There will not be same-sex civil union by Chaplains

     In 1993, congress passed Don't ask don't tell into law, giving the military the ability to discharge openly gay, lesbian or bi-sexual servicemen/women. For the past 18 years, the military has discharged more than 14,000 military members with this law.

     In the past year and half, there has been significant movement towards the repeal of the DADT law. In May 2010 the House of Representatives moved to get rid of DADT.  Then in December both the House and Senate passed stand alone bills to repeal.  This was not with out a large amount of criticism. According to Service Members Legal Defense Network, John McCain filibustered the entire National Defense Authorization Act NDAA, which included DADT repeal, on Sept. 21, 2010 and again on Dec. 9, 2010. The President signed the repeal on December 22nd, 2010.  Even though the law has been repealed, gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual servicemen and women still can not be openly gay in the military. There is a process the military is going thru right now to train all the people in the service on what the new rules will entail, then servicemen can "come out".
     In preparations for the official day when DADT is no more, the Navy and the Chief of Chaplain Core stated in a memo that chaplains would be allowed to conduct civil unions of same sex partners.  The memo stated that Navy legal looked into the matter and found military church's to be gender neutral establishments. This was a loophole that was suppose to allow same sex marriage in a federal facility. A loophole because the defense of marriage act defines marriage as between one man and one woman for federal purposes.
    Now the Navy has retracted their stance on same sex marriage in base churchs. A pentagon spokesperson stated  that the Republican outrage has "raised questions about policy and legal implications that require further review". Navy Rescinds guidelines
     I like the idea that the Navy is being proactive and looking for ways to make sure this new era in military history goes off with as few problems as possible (even if it was a publicity stunt). Unfortunately this attempt was too much too soon. The military needs to allow this process to work itself out for at least 6 months to a year before they start to tackle concepts and ideas that involve very particular details, such as the legalities of same sex marriage in federal buildings. We need to have all out members trained on the new policies, I am going to the training in 2 weeks and I know there is alot more Sailors who have not received this DADT repeal training. Like I said I love how the Navy is being proactive, but with something this large there also needs to be a level of letting things happen so a book of lessons learned can be created.