{"id":30667,"date":"2015-01-06T00:45:52","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T03:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=30667"},"modified":"2016-11-25T00:46:19","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T03:46:19","slug":"mikey-weinsteins-words-actions-and-religious-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/06\/mikey-weinsteins-words-actions-and-religious-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Mikey Weinstein&#8217;s Words, Actions, and Religious Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>We think \u2014 and the Constitution and Supreme Court caselaw supports us \u2014 that the right of the men and women in our armed forces to their personal choice, the right to their personal belief, the right to their religious or non-religious preference, cannot be abrogated by the government, by their superior officers, or by the Pentagon.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That sounds like a statement most could agree with &#8212; and those words come from MRFF board member Mike Farrell in their annual end-of-year <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org\/appeal_foundation_voices.html\">fundraising letter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Regrettably, the actions of Farrell&#8217;s boss, Michael &#8220;Mikey&#8221; Weinstein, contradict his noble words.\u00a0 Contrary to Farrell&#8217;s gilded semantics, Weinstein has attacked the personal faiths of Christian chaplains and troops &#8212; even going so far as to attack Christian <em>chapel<\/em> services &#8212; in what can only be described as an attempt to <em>deny<\/em> &#8220;the men and women in our armed forces&#8221; their religious liberties through the force of government.<\/p>\n<p>More tellingly, Weinstein &#8212; a <!--more-->self-proclaimed &#8220;religious freedom&#8221; advocate &#8212; is on the record <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2014\/03\/25\/mikey-weinstein-calls-for-religious-test-for-military-service\/\">calling for a &#8220;religious test&#8221;<\/a> denying military service to people with Christian beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>Other members of his board were less subtle in their description\u00a0of the MRFF&#8217;s attacks on Christianity:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The forces of evangelical, 21st-Century Crusader Christianity comprise one of the most potent threats to democracy and the Rule of Law in the United States&#8230;<br \/>\n<em>&#8211; Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&#8216;American Taliban&#8217; is not too powerful a descriptor for some of the fundamentalist Christians prowling our nation&#8217;s&#8230;armed forces.<br \/>\n<em>&#8211; Lawrence Wilkerson<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>When these are the words the MRFF itself uses to summarize its purpose (and raise money for its mission), can there be any doubt that Weinstein uses his &#8220;charity&#8221;\u00a0to attack Christians who hold beliefs with which he disagrees?<\/p>\n<p>When his board describes Christianity as a &#8220;threat to democracy&#8221; and calls\u00a0<em>American<\/em> troops\u00a0&#8220;Taliban&#8221; because of their beliefs,\u00a0can there be any doubt Weinstein would use &#8220;the government&#8230;,\u00a0superior officers, or&#8230;the Pentagon&#8221; to attempt to abrogate the religious rights of US troops?\u00a0 That&#8217;s precisely what he&#8217;s done, despite Farrell&#8217;s reassurances to the contrary.<\/p>\n<p>Many people support the concept of defending religious freedom in the US military, and some of those may even support the MRFF because they believe Mike Farrell&#8217;s words. In Mikey Weinstein&#8217;s world, though, and in contrast to the words Farrell used, only <em>certain<\/em> beliefs are worthy of true &#8220;religious liberty&#8221; &#8212; and Weinstein seems to believe <em>he<\/em>\u00a0is the one who gets to decide which ones are worthy.<\/p>\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>We think \u2014 and the Constitution and Supreme Court caselaw supports us \u2014 that the right of the men and women in our armed forces to their personal choice, the right to their personal belief, the right to their religious or non-religious preference, cannot be abrogated by the government, by their superior officers, or by the Pentagon. That sounds like [&#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":[38,5284,96,82,1346,4005,3394,85,2,5218,7,10,171,4996],"class_list":["post-30667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chapel","tag-chaplain","tag-christian","tag-constitution","tag-joe-wilson","tag-lawrence-wilkerson","tag-mike-farrell","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-valerie-plame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30667","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=30667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}