Let’s say a senior enlisted disagrees with an officer who agrees with Scotus. Say the officer thinks faggotry in the ranks is kinda cool, despite the clear authority of Congress to determine the rules and regs regarding homos in the Armed Forces.
The enlisted man has sworn both to defend the Constitution and obey the orders of officers. What should the senior enlisted man do?
>>Let’s say a senior enlisted disagrees with an officer who agrees with Scotus.<<
Lets say you go read the Constitution and stop being sloppy on it. If the Constitution does not specifically give the Federal Government authority it belongs to the States. If the Constitution protects specific rights the States can’t touch it.
This has been a conundrum for military personnel forever. The answer as I have always understood was: If it will not involve immediate harm register a protest with the order giver, but follow the order and then after following report immediately to superiors in the chain/ombuds/chaplain/ legal.
If it involves immediate harm, then traditionally enlisted were considered a “protected class” that must follow orders, per their oath - though since ‘nam the protection has not been upheld. Some would say WWII, but the camp guards in question committed atrocities considered beyond any need to have orders protect them and often went beyond the minimum needed to meet their orders becoming complicit.
Officers have been held to the standard of resisting illegal orders or facing the same punishment as those who gave the original - in other words they are accomplices if they pass it on.
The answer to the enlisted is still to follow the orders in immediate conflict or face CM as good order and discipline in combat must be maintained for the good of the whole and they may not be privy to information of those giving the order. It is the duty of the officer who has not been sworn to uphold unlawful orders to discern the nature.
This conundrum is the whole basis for the bogey movie “The Caine Mutiny” a classic in military leadership (along with a movies about army air who’s name I forget). Should the crew overthrow a captain who was putting his crew in harm’s way? It was a war situation, the weather was pounding the ship to ribbons - should they have pushed on as the other ships in the fleet - some of which went on to sink, or should they have mutinied and turned the ship to safety as they eventually did? Yes the capt was nuts - but all the officers got their comeuppance in the end.
Now where are those strawberries?...