Yesterday, Marine General Peter Pace, the chairman of the US military Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said he backed the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" limits on gays serving in the military because he believed homosexual acts were immoral. He then issued
a statement expressing mild regret when his earlier remarks were condemned by gay activists and a number of U.S. politicians.
And in related news, the U.S. military
discharged 612 homosexuals in fiscal 2006.
But while General Pace and the other Joint Chiefs seem happy to engage in a witch-hunt against gays, the U.S. army seems to have no problem with actual witches.
For example, in the mid-1990s Fort Hood, Texas, approved the existence of a
wiccan coven on base property, even allowing them a"grassy mound" where they could wave their knives over a giant ball of salt and worship the blessed Earth.
And of course the infamous
Army Pamphlet 165-13, entitled "Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups: A Handbook For Chaplains", instructed army priests on fulfilling the spiritual needs of any Satanists that they might run across in the service (in case of death: call the Central Grotto).
Not that I have anything against
wiccans and devil-worshippers, especially the kind of devil worshipper under consideration in 165-13. The memo
originally dates from 1970 something, and the Church of Satan adherents an army chaplain was likely to encounter at that time were a strain of Secular Humanist rather than the "kill them and eat their flesh" variety of Satanist preferred by your typical modern teenager.
But if the U.S. army is willing to accommodate these guys, you would think that the whole "immorality" horse has long since fled the stable. On the other hand you would think that, if General Pace and the Joint Chiefs were really serious about cleaning up "immorality" in the forces, they might start with worshippers of the Dark One and work their way slowly towards gays and lesbians.
But apparently they have other priorities.
