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  • 2015-11-16 (xsd:date)
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  • Did President Obama Ban the Military from Using the Word 'Christmas'? (en)
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  • On 14 November 2015 the web site Truth and Action published an article headlined MILITARY CAN'T SAY CHRISTMAS PER OBAMA ORDER, claiming the President had issued a directive creating a blanket ban on U.S. military personnel's exchanging Yuletide greetings or making any other mention of the word Christmas: Precisely when the order was issued, its specific provisions, its scope, and other incredibly basic details were suspiciously absent from the article. Truth and Action cited Coach is Right as the source for their claims, linking to an item that was posted a week earlier and titled MILITARY MEMBERS NOT PERMITTED TO SAY 'CHRISTMAS,' MENTION RELIGION PER OBAMA ORDER: So, in the space of a week, a post declaring that two years ago, an unnamed soldier (who may or may not exist) claimed that a third party who was not President Obama told him soldiers 'can't say Christmas' mutated into the claim that President Obama issued an order prohibiting military personnel from saying the word Christmas. Coach is Right had in turn based their post on a 24 December 2013 article by Fox News War on Christmas correspondent Todd Starnes titled Army: Don’t Say Christmas. Starnes' piece (published on Christmas Eve 2013) focused on a purported conversation between soldiers planning a holiday football game and an equal opportunity officer from the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI). According to that 2013 article (which had nothing to do with President Obama), the supposed dispute didn't even pertain to a blanket ban on use of the word Christmas, but rather whether the Army could endorse a Christian-specific event: As Starnes' own article observed, the U.S. military itself had in place longstanding policies prohibiting its branches from endorsing any specific religion. Those policies were in place well before President Obama was elected, and in 2014 Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen commented (regarding a separate claim of religious persecution fronted by the same columnist): That policy expressly referenced the Constitution's provisions prohibiting the establishment of an official, government-endorsed religion as its basis: Starnes' 2013 article included comment from an Army spokeswoman who expressly confirmed that there was no ban on servicemembers' use of the word Christmas: (en)
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