On January 17, Rep. Gregory Steube (R-FL) introduced HR 5657 — the “Religious Insignia on Dog Tags Act” — a bill intended to aid one specific for-profit Christian jewelry company by ordering the Secretary of Defense to change military regulations to allow this Christian jewelry company to produce and sell Bible verse dog tags with official trademarked military emblems on them under official license from the military. That is your tax dollars at work when religious zealots are among the members of our Congress!
I’ve written two previous posts about these controversial Bible verse dog tags (here and here), the military’s prohibition of which became a viral story among the Christian, right-wing, and even mainstream media back in December, and has now resurfaced, but I will recap the story here.
Last July, it was reported to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) that a Christian jewelry company, Shields of Strength, was selling replica dog tags with a Bible verse and the trademarked military branch emblems on them as officially licensed military merchandise. This was a clear violation of Department of Defense trademark and licensing regulations, particularly Department of Defense Instruction 5535.12, “DoD Branding and Trademark Licensing Program Implementation,” Section 2.d. of which states (emphasis added):
“In accordance with subpart 2635.702 of Title 5, Code of Federal Regulations (Reference (i)), DoD marks may not be licensed for use in a manner that creates a perception of DoD endorsement of any non-federal entity or its products and services. DoD marks may not be licensed for any purpose intended to promote ideological movements, sociopolitical change, religious beliefs (including non-belief), specific interpretations of morality, or legislative/statutory change. ...”
MRFF reported Shields of Strength’s violations of military trademark and licensing regulations to the various branches of the military, and the Department of the Navy, which the Marine Corps comes under, quickly notified Shields of Strength that it could not use the official USMC emblem on its Bible verse dog tags. At that time, Shields of Strength removed its Navy and Marines products that had the official emblems on them, but continued, and continues, to sell its Air Force and Army Bible verse dog tags with the official emblems of those branches despite receiving a letter from the Army telling them to cease doing so.
At some point, Shields of Strength retained the services of First Liberty Institute, a fundamentalist Christian legal organization, which sent a letter to the Army Trademark and Licensing office in December, and on January 14 sent a similar letter to the Marine Corps, both letters claiming that the military’s prohibition on licensing religious merchandise is unconstitutional.
Three days after First Liberty revived the dog tag story — and revived the outrage among the right-wing and Christian media with its deceptive press release about the issue — Rep. Steube introduced his “Religious Insignia on Dog Tags Act.”
To be clear: Nobody is stopping Shields of Strength from making dog tags with Bible verses on them, and nobody is stopping service members from wearing them — they just can’t have the official trademarked military emblems on them and be sold as officially licensed merchandise.
As MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell wrote in a post on the issue:
“A simple fix, of course, would have been to have Shields of Strength remove the official emblems of our military branches from their dog-tags, stop pretending they are endorsed by our government, and be honest about what they are doing. No one, including the MRFF, would object to them if that were the case.”
But First Liberty doesn’t want a simple fix. They want to cry Christian persecution from the rooftops and get an act of Congress out of it!