Iowa Congressman Steve King on Thursday
introduced an amendment to the 2013 defense funding bill which would
ban gay and lesbian couples from marrying on a military base and
prohibit military chaplains from officiating over such ceremonies.
According to CapitolColumn.com,
the amendment was approved by the House.
King, a vocal opponent of gay rights,
accused President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta
of “contravening” the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) by allowing
such unions to take place on military bases.
King
is quoted by POLITICO.com as saying that the secretary's
permission to chaplains is tantamount to “implied encouragement to
conduct same-sex marriages on our military bases conducted by our
chaplains presumably who are all under the payroll of the U.S.
government.”
DOMA bans federal agencies, including
the military, from recognizing the legal marriages of gay and lesbian
couples.
“The Defense of Marriage Act means
this: Marriage means only a legal union between one man and one woman
as husband and wife. And the word 'spouse' only refers to a member
of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife. Pretty simple
statute being contravened by the President of the United States as
exercised through the Secretary of Defense,” King said on the House
floor. “This amendment prohibits the use of military facilities or
the pay of military chaplains for being used to contravene the
Defense of Marriage Act.” (The video is embedded in the right
panel of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
The move comes just weeks after a
gay service member in the Air Force and his partner entered a civil
union at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Wrightstown, New
Jersey.