The Subversion of the US Military: Why I Left the US Navy

When I resigned from the nuclear submarine service nearly seventeen years ago, I listed as one of my reasons irreconcilable ethical differences resulting from the Navy’s acceptance of homosexuality. Such impertinence on the part of a US Naval Academy (USNA) faculty member resulted in an informal visit to my office by a senior officer of the engineering division in which I taught, who wondered whether I really wanted a statement like that forwarded to the Pentagon. The unspoken sentiment was that such a bald statement might reflect poorly on the command climate. After all, my visitor reasoned, homosexual conduct was still illegal under the new “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) rules, to which I replied, “For now.” 

After a short pause in which he could think of no meaningful reply, he shrugged and walked away. Just a few months earlier General Colin Powell (then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), in a Q&A session following his address to the USNA brigade, had told a midshipman in response to his query regarding the morality of DADT, “If after those decisions are made you still find it completely unacceptable and it strikes to the heart of your moral beliefs, then I think you have to resign.”¹

The list of valid and cogent military reasons why homosexuality should be outlawed and those who practice it dishonorably discharged is lengthy. But all too often the only irrefutable argument against the DADT policy is relegated to a footnote, if it is even mentioned at all. As every homosexual activist knows, Scripture forbids all such activity, even mandating the death penalty for it. This prohibition applies equally to all people at all times regardless of their race, religion, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation. 

Rather than utilizing this most compelling argument, discussions focus on practical difficulties, preferences, or cultural attitudes. Granted, many of these issues even rise to the level of military necessity. But as valid as these concerns are, defeat is inevitable as long as the discussion is focused on them. Practical problems can be solved with enough money and effort. Those that can’t be solved can always be accommodated. There is no public sentiment that can’t be changed with sufficient sensitivity training and media control of the terms of the debate. Thus it should be no surprise that in a mere seventeen years, repeal of DADT in favor of open acceptance of homosexuality in the military service is well underway. The only sure and certain defense against such incremental decay is to argue from the unchangeable law of God condemning all such practices.

They have also been condemned throughout our legal history. In the Rules for the Regulation of the Navy of the United Colonies of North America, which the Continental Congress enacted on November 28, 1775, commanders of all ships and vessels belonging to the thirteen United Colonies were “strictly required to shew themselves a good example of honor and virtue to their men” and to “discountenance and suppress all dissolute, immoral, and disorderly practices.” The article goes on to direct officers to “correct those who are guilty of the same according to the law of the sea.” That could mean flogging or confinement in the brig on bread and water, or most any other punishment the captain desired, even including death. This requirement was reenacted with virtually identical language in 1956.² Even today consensual sodomy remains an offense under Article 125 of the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice), punishable by court-martial with up to five years of confinement.

DADT potentially requires officers not only to ignore the law of God, but it could also require them to violate their oath of office. To prevent a naval officer from screening incoming members about their relation to the law in this matter (i.e., Article 125 of the UCMJ) is equivalent to forbidding customs agents from asking someone their citizenship at the border prior to entry. Under such a rule it would be impossible for a customs agent to keep his oath of office. Likewise, under DADT, naval officers are prohibited from keeping their sworn oath by forcing them to be purposefully ignorant of violations of the very laws they have sworn to uphold and for which they will be asked to risk their lives. Under such circumstances there are only two honorable choices: resign or disobey the unlawful order of the commander in chief.

It should be noted that if the institution requiring an unlawful action is the family or the civil magistrate, resignation is often not an option. One cannot simply resign from a family, neither is it often feasible to leave a nation. In these situations the only remaining choice is to disobey unlawful orders. But resignation from a voluntary organization is a valid option.

I have deliberately avoided a discussion of all the practical reasons (and there are many) why tolerance of the practice of homosexuality is destructive of our military readiness and the safety of our country. This is not simply because they are fully discussed in many other excellent places,³ but also because such discussions, as important as they are in some contexts, ultimately obscure the main point. Our help comes from God. Our security as a nation is from God. As Israel learned at Ai, all the military preparedness, skills, drilling, and training vital to building and maintaining a secure national defense are meaningless to a nation that is living in flagrant and willful disobedience to the commands of God. The fact that people are blinded to the reality of the military degradation resulting from such disobedience is simply one means through which God is executing His judgment.

Another Form of Subversion 

To add insult to judgment, there is another channel subverting the integrity of our military personnel and ultimately its ability to defend the country from external enemies—the transfer of the US military to the auspices of the United Nations. This has been a gradual process that has marched silently but inexorably forward since the conclusion of World War II. 

The groundwork for transferring the power to make war to an alien authority was laid prior to World War II. These efforts were uncovered in 1953 by the House Committee to Investigate Tax Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations, through the labors of its research director, Norman Dodd, and a staff attorney, Kathryn Casey. In her investigation of the minutes of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace she discovered the trustees in 1908 discussed the question: “Is there any means known to man more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?” According to Dodd’s report of Miss Casey’s findings, the trustees answered their question in the negative and then in 1909 considered how the US could be involved in a war.⁴

While this material apparently never made it into the final committee report,⁵ Norman Dodd did say in the close of his report to the Reece Committee, “It seems incredible that the trustees of typically American fortune-created foundations should have permitted them to be used to finance ideas and practices incompatible with the fundamental concepts of our Constitution. Yet there seems evidence that this may have occurred.”⁶

History records how the sentiments of the American people were pushed toward war by the sinking of the Lusitania. What the American people weren’t told is that the Lusitania was carrying munitions,⁷ that it had been sent unescorted into an area known to be patrolled by the German U-boats, and that Germany had tried to take out full-page newspaper ads warning people that they might endanger themselves if they traveled on the ship known to be a British man-of-war.⁸ Although the war was advertised as the war to end all wars, a second world war was fought a few years after the senate refused to ratify the League of Nations. 

Was America manipulated into a war? The details of that story are too nuanced and complex to recount here, but a quote from Admiral Beatty in US News and World Report provides an interesting summary. He said, “Prior to December 7, it was evident even to me … that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was the desire of President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the conditions we imposed upon Japan—to get out of China, for example—were so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react toward the United States.”⁹

Learning from the failed attempt to ratify the League of Nations, efforts to create a global governing entity were begun immediately. In 1942 delegates from twenty-six nations including the US met and issued a Declaration of United Nations.¹⁰ Several other meetings followed in subsequent years with the founding conference held in San Francisco between April and June, 1945. 

While most of the church was fast asleep or busy preaching that the deity of the Christ, the virgin birth, and bodily resurrection were not essentials tenets of the Christian faith, the US Senate ratified the UN Charter by a vote of 89-2 in July 1945. According to Article 43 of that charter, the might of the American military was now at the beck and call of the United Nations.¹¹

The difference this time was that the media succeeded in drumming into every American soul the overwhelming need for peace and an organization dedicated to ensuring it. There was little, if any, principled opposition. Like a naive class of government-schooled kindergarten children, the Senate listened to the deceitful promises of the UN promoters that it was virtually impossible that American troops would ever be committed to a UN military action without congressional approval. But not one of the many subsequent troop mobilizations has ever been authorized by a congressional declaration of war.

Since the 1990s American troops are now sent into war under foreign commanders, ordered to wear alien uniforms,¹² and expected to enforce the military objectives of the UN, thus realizing the goal expressed in Article 43 of the UN Charter. 

The ultimate goal is clearly expressed by the Department of State Publication 7277, titled Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World, as “The disbanding of all national armed forces and the prohibition of their reestablishment in any form whatsoever other than those required to preserve internal order and for contributions to a United Nations Peace Force.”¹³ This plan was presented to the UN General Assembly by President Kennedy on September 25, 1961, and represents the policy of the United States to this day. Several people have confirmed that it has never been withdrawn.¹⁴ In that speech Kennedy committed the US to a program of “general and complete disarmament under effective international control.” He went on to claim that his program “would achieve under the eyes of an international disarmament organization, a steady reduction in force, both nuclear and conventional, until it has abolished all armies and all weapons except those needed for internal order and a new United Nations Peace Force. And it starts that process now, today, even as the talks begin.”¹⁵

I have no objection to fighting to defend the land from foreign invasion. But I have every objection to becoming a pawn of the United Nations in their quest for world dominance. I certainly have no interest in risking my life to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations. Thus seventeen years ago I submitted an unqualified resignation to avoid being ordered into battle under the auspices of an organization dedicated to the military neutralization of my native land or being ordered to ignore the practice of homosexuality, contrary to both the law I had sworn to uphold and the eternal unchanging law of God. 

But what about helping other people win their freedom? The answer is that we can rarely give freedom to other people through military conquest. Freedom, political or otherwise, has to be won by those who have the necessary self-government to maintain it. Ultimately, freedom only flows from the gospel of Jesus Christ. The jubilee proclamation of Leviticus 25:10, affixed to our Liberty Bell, will only be realized in a land that lives in obedience to the perfect law of God. Those whose mind is set on the flesh cannot please God, only those who are led by the Spirit. The best hope of bringing freedom to any land is through the Sword of the Spirit, not the sword of Caesar.

1. Eric Schmitt, “Military Cites Wide Range of Reasons for Its Gay Ban,” New York Times, January 27, 1993, A14.

2. 10 U.S.C. § 5947 Requirement of Exemplary Conduct.

3. Colonel Ronald D. Ray, USMCR, Military Necessity and Homosexuality (Louisville, KY: First Principles, 1993).

4. This assertion comes from an interview of Norman Dodd by G. Edward Griffin. “Transcript of Norman Dodd Interview,” 1982, http://supremelaw.org/authors/dodd/interview.htm. 

5. Hearings Before The Special Committee To Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations And Comparable Organizations, House Of Representatives, Eighty-Third Congress, Second Session On H. Res. 217. MAY 10, 11, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, JUNE 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 15, 16, 17, 18, and JULY 2 and 9, 1954.

6. THE REPORT of NORMAN DODD, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, covering his direction of the Staff of THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE of THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES to INVESTIGATE TAX EXEMPT FOUNDATIONS for the six months’ period November 1, 1953–April 30, 1954. May 10, 1954. Page 15.

7. “The Sinking of the Lusitania, 1915,” EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000). 

8. A copy of the only ad that made it into print in the Des Moines Register can be seen here: http://www.teachpeace.com/teachpeacemoment9.htm.

9. Vice Admiral Frank E. Beatty, “Another Version of What Started the War with Japan,” US News and World Report, May 28, 1954, 48, cited at http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/docs/Communism_at_Pearl_Harbor.html. Emphasis added.

10. John F. McManus, Changing Commands: The Betrayal of America’s Military (Appleton, Wisconsin: The John Birch Society, 1995), 92.

11. Article 43 of the UN Charter required “All Members of the United Nations … to make available to the Security Council, on its call…, armed forces, assistance, and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining international peace and security.” Emphasis added.

12. See Stipulation of Fact in United States v. Michael G. New, available at http://www.mikenew.com/facts.html.

13. Text available at http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/arms/freedom_war.html.

14. John F. McManus, “Arming the UN,” The New American, American Opinion Publishing, Incorporated, 1996. Republished at http://www.mikenew.com/arming.html.

15. Address Before the General Assembly of the United Nations, President John F. Kennedy, New York City, September 25, 1961, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03UnitedNations09251961.htm.