I often am reminded, in the Peanuts comic strip, of Lucy pulling the football away at the last second when Charlie Brown goes for the kickoff. I guess it’s been a defining symbol of our times, that if something sounds too good to be true,… it probably is.

In this case, the intersection of two of the high profile LGBT topics of our times: same-sex marriage and the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

I am not familiar with CNS News, so I’ll keep scouting to see if other news outlets run this story. But tonight [1] CNSnews.com is running this headline: “Navy Authorizes Chaplains to Perform Same-Sex ‘Marriages’ in Naval Chapels.”

My suspicion started with the headline that puts “Marriages” in quotation marks. This is typically the sign that the publishers means “so-called” instead of authentic. A little [2] Wiki-search reveals that CNS News now means Cybercast News Service, but it was launched in 1998 as Conservative News Service, funded entirely by “private donations.” According to Wikipedia, CNS’ editor for 7 years was Scott Hogenson, who simultaneously worked for the Republican National Committee for a time.

This is not a gay marriage story lifted from the pages of [3] The Onion. According to a 2-page [4] April 13 memo from Rear Admiral M. L. Tidd ([5] bio here) linked CNS, this is a genuine article.

Citing “additional legal review” by Navy attorneys, the admiral said the Navy “has concluded that, generally speaking, base facility use is sexual orientation neutral.”"If the base is located in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, then the base facilities may be used to celebrate the marriage,” the admiral’s directive states.Tidd has been Chief of Navy Chaplains since last August, according to his official bio. But it surprised me I had not seen this story on mainstream news wires. I went digging and, well, it has, sort of. [6] Yahoo News is running the [7] Reuters version of the story, also with today’s date. And [8] MSNBC is running it tonight. The only real question, then, is where was Tidd’s memo since April 13?The Family Research Council is [9] lamenting this and crying foul, because it believes that DOMA still prohibits same-sex marriages on federal property. That, I am sure, will be open to interpretation. (see [10] pro-DOMA or [11] anti-DOMA sources.) The Obama administration announced more than two months ago its finding that DOMA is unconstitutional and that it will no longer defend DOMA in court. If this is the conclusion President Obama came too, and he is (ahem) Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, wouldn’t that settle this issue? But according to the MSNBC story, “Representative Todd Akin, chairman of a U.S. House subcomittee that oversees Navy and Marine Corps programs, said the new Navy guidance violates a federal law that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The Missouri Republican and 62 other members of Congress have sent a letter to the Secretary of the Navy calling for the service to obey the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.”Nothing I could find says that any Navy Chaplain has actually performed a same-sex wedding since April 13. So as of this minute, the news still falls in the category of “probably too good to be true.” At least it gives our partisan political system something else to chew on. I wouldn’t send out your invitations just yet.

—Pastor Dan Hooper