Brenda Fulton - Nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower & Reserve Affairs

Brenda Fulton was a member of the first West Point class to admit women. She served as a platoon leader and company commander in Germany before receiving an honorable discharge at the rank of captain. In 2009, Fulton served as a founding board member of Knights Out and OutServe. In 2011, Obama appointed her to serve as the first openly gay person on the West Point Board of Visitors. By 2015, she was elected as chairperson of the Board of Visitors at West Point. Fulton has served as president of SPARTA, an organization advocating for transgender military service.

Views on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity:

• Fulton helped found and held high positions within military LGBT advocate groups.
• She spoke in a panel at the first LGBT pride event held at the Pentagon.
• She worked closely with the Pentagon to implement the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
• She supported President Clinton’s efforts to overturn the ban on gay service in the military as she worked with the Campaign for Military Service.

Views on Religious Freedom:

• Fulton called for our nation’s flagship religious liberty law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), to be repealed. RFRA prohibits the government from burdening a person’s religious exercise unless the government can show that it is advancing compelling government interest in the least restrictive means.
• She has repeatedly criticized Bible-believing Christians who do not share her views on marriage, sexuality, and abortion.
• She falsely believes that chaplains “give up some of their rights as ministers when they become military chaplains.”

Views on People with Ideological Differences:

• Fulton once called the entire Republican Party “racist” and called its members “anti-everyone nutjobs.”
• She described members of the Trump administration as “dishonest, sexist, and racist.”
• She responded to a statement on human sexuality signed by evangelical leaders by tweeting, “The vast majority of white evangelical leaders are utterly unmoored from the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
• She also tweeted that some pastors were not Christians but “members of an anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-women’s equality cult that claims to speak for actual followers of Jesus.”