According to Sally Quinn, Defense officials had not only met with Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, but published an entire Air Force manual on religious protocol at his request. Now, either Mikey is lying or the Pentagon is backpedaling, because [the DoD] released another statement claiming to have made “reasonable accommodations” for religious practice and that “service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization).”

Of course, no one should be coerced, but it all hinges on how the DOD defines “unwanted” and “intrusive.” Judging by Weinstein, who views us as “fundamentalist Christian monsters of human degradation,” any mention of religious testimony would be intolerable. Meanwhile, where were those “religious accommodations” when the Air Force disinvited me from a prayer breakfast at Andrews Air Force Base? Or when officers stripped “God” from the Rapid Capabilities motto and purged Bibles from Air Force Inn checklists? Where was the Air Force’s encouragement to “confidently practice your own beliefs” when cadets were ordered to stop promoting charities for needy kids or when it suspended a 20-year-old class on “Just War Theory” because it included a few Bible verses?

Links added to Tony Perkins’ commentary.

ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow — who debated Michael Weinstein at USAFA in 2007 — said Weinstein is a “bigot” in the vein of the Westboro Baptist Church.

[T]he Air Force has been meeting with a bigot every bit as obscene, every bit as hateful as any of the individuals or groups discussed above.

That bigot is named Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, the founder of the inappropriately-named Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and his rhetoric against Christians if every bit as poisonous as the rhetoric of acknowledged hate groups…

The Air Force claims to protect service members’ delicate sensibilities, yet it does so by granting high-level access to a man who’s claim to fame lies in sometimes-obscene and always-hateful rants against Christians he doesn’t like…

The Mainstream Media continues to grant Mr. Weinstein access, publishing and airing sympathetic stories they would never air about the Westboro Baptist Church or Terry Jones – despite the fact that he’s a comparable bigot…

Normally, name-calling is frowned upon as its unhelpful to the situation.  Sekulow appears to be using the word for intentional dramatic affect; while it isn’t classy, it is “shrewd.”  It was also well-played, as it appears to have had a possibly desired effect.  Sekulow also wrote a lengthy letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel “introducing” Weinstein to Hagel in Weinstein’s own words — in a stunningly effective treatise.  Weinstein’s hyperbole and vitriol may finally be his undoing.

With reference to Charisma News and David French at the Christian Post.

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