Mikey Weinstein: Court Martial the entire Military in Colorado Springs?
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein recently demanded the court-martial of US troops who attended an awards event hosted by the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, a coalition of chaplain endorsers. The reason Weinstein demanded their court-martial was his bigotry toward the Christian beliefs espoused by the chaplain groups represented. Weinstein essentially admitted as much when he hatefully caricatured and lambasted those Christian beliefs in his attack.
But since “Mikey Doesn’t Like Christians” isn’t actionable by the military, he tried to use an old technique that unintentionally won him a battle many years ago: He claimed the service members violated regulations by “endorsing” the chaplains by virtue of their presence at the event in uniform.
The Air Force rebuffed that claim, and there is no evidence any kind of action was taken against any of the service members present. That upset Weinstein so much he demanded to know who looked into his accusations — and when he thought he found out, he then attacked her. Mikey Weinstein thus accused US Army Chaplain (LtCol) Grace Hollis of illegal conduct — drawing a rare rebuke from the DoD IG, who told him Chaplain Hollis had nothing to do with it.
Here’s the newsflash, Mikey: Just because you think these troops are violating regulations doesn’t mean the US military — which is the one who interprets and enforces their own regulations — agrees.
As has been noted here many times, US troops appear in uniform at similarly situated events all the time. (Weinstein knows it, too, and he’s intentionally ignored some similar events only because he agrees with their ideology.) At this point, whether that fact violates the regulations isn’t even relevant: What is relevant is that the US military can’t selectively enforce Weinstein’s interpretation of the regs.
In only the most recent example, The Home Front Cares — a non-profit, non-Federal entity — recently held an event at which US Army Major Lisa Jaster — one of the first females to graduate the US Army Ranger School — was the guest speaker. Jaster didn’t appear in uniform, but a whole host of military leadership from across Colorado Springs did, including Fort Carson (Garrison and Division), the US Air Force Academy, AFSPC, and NORTHCOM:
These kinds of things happen all the time. If the US military only “visibly punished” or “court-martialed” or ‘put heads on pikes‘ of Christians who appeared at these kinds of events (as Weinstein has demanded), they’d be justifiably accused of discriminating against Christians, which is exactly what Mikey Weinstein wants to do. (And if they only responded because Mikey Weinstein complained, they’d be justifiably accused of granting him special deference.)
Mikey Weinstein doesn’t care about people attending an event in uniform. He just cares about Christian beliefs he doesn’t like, and when he sees uniformed troops publicly associated with Christianity, he wants to hurt them. Targeting them for wearing their uniform is the best method he can think of to have the military act as an enabler for his bigotry.
To date, the military has ignored Mikey Weinstein’s attacks against those horrible uniform-wearing Christians — though that is no guarantee. If the military ever did accede to his demands and punished a Christian in a situation it hasn’t punished others, it would have a long row to hoe to justify its discrimination — a fight they’d very likely lose in the long run. But even that would “hurt” the targeted Christian troop, which is Weinstein’s goal.
The simple fact is Mikey Weinstein’s claims about uniform wear and non-military events are untrue. Otherwise, the US military would be court-martialing a whole lot of people. Mikey Weinstein doesn’t care about that: He just wants them to court-martial the Christians.
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It amazes me how bigoted one man could be. Fred Phelps’s incorrect rhetoric is nowhere near as hateful as Weinstein’s.