‘Prohibited Extremist Activity’

The following is an exchange of emails initiated by “Employee,” who worked on a military base for a “Company” that has a contract with the U.S. military, after the Department of Defense released its Instruction, DoDI 1325.06, Handling Protest, Extremist, and Criminal Gang Activities Among Members of the Armed Forces, in December 2021. Except to remove names and other identifying information, the emails are unedited — even to the point of retaining typographical errors. The reader should understand that each reply in the email chain had the preceding missive below it, starting with an article (not reproduced here) announcing the release of the DoD Instruction. The government office at which “Employee” worked is organized into divisions, each of which is made up of branches.

Report of Possible Prohibited Extremist Activity

From: Employee
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2021
To: Government Security; Company Security
Cc: Government Supervisor; Company Supervisor

Folks,

Good afternoon. I hope you are well.

With the release of the DODi 1325.06 (link provided below), I feel a need to report what may be prohibited extremist activity that I am engaged in. Enclosure 3, paragraph 8.c.(1)(f) (on page 10) defines “Extremist Activities” to include “Advocating widespread unlawful discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity, or sexual orientation.” “Active participation,” which is prohibited by the direction of paragraph 8.c., is defined in 8.c.(2)(d),(e), and (f) to include:

•  Recruiting or training others to engage in extremist activities.
•  Fundraising for, or making personal contributions through donations of any kind (including but not limited to the solicitation, collection, or payment of fees or dues) to, a group or organization that engages in extremist activities, with the intent to support those activities.
•  Creating, organizing, or taking a leadership role in a group or organization that engages in or advocates for extremist activities, with knowledge of those activities.

If I may speak plainly, “unlawful discrimination based on…gender identity or sexual orientation” has recently been taken to include following traditional Christian teachings (and the present-day teachings of the Catholic Church) on matters of gender theory and marriage. Pope Francis, who is the head of the Catholic Church, has denounced gender theory in the strongest possible terms, calling it “demonic in origin.” There is a Catholic men’s group, the Knights of Columbus, which actively promotes the causes of restricting marriage to be between a man and a woman and of insisting that “male” means “of the type that begets young” and that “female” means “of the type that bears young.”

As a devout Catholic and an active member of the Knights of Columbus, I feel a need to self-report this “extremist activity.” Before you dismiss my concerns as absurd, please consider that if I had told you ten years ago that within a few years people would be taken to court for insisting that marriage is between a man and a woman you would have dismissed me as being absurd. We live in absurd times and what was unthinkable yesterday may be government policy tomorrow.

What I request from you is a definitive ruling one way or the other. If supporting the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus does not constitute prohibited “extremist activity,” I would like an official communication saying so. If this support does indeed constitute prohibited “extremist activity,” I would like to know that as well so that I can start to take appropriate steps. The present situation of ambiguity is not a good one to be in.

— Employee

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Re: Report of Possible Prohibited Extremist Activity
From: Division Chief
Sent: Tuesday, January 4, 2022
To: Employee
Cc: Government Security; Company Security; Government Supervisor; Company Supervisor; Branch Chief; Assistant Branch Chief; Colonel; Division Chief 2

Employee,

I’d like to provide a brief response to your request below. Since you are a contractor employee, I recommend you refer to your company’s policies for official communication on this matter. In general, government employees and contractors are allowed to uphold their personally-held values/beliefs as long as that does not equate to alleging or engaging in extremism while on the job or in government facilities. Please seek additional guidance through your employer.

Thanks.

— Division Chief

——————————————————————

Re: Report of Possible Prohibited Extremist Activity
From: Employee
Sent: Wednesday, January 5, 2022
To: Division Chief
Cc: Government Security; Company Security; Government Supervisor; Company Supervisor; Branch Chief; Assistant Branch Chief; Colonel; Division Chief 2

Division Chief,

Good morning and thank you for your reply. Thank you also for your assurance that “government employees and contractors are allowed to uphold their personally-held values/beliefs.” As a contractor, I recognize that I am directly bound by my company’s policies; I also recognize that those policies tend to reflect the policies of the government and I would like to address the matter before it gets to my company.
Your caveat to the reassurance, “as long as that does not equate to alleging or engaging in extremism while on the job or in government facilities” puts its finger on the heart of the problem. What constitutes “alleging or engaging in extremism”? Let me give a couple of examples.
When God walked the earth in person two thousand years ago, one of the things that He said was that He made us male and female, and that “for this reason a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Is it extremism to refuse to acknowledge the validity of a gay “marriage” while at a government facility?

Similarly, based on what I have read in the news, I cannot in good conscience use the word “she” to refer to Under-Secretary of Health and Human Services Rachel Levine. The pronoun “she” indicates a female antecedent, and “female” means “of the type that bears young,” and from the news reports that I have heard the Under-Secretary is in fact male, meaning “of the type that begets young.” Is it extremism to refer to the Under-Secretary as “he”?

I appreciate the difficulty of delineating exactly what constitutes allowed and what constitutes prohibited behavior and I certainly do not envy the writers of the DOD Instruction their task. As it is presently written, though, the Instruction could easily be used as a weapon to persecute observant Catholics and other Christians. In view of the history of our society in the past decade, this is a real concern.

— Employee

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The phone rang. The General Manager of Company wanted to speak to Employee. He was called to the General Manager’s office and given a dressing-down because the Division Chief had told him to seek additional guidance through Company, and he had not done so. The General Manager also explained that the policy on extremism was aimed at people who would impair unit morale and cohesion. There was also some talk of using the government email system for the exchange.

Employee never did get a written determination of whether he was engaged in extremist activity.

To the military’s credit, the next time the anti-extremist training came out, what was addressed was violent extremist activity. DoDI 1325.06, however, remains unchanged.

Ed. Note: As of this January, Rachel Levine (born Richard Levine) is no longer employed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

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