it.
The 43-day shutdown is over after eight Democratic senators gave in to Republicans’ push to roll back parts of the Affordable Care Act. According to CNBC, the average ACA recipient could see premiums more than double in 2026, and about one in 10 enrollees could lose a premium tax credit altogether.
These eight senators — U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Angus King (I-Maine), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) — sided with Republicans to pass legislation reopening the government for a set number of days. They emphasized that their primary goal was to reopen the government, with discussions about ACA tax credits to continue afterward.
None of the senators who supported the deal are up for reelection.
King said on Sunday night that the Senate deal represents “a victory” because it gives Democrats “an opportunity” to extend ACA tax credits, now that Senate Republican leaders have agreed to hold a vote on the issue in December. (The House has not made any similar commitment.)
The government’s reopening also brought a win for Democrats’ other priorities: Arizona Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva was sworn in after a record-breaking delay in swearing in, eventually becoming the 218th signer of a discharge petition to release the Epstein files.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
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