{"id":25544,"date":"2013-09-23T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2013-09-23T03:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=25544"},"modified":"2016-11-26T00:44:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T03:44:45","slug":"white-house-answers-two-year-old-military-atheist-petition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/23\/white-house-answers-two-year-old-military-atheist-petition\/","title":{"rendered":"White House Answers Two Year Old Military Atheist Petition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 2011 Dustin Chalker, a former Army Sergeant and <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/07\/atheist-lawsuit-against-us-military-dismissed\/\">now-discarded plaintiff<\/a> of Michael Weinstein&#8217;s MRFF, <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/31\/mrff-petition-garners-signatures-for-white-house\/\">created a petition<\/a> on WhiteHouse.gov calling for an &#8220;End [to] the Military\u2019s Discrimination against Non-Religious Service Members.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/petitions.whitehouse.gov\/petition\/end-military%E2%80%99s-discrimination-against-non-religious-service-members\/jcfr6fWt\">The petition<\/a> was\u00a0two years old and was the second oldest unanswered petition on the site.\u00a0 The <a href=\"https:\/\/petitions.whitehouse.gov\/response\/protecting-military-servicemembers-religious-discrimination-and-preserving-freedom\">White House responded<\/a> last Friday:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Thank you for your petition regarding the importance of ensuring non-religious members of our armed forces are not discriminated against&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The Obama Administration strongly supports every American&#8217;s right to religious freedom. This support extends equally both to the many members of our armed forces who hold religious beliefs and to those members of the military who do not hold such beliefs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The response then addresses the Army&#8217;s Global Assessment Tool, which changed last year.\u00a0 In essence, the response to the petition says it is\u00a0moot.<\/p>\n<p>The White House response ignored <!--more-->Chalker&#8217;s contention that troops are &#8220;forced to participate in religious rituals.&#8221;\u00a0 Interestingly, the response was titled [emphasis added]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Protecting Military Servicemembers from Religious Discrimination and <strong>Preserving Freedom of Religious Expression<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The addendum\u00a0may\u00a0have been a nod to the many accusations that the military\u00a0has been <em>restricting<\/em> religious expression over the past few months, but the response itself never spoke to that topic, other than to say<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Military members who believe that they face discrimination due to their religious beliefs, or lack of such beliefs, should refer specific allegations to the Office of the Inspector General for their Service, or to the chain of command.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"fb-like\" data-share=\"true\" data-show-faces=\"true\" data-size=\"small\" data-action=\"like\" data-layout=\"standard\"><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: xx-small;\"><strong>ADVERTISEMENT<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><!-- blogpost --><ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-format=\"auto\" data-ad-slot=\"2728423835\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6450825356098669\"><\/ins><script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});<\/script><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2011 Dustin Chalker, a former Army Sergeant and now-discarded plaintiff of Michael Weinstein&#8217;s MRFF, created a petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling for an &#8220;End [to] the Military\u2019s Discrimination against Non-Religious Service Members.&#8221; The petition was\u00a0two years old and was the second oldest unanswered petition on the site.\u00a0 The White House responded last Friday: Thank you for your petition regarding the [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[88,20,3561,5284,96,125,19,85,2,5218,7,2405,11,17,10,171,550],"class_list":["post-25544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-atheism","tag-beer-recipe","tag-chaplain","tag-christian","tag-dustin-chalker","tag-government","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-petition","tag-prayer","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25544\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}