 Well thanks Martin for inviting me back. As Martin mentioned I'm a jag and an attorney and I would be remiss especially since I'm being recorded for YouTube prosperity. If I didn't start my remarks with all the fine print that my remarks here today do not reflect the Department of the Air Force the United States Air Force Academy or any other official DOD position they are mine and mine alone and so with that we'll we'll get started. So the notions of ethics and values get discussed all the time in military service but when we talk about ideas of ethics and values each service puts their own rubber stamp on them for the Air Force it's integrity first and service before self excellence in all we do. The Navy and the Army have and the Marines have their own particular stamp on values and vision except when we talk about it we tend to talk about it in terms of right versus wrong. What we don't spend a lot of time on is what happens when it's a right versus a right. What happens when our professional obligations start to collide with our personal beliefs? What happens when our personal beliefs are grounded in our moral fiber or our religious beliefs? How do we resolve these issues and how do we counsel our people to resolve those issues? Which Trumps and why? Those are some of the questions that I hope that we can chat about today and through a better understanding of this idea of constitutional ethics. So as Dr. Cook mentioned I teach at the Air Force Academy and as an instructor I expect some active class involvement especially for you those of you who like to sit way in the back. Last year I was one of you except I was at Eisenhower School so I know about the people who like to sit way in the back and so the questions will get progressively harder as the time goes along so just as a fair warning. So give answers early because they will get a little harder. So the first question is what do you think about when you think about the Constitution? What images come to mind? Go ahead, shout them out. What do you think about? A piece of paper with words on it. See? See? There you go. They're easy at the beginning. All right? See the correct answer. I even knew you'd say that. See? Look at that. A piece of paper with the words on it. What else do you think about the Constitution? Old white dudes. That was the third clip. Okay? So books. Okay? That was the other one. What else? There's the old white dudes. Political compromise. Oh, he's sitting up front. Okay? It's one of the smart dudes. Okay? Who else? Who else do you think about? Say again? George Washington. Any present-day people you think about? Justices of the Supreme Court. I know I have a policy major somewhere in this room. And you had to read these. The Federalist Papers. Bonus points for you. All right. Okay? So the Constitution. Okay? Here's what, quite frankly, I hoped you would have talked about this. Because this document is why you are all here. This is why you agreed to put on a uniform. You raised your hand to support and defend it. You took an oath. Not to this country. You took an oath to this. So when's the last time you read it? This year? Good. Finally, my talks are paying off. Four times a charm. Okay? Okay? And thought about it. When's the last time you thought about the idea that perhaps we have a set of ethical systems and values that stems from this document? I believe that we have just set, just such a set of ethical ideas that stem from our oath. That you agreed to support and defend. So let's talk about and understand what is required of our oath and tease out this notion of constitutional ethics. To do so, we'll walk through an understanding of what constraints, what in the Constitution constraints are military, and reflect a little bit about why the Constitution constrains the military. Then we'll take a look at our obligations that the oath imposes on the military profession through a review of some Supreme Court cases, just to prep you a little bit for Justice Sotomayor. And finally, we'll talk about a model that you might use in your everyday use as a professional officer. And take a look at how some senior leaders have used and dealt with this idea and this tension between professional obligations and personal beliefs. And finally, we're going to take it back over to you to deal with some scenarios. So let's start with some softball questions concerning how the Constitution constrains the military. And with that, there are four ways and since you've read it, this ought to be easy. So there's four different ways that the Constitution constrains the military. So what are they? So budget and who does that? Congress. Okay, see, you guys are paying attention this year. Okay, so we've got Congress. Who else? Okay, so in control, how so? Okay, so we've got the President and the Commander-in-Chief. All right, how else? Okay, laws, she's passing them. You need to go back and read. Okay, who passes the laws? Congress. Okay, and then the President signs. And then who interprets them? I know that's actually what you were trying to say. Okay, and then we've got the Justices. All right, so I'll try to give you that one. All right, and then what's the fourth? This is the Tuffy. I had hoped that my Navy Brethren would be able to get this one. International law, how? Where's my international law attorney? Okay, so treaties and we call that the what? What clause is that? The advice and consent, the treaties, and we call the Supreme Law of the Land. Okay, so the clause concerning the international treaties and the Supreme Law of the Land. All right, great. Okay, so in our PME and our professional military education, we do spend a little time, I'm pleased to hear, that concerning what, the what in terms of constraining our, the military and the expectations that the Constitution has for us in an individual level. So that we have a superficial understanding of the branches of government and their role of controlling the power of the purse or serving as the Commander-in-Chief. But how much thought have we given about the professional understanding about the Constitution and our professional obligations? We need to have a deep dive into why officers feel bound by these obligations. As one scholar quipped, why should people with money and guns ever submit to people armed only with gables? Or to the point of this lecture, why does the United States military appropriately view itself as constrained by the Constitution? Why do we place the public's needs above our personal desires? Is it just because we have 200 years of history that we're following? Is it just because we're genuinely good people? So in a year of a hotly contested presidential election, and no, not this year, let's think back to the year 2000. Remember, hanging chads? Florida? Constitutional crisis? We have a set of electoral votes, electoral delegates that are up for debate, that are up for the decision about who is going to be the President of the United States. They are up for a decision between nine justices of the Supreme Court. I'll let you in on a little secret. The officer core in the United States military tends to vote for a public. We had had four, eight years of a democratic presidency. Why did the military allow U.S. Gore versus Bush to go to the Supreme Court? Could we have made a different decision? We chose, didn't we? We chose because we believe in this idea of a constitutional commitment to allow a system to work, to allow the Supreme Court to make a judicial choice. Other countries don't make that choice. We do, and it's important for us to peel back the onion a little bit about why we do. We do this out of a longstanding tradition, absolutely. 200 years worth. But why do we do this? Other countries don't. When we look at Egypt, when we look at other countries where military coups are a thing, are a normal idea, we have a constitutional commitment to our branches of government, to our way of thinking. And it runs more than just this notion or a commitment to civil military relations. It runs deeper than that. So what is it that leads us to believe and to continue to follow this? I believe it runs to this idea or this notion of constitutional ethics. Something that we uphold and hold very dear. Something I think that runs through this idea of our oath, our oath of office. And so I'd like us to explore a little bit about what it is in that oath of office that we take. What it is that compels us, that draws us to the idea that, of course, we thought that we didn't think that this was any big deal. Of course, we would have the Supreme Court make this decision. We didn't think twice about it. So let's think about and walk through this notion of constitutional commitment at a little bit more of an academic level. The first is through a model by a man named Daryl Levinson. He wrote an article called, Parchment and Politics, the Positive Puzzle of Constitutional Commitment. And he talked about six different mechanisms that he believes prevented the Constitution from becoming a parchment barrier. And these mechanisms ranged from reputation and reciprocity to coordination and system investment. In part of his argument, he opined that government actors are in a position of power and that they're motivated in part by this practical recognition that they may someday may not be in the majority. So in other words, they recognize that they're going to flip from one party to another. But in the military profession, we're non-political actors. So that idea doesn't work quite as well for us. We're not going to be from flip from one side of the coin to another. So instead, let's turn to a different philosopher or a different legal scholar by the name of Josh Shevets. He agrees that Levinson overlooked some of these ideas of constitutional commitment. And instead, he turned to this idea of virtue. He went all the way back to the beginning and he talked about a guy named Aristotle, who you may have thought about. And this idea of the virtuous citizenry that a virtuous citizen shares in the administration of justice and in the offices thereof. That a virtuous citizen requires the willingness to be ruled and in turn to be ruled. He goes on to explain how the notion of a public virtue became a central tenet to the principles of our founding fathers. So folks like Madison, who talked about the importance of being a citizen and being willing to sacrifice one's private interests for the good of the community. Madison is talking about you and I. This idea of being willing, if you are going to be in the private, be a public office, be a holder of public office to sacrifice your private interests for the good of the public. What Madison and Shevets are talking about is the idea of constitutional ethic. But the military has not always demonstrated constitutional ethic. And while it is something that we should strive towards, the understanding and commitment to these virtues must be nourished because we have seen examples from General McChrystal's relief from command to the recent prosecution of Captain Dusk for bribery and fraud, where military leaders have allowed their personal desires to trump service needs, or in the case of General McArthur, forgotten the criticality of civilian control of the military. And I would submit that we as a profession are at risk of the Constitution becoming a parchment barrier, if we leave thinking about the Constitution just to the attorneys, or if we assume fidelity to the Constitution and obedience to the Constitution, to these ethical principles without commitment to the study and the understanding of its concepts, and if we only view the Constitution as a set of rules to follow, as opposed to values in which to live and aspire. So, that's a lot of legal jargon to talk about constitutional ethics. Let's start to understand some of the practicalities about what it means for you and I. What does it mean to support and defend the Constitution of the United States? What does it mean to bear true faith and allegiance to the same? Well, if I were to ask my students at the Air Force Academy what it means, they believe that they gave up every constitutional right when they crossed through the North Gate. And that simply is not the case. You don't give up all of your constitutional rights when you don this uniform and when you take the oath, but you do give up some of them. And so, we're going to walk through a few Supreme Court cases and to talk about what some of those rights and responsibilities that you have given up when you became an Air Force or Navy or Marine officer and which ones remain. This is the point at the lecture. I know you've gotten some notes about what you are not allowed to ask Justice Sotomayor this afternoon. However, perhaps a couple of these you can because these are really old cases. So, if you're wondering what you could ask her, I'll give you some cases and maybe you can ask her about the old stuff as opposed to the new stuff. All right. So, the first case is a case called Orloff versus Willoughby. First of all, do I have any doctors who are in the audience, any medical folks? Because for some reason, most, I'm sorry, just to let you know, most of the Supreme Court cases dealing with military and ethics have to do with doctors. So, my apologies to you up front sir. So, Orloff versus Willoughby. In this case, the Army actually paid for a great deal of education for an Army officer. They paid for his entire schooling to become a medical doc. Prior to this doctor's commissioning, however, the Army required him to sign a form, sign a form saying that he was not communist. This is the 1950s. The doctor refused. The Army then denied him a commission and instead forced him to pay off his commission as a med tech, the most well-paid med tech in the history of the Army. He then sued and said that he was entitled to his commission. He was, after all, a highly paid and highly educated doctor. And the Army said, and the Supreme Court ended up saying, no, you're not. You're not entitled to a commission. And the Supreme Court essentially rejected his claim saying, the very essence of military service is the subordination of individual desires and the interests of the individual to the needs of the service. In other words, the oath of office, service, trumps individual desires. The second case, two, involved an Army doc. This was the case of Parker versus Levy. This is about a decade later in the height of the Vietnam War, and Captain Levy was a doctor who refused to treat special operators. He refused to treat special operators because in his words, they were baby killers. He also told any black soldiers who came through his particular care that they should refuse to go to Vietnam because in his words, the Army was racist. He was court-martialed. And he then petitioned and went up to the Supreme Court saying that he was just proclaiming his free speech rights. The Supreme Court rejected that notion and said, you don't have free speech rights to tell soft operators that they are baby killers or to tell black soldiers that they can't go to or shouldn't go to Vietnam. And the Supreme Court used language like this, the rights of men and the armed forces must pre-force be conditioned to meet certain overriding demands of discipline and duty. That's a fancy way for the Supreme Court to basically say that discipline and duty trumps one's individual rights. The final Supreme Court case that we'll chat about today is Greer versus Spock. And this case deals more with the idea of civil military relations and emphasizes the importance of the military being subservient to political civilian leadership. It involves an installation commander who refused to allow a political organization to distribute leaflets on base. The group sued and argued that the military cannot restrict their free speech rights as civilians. The court upheld the military's actions by stating the military policies keep the military insulated from both reality and the appearance of acting as a handmaiden for partisan political causes. In other words, the military cannot be or appear to be partisan. We have to be a political. So in some, if the Supreme Court were to wrap up what our expectations about constitutional ethics are, it would be these. That service needs are going to trump individual rights and interests. And that duty and discipline also trumps those rights. And finally, we cannot be or appear to be partisan. So that's a lot of great rules. But how does it work in reality? How does it work when we have to make those tough decisions ourselves? Because what it certainly does not mean and what the oath of office does not require is that military professionals eliminate all personal thoughts or moral beliefs and that those somehow cease to exist or that we cease to have a personal life. The key question for us is to identify those situations or contexts in which professional obligations take precedence and which personal beliefs can reign supreme. So to age into understanding and developing those and resolving those dilemmas, let's take a look at a framework or a model. What I would suggest is that there's a three-step process, the first of which you see here. And that is to first identify the setting or situation that you're in. Are you in one that is personal, purely personal, purely professional, or a mixture of both? This is not just as easy as identifying are you wearing a uniform or are you in a workplace? For example, normally being present in your place of worship would be the height of a personal setting. But if after service and you're at coffee hour, a retired military officer approaches you and starts to engage you in conversation about your views on the president's ISIS strategy or about what you think on the latest change in the military retirement scheme, have you switched from a personal setting to a professional one? Factors for you to consider might include what's your status? What's the status of the listener or your audience? What is the context or characteristics of your speech or your actions? Such factors help you to demonstrate or to understand whether or not you're in a personal situation even if you're in uniform and even if you're at a workplace. For example, if a peer came to you and disclosed she's going through a divorce and needed emotional support, a fellow military colleague could properly identify this as a personal situation and could bring your personal beliefs, even your religious tenets, into that discussion. A second step in the model would require you to identify the purpose of your own actions. This requires an ability to be honest with yourself and I will say is probably the most difficult part of the model because you have to look yourself in the mirror and answer some tough questions, pause for some reflection. You have to be able to ask yourself and answer tough questions like what is motivating my actions? What loyalty is driving me? Am I making this choice or statement because of a personal belief or a professional obligation or both? In the case of Captain Levy, it was his personal views who was driving his statements about the Vietnam War, not his professional commitments, not his oath of office. Ask yourself what was driving General McCrystals and his staff's comment to Rolling Stones? Was it personal hubris or was it his commitment to professional military ethic as described by Samuel Huntington? The final step in the model would be to identify the effects of your actions. To understand what others looking at you and your involvement in this situation would think and determine whether or not they would believe that you're acting out of your personal beliefs or out of your constitutional obligations. So similar to the Greer versus Spock, that was that last Supreme Court decision we looked at, what would a reasonable observer look like and perceive in this situation? Would an outside observer believe you're endorsing your personal beliefs or your constitutional obligations? So that's the model that I propose for you to think about today. So how would this work in practice? And for that I'd like to turn to an experience that I had concerning three senior leaders and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. It started the end of January 2010 and if you recall the President of the United States in the State of the Union address had indicated that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was going to be repealed during that calendar year. Secretary Gates followed that announcement by saying that it was not a question of weather, but it was a question of how. And on the 2nd of February 2010, Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before Congress with this quote. He indicated, Mr. Chairman, speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. For me personally, it comes down to integrity, theirs as individuals and ours as an institution. On the 2nd of February 2010, I was actually here. Martin, I don't know if you remember, but we had an ethics symposium that day and I got a call in between one of the lectures. I was here talking about religion and I got a call from a three-star and it went something like this. Lanell, I have a job for you and I said, okay, sir, yes, of course, sir, whatever. Yeah, we'd like, yes, sir. That's usually how those three-star conversations go, right? And my job was, would you like to be the scribe on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell working group? Of course I would. I have no idea what that is. My question was not nearly as hard as the question that went to this man. This is General Carter Ham. His question was, would you like to run the Don't Ask, Don't Tell working group to be the co-chair of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell working group? General Carter Ham is a Catholic raised, Jesuit educated man. He's a deeply religious man. And his answer to that went, I must admit to you that when Secretary Gates appointed me as co-chair of this review, I was not all that thrilled. He went on to say, and I'm going to get this quote right because this is a great quote. General Ham was also known as the most plain spoken four star in the history of the Army. He went on to say, quote, I anticipated the task would be complex, tough and sometimes uncomfortable. And I must now acknowledge that I underestimated these factors. Despite these personal beliefs of the subject, General Ham, by the way, General Ham is a distinguished or is a great graduate of this Naval War College. I don't remember the year. General Ham recognized his professional obligations of the co-chair of the working group took priority over his personal beliefs. And on the first meeting of the working group, he stated in no uncertain terms, rule number one, that service needs trumped your individual beliefs. And his rule number one was to check your personal feelings at the door. He sat us all around a conference table in the secretary's conference room. And he said that if you cannot do this, leave. He made it really, really clear. In doing so, he demonstrated that duty and discipline trump individual rights. And he demonstrated the commitment of placing professional obligations above personal beliefs. So the first week on the job, General Ham pulled me in as legal advisor. He said, Lanell, I got a job for you. I have an important legal question. I'm all excited. I'm a major. And I come in, he goes, I signed a document when I became a four star and it said something about my personal beliefs to Congress. Go find that document. All right. So for all of you butting three and four stars out there, okay? I know you're out there and you know you're out there, all right? You will sign a document before Congress. And it says something like this, when called before a duly constituted committee of Congress, if asked your personal opinion, you will give it signed General Ham, signed Admiral So-and-so. You'll all have to sign it. It's a prerequisite to getting appointed. It's a prerequisite to Senate confirmation. So I found the document. Every time we made a trip across over to the hill, he'd ask, is this one of those, Lanell? No, sir. This isn't one of those committees. This is just a meeting with a staffer. All right. Is this one of those? Nope. This is just one of those office calls. Over and over and over. I was a clueless 04. I had no idea why this was this important. In December, the report came out November 30th. And this was what General Ham's and Mr. Johnson, now Secretary Johnson's final assessment was. Based on all we saw and heard, our assessment is that implementation and repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell will have a low impact. It's a low risk. We can do it. All those reports are delivered. The next morning, on December 1st, we are in a closed door hearing before the House Armed Services Committee. And in the House Armed Services Committee, you start in ranking order, and they start at the top, and they work their way down to a very low-ranking Democratic senator who asks General Ham, sir, what's your personal opinion about having gays and lesbians in the military? Remember, General Ham just signed this report out. By the way, on the drive over, I told General Ham, hey, sir, this is one of those committees. If you're asked, you now have to give it. I'd finally figured it out. And he gave his personal opinion, and it didn't look like this. It looked like a Jesuit, and sounded like a Jesuit-educated religious belief about serving alongside gays and lesbians. It sounded like his personal belief because it was his personal belief. We then drove back across. By the way, closed hearings in front of Congress. There are no media. No one is allowed to report what was actually said in report out. So we drive back across the Potomac to this room. That's the Pentagon press room. That drive takes five, six minutes with traffic, depending on how crazy your driver is from the Pentagon driving pool. We then get into the press room, and a reporter raises his hand and says, sir, I heard you were just before the House Armed Services Committee, and you were asked your personal opinion. Because, of course, everything's quiet, right? And in true four-star ability, he says, when called to testify before a duly constituted committee of Congress, I gave my personal opinion. Done. And that's all he said. And then Mr. Johnson, who's sitting to his right, says, I have worked with General Hamm for the last 10 months on this committee. And that was the first time I had ever heard his personal belief. The next day, he was at the Senate Armed Services Committee. Actually, it was a couple of days later. And he was asked a slightly different question by Senator McCain. Senator McCain asked, what is your personal belief about whether or not this will work? That was a different question. And this was General Hamm's personal belief about whether or not it could work. And he said, yes, I believe it can work even at a time of war. Different questions, different answers. There was a third senior leader that I'd like you to think through on this scenario. And this is at the time, Lieutenant Jerome Bixen, I only have a picture of him as a two-star. He was over in the Pacific. And he wrote a commentary on Stars and Stripes. And he says, wondering what you can do to stop this ill-advised repeal of a policy? For those of us in favor of retaining the current policy, you need to speak up now. Otherwise, there's no chance. He was publicly rebuked by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. So what's different? Three senior leaders, three services. This is where you all get to talk. It's different. All right, so we have the technicality of being in front of a congressional committee and not being asked to provide his personal opinion. So the takeaway is that I can give my personal opinion if I'm before a committee, but otherwise, if I'm a general, I better not have a personal opinion. Okay, so this idea that I need to recognize the personal ethic that I have in a situation where, I'm sorry, you said it really articulately. Could you say it one more time? Okay, so this idea, the public eye, and it becoming your professional ethic and that one conflates with the other. And you all apparently have microphones that you can use, too. So I don't have to try to put words in your mouth. Okay, so the purpose of General Nixon's action was to influence policy when it wasn't his role or place to do so. What about Admiral Mullen? So is his place to debate policy and to influence policy? One could argue. Okay, sometimes it's not that esoteric and this is maybe a little hard to read. Let's take it down a few notches. So here's the scenario. You have two women who are working in the same legal office. I heard we have some people from the Justice School who are here, maybe so. All right. Oh, great. You guys get to answer this one. All right. We have Lynn, a retired E8. Everybody remember government shutdown? Who had to send workers home? Okay, you all remember having to classify people as essential government employees or not? Okay. It wasn't fun. All right. Well, here's the scenario. We have two workers. One's a retired. She's a court reporter and she clearly falls within the exception as a essential governmental employee and she doesn't need the money. The other one really does need the money. She lives paycheck to paycheck. And boy, maybe if I turned upside down and read the language backwards on that category, maybe I could. By the way, that leader, she's known that GS6, what's her name? Lynn. Judith. She's known Judith for a really long time. You know, the SGA, she's a lawyer. I bet that SGA could read that language a thousand different ways. And at the end of the day, at the end of the day, what's Congress going to do? What do we all know Congress is going to do? What's Congress going to do? They're going to give the money back later, right? Right. So what's the harm? What's the harm in just making it easy from the beginning? Let's just make it easy from the beginning. Let's just make Judith an accepted employee. Over to you. Okay. So what's wrong with studying the precedent? So I'm setting a bad precedent. By Judith, anytime I feel that tingly in the side. Because why? What's that tingly coming from? Spidey sense. Okay. So ultimately, it's the commander's call. All right, commander, what are you going to do? You did walk into that one. I want more facts. That's a nice punt. It gets harder when you have to face the person. But the principles remain the same. Okay. How about this one? Your unit routinely takes up a collection for a wedding gifts of all young Marines getting married. And today you learn you have a gay Marine in your unit who plans to marry your lesbian partner. Should you take up a collection? The precedent's already been set. And can you force people to contribute? And you can't force them to contribute anyway. Okay. You just attended a base chapel service. And the chaplain preached that homosexuality is an abomination. The chaplain's your unit, chaplain. And there's an openly gay sailor in your unit. Can you prohibit the chaplain from giving a similar sermon in the future? Can I ask for a different chaplain? What could I do instead? Talk to the chaplain. What did I talk to him about? An accident occurs on deck. You're out at sea. And the young sailor dies. Can you limit what the chaplain says? What if the chaplain says he can't? Then he doesn't speak. Real life events. Unfortunately, the commander in this case didn't have the talk beforehand. And it didn't turn out so well. So this idea and this tension between our private rights, our private beliefs, and our public responsibilities can sometimes be easy to think about. We can quote a statute. Nice job, chaplain, by the way. But when we are faced with real life scenarios, sometimes they get a little tougher. I'm going to save some of the more controversial ones for when we are off the YouTube channel. But I would hope, and we're leaving lots and lots of time for us to hopefully have some very robust conversation about these and lots more issues. To T sum up, what are we going to think about when we don't believe, if you have a personal belief, that it ought to be a human on a trigger? And we completely take humans off the loop. Do you have a moral and ethical problem if we completely remove man out of warfare? What should be your role in talking about that to the through and with the chain of command when we think about our personal beliefs versus our professional obligations and this idea of autonomous weaponry? It comes into play in political campaigns, and this is mainly while I want to be off record when we start to have those conversations. It can be as simple and as innocuous as a quote that I just had driving my son home from soccer practice the other day. Mom, who you voting for? Shouldn't I be able to have that conversation with my son? Does it matter that his friend is in the car? Does it matter that his friend is in the car whose father is a major who works not within my unit but in a nearby unit? How does that change the conversation about when and where I talk about politics? When am I ever in a personal capacity? I should be able to be in one, but how and why? I think this age of this presidential campaign puts us in a unique situation to start seeing and calling out and having some good discussions with our folks about personal beliefs versus professional obligations. I have already started to hear things like I'm going on vacation up to the Pacific Northwest and while I'm there I'm going to be looking at land in Canada just in case the presidential campaign goes in this direction or that. I don't think that's appropriate for an officer to say regardless of which direction or that they may have inserted on the presidential candidate of their choosing. We need to start having those discussions with each other and holding each other accountable about what is and is not appropriate as a military profession. Having those conversations about what constitutional ethics require out of us. We can have those conversations about the transgendered service members not that are coming to your base but that are already there. They are serving with us. This is Logan. He is at Peterson Air Force Base. He just returned from deployment and he is serving as an openly transgendered airman. He is getting married to an openly transgendered woman in the Army. Our policies are starting to catch up with society and we as commanders and as attorneys are going to have to work with those policies. Same with women in the draft and women in combat. Our personal beliefs are colliding or may collide or may dovetail very nicely with our professional obligations. But how and what we think about them and how we behave with ourselves and with our subordinates is very, very important. And so the takeaways before we launch into Q&A. I'd like to leave you with a few concluding thoughts. Mainly that our oath of office demands that we be willing and able to place our personal beliefs as subservient to our professional obligations. That through reflection on constitutional ethics we can prepare ourselves to recognize such dilemmas and determine which trumps in a given situation. We cannot begin thinking about such challenges upon selection for senior leadership levels. Instead we must challenge ourselves and our subordinates to read and think about the Constitution, our oath of office, and the role of constitutional ethics in our daily endeavors. We must talk about our profession of arms and its different rights and obligations openly with our people and our peers. And finally every time we raise our hand and repeat our oath of office either as an officiating officer or as the promoter we should ensure it is an eye-popping event where we recommit ourselves to our profession and its obligations. Thank you. Let me kick it off with just a couple of specific cases that I know that you've thought about before. You talked on a previous visit about a case where you had I think it was a very strongly evangelical male missile launch officer who said that both on religious grounds and because of concerns of his wife he refused to serve in launch capsules with female launch officers. Can you talk a little about how you understand his position and whether it should be granted as a kind of exception to policy because of his strong personal convictions? Sure. So this is an old example as over a decade old at this point maybe 15 years. But when the Air Force opened up our missile silos to women to having co-ed missile silo teams, missile watch teams, there was one particular captain who, based on religious beliefs, asked to not be assigned with a woman on shifts. And his first commander said okay and he never was. And that continued until the second commander rolled in and said what? What do you mean you're not having to pull a schedule with a woman? And he then ordered that the schedule progress as the schedule progressed and he refused and then went up through UCMJ channels and got an article 15 and progressed and eventually was discharged out of the Air Force. But the result of the first commander being okay with and allowing for an individual to set the rules based on his or her religious beliefs such that the individual could segregate essentially the unit, set a tone and a standard amongst the unit that was not acceptable. And we've seen this also in the Air Force where there was a mixed flying crew and there was a co-pilot who didn't want to take orders along similar grounds from the pilot because she was a woman and also it almost caused a flying mishap and when they investigated it was very clear that the squadron commander knew that this individual had problems based on religious grounds taking orders from a woman. And those types of issues it almost called operational problems not just workplace environment issues but it almost caused an operational mishap. So there is a distinction I believe and I'm sure our good chaplain could walk us through the how do you and when do you accommodate and we should. I think we've recently heard in the news the accommodations that have been given in terms of of Sikhs being able to wear turbans in the Army and been given a blanket policy exception to be able to wear shorn beards etc. There are differences though that I think we as commanders need to understand between when are those abilities to make religious accommodations are should be promoted and embraced. Vice when do they jeopardize our mission set and jeopardize driving separation amongst the team and amongst the units and those are tough decisions that I think that commanders are going to have and are going to be continued to face and be challenged with. One more for me and then we'll open it up but as you know I went back to the Air Force Academy for the third time in 2003 right on the heels of a fairly large front page of the New York Times expose about the prevalence of religious proselytizing at the Academy and it was fairly routine then for for many officers to begin the first day of class as they were introducing themselves to their class by saying among other things you know my family and I go to this church if anybody would like to go with us here's my phone number we'll be happy to take you and the follow-up to that there were a number of sensing sessions about the religious climate at the Academy and I remember going to one meeting where a very articulate officer said look one of the reasons we have a primarily military faculty at the Academy is we're supposed to provide role models for these cadets about how to be effective officers for me personally a great deal of my understanding of officership is completely bound up with this religious identity therefore I couldn't be fulfilling my role appropriately as a role model and mentor to them if I were not explicit about this dimension of my life because it is such a defining moment so it's not only appropriate it's essential that I that I witness in this way because that's how I fulfill my role modeling function at the Academy so we see this a lot the the question of it's who I am can I mention it can I invite where is the line and as a jag I get asked that question a lot where's the line we have free exercise we have the establishment clause and I want to know where the line is and why am I asked where the line is I want to go right up I don't want to cross it I want to get right up where right up to the edge and the cautionary tale that I give is that if we're asking where the line is we're asking the wrong question and this is why I would like to get away from the law I know all the lawyers are about ready to gasp okay because and get to this more of this notion of constitutional ethics because the law will tell you and bring you right up to the line this is where the line is if we're asking where the line is we're asking the wrong question instead we ought to be asking that question of what's the right thing to do if I'm leading this organization what's the right thing to do what do the constitutional ethics require of me when I'm introducing this class when I'm giving my change of command speech what is the most inclusive way that I can give this speech where everyone will feel a part of my team where every person in this unit will know that if they have a problem that they can come and I think if we turn that question that we then start looking at it in a different way and we stop asking where's the line and how close can I get to that line and start asking the question of what's the right thing to do how's that for a non-answer I remember the then superintendent Rosa said at one point some people have been so far over the line here for for so long that they're offended when you tell them where it is I mentioned this by the way Lanell and a colleague Dave Fitski wrote the then definitive article on every case ever litigated about free exercise of religion in the military published in the Air Force Law Review about 10 years ago it's a little dated now because other things have changed including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act we talked about that dinner a little but Lanell is a true expert on this question so that's why I was I was poking her a little bit on it okay over to you please use your mics and by the way I should have mentioned if you have electronics would you please make sure they're on silent mode and please let's give her a chance to answer some hard questions