Twenty-one religious agencies providing chaplains to the U.S. military sent a joint letter to the military’s chiefs of chaplains Monday voicing strong concern over the continuing absence of religious liberty protections if openly practiced homosexual behavior is definitively imposed on the military. The letter asks the chiefs for their help in urging Congress and the Department of Defense to adopt such protections.

Our friends at the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) helped to draft and propose religious liberty protections for the Pentagon’s working group on the matter, but the law designed to dismantle the so-called “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy still lacks any such protections.

“Service members should not be denied the very constitutional liberties they volunteered to defend,” said ADF Legal Counsel Daniel Blomberg. “If this government truly cares about protecting religious liberties as it says it does, why has it been afraid to put it in writing? The alarm has been sounded time and time again in this process by those with the utmost credibility. The question is: will our military leaders and elected officials listen?”