Given the Supreme Court decision, I see none of those as being issues. If you are "married" the entitlement will be the same regardless of the gender of the person to whom your married. Any other decision by DoD will be a non-starter. If anything, legally speaking, entitlements are a more clear, not less.
As for the "off topic discussions" I'll pass. Those post will digress quickly.
@chaplaincharlie,
As a general matter, I think you are right...over time, the entitlements would seem to have to "work out" for gay married folks as they do for heterosexual married folks; my point more had to do with actually getting the entitlements. I foresee, issues with regulatory implementation of the Supreme Court's decision and potential issues with whether there will be issues with date of application of the entitlements. I have not delved too far (hardly at all) into this. But, I am wondering what about effective date of the rights. Just keeping it in the military context, let's take SBP. Is a gay couple married a few years go, with one of the spouses a retired military member, due SBP entitlements now? Will they have to "pay in" the retroactive time they should have been entitled to SBP? What if the military retired spouse died before Obergefell decision? What if it was a gay couple, but, they were not allowed to marry? Would a civil union suffice to establish a retroactive entitlement to SBP and the payments that would have flowed? Or would an entitlement extend, on an equitable basis, to a surviving partner who can show that they lived, essentially as a "married couple" but did not marry because the state they lived in denied the right to marry? If there is going to be some retroactive extension of grant of entitlements, how far back can it go? Is it going to be limited to a statute of limitations period of time? (Basically, wash, rinse, repeat, for all of the issues I mentioned).
It is not so much the going forward (though, even with that, there are likely going to be lags in "re-writing" regulations where necessary to capture coverage for gay married couples). Will there be denials based on date of implementation of regs? Will new applications need to be made or will previous applications be given effect or will there be a case by case adjudication? (Add in potential issues in some cases where children will be previously seen as the child of only one of the gay couple because of state law rules, which are likely going to be also no longer effective, but, then you have issues of dates of entitlement for dependency benefits). How does someone get entitlements that should have been granted years, perhaps many years, before and will there be attempts to deny anything but current applications going forward.
I do hope that it is not going to be as potentially complicated as it might be. However, my instinct is that there will be issues with getting entitlements sorted. That is what I was getting at with the above posts.
I agree with your point, which I bolded. Some folks have and will have strong disagreements and some folks will feel equally strong about their opposing opinion. I don't want to tamp down people posting and, of course, I will watch to see the tone and tenor of posts. If discussions are kept civil and respectful, it will be fine. If it spins out of control, I will take corrective measures.
