{"id":9190,"date":"2011-02-01T01:57:16","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T06:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=9190"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:15:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:15:34","slug":"mrff-sues-usafa-over-mcclary-invitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/02\/01\/mrff-sues-usafa-over-mcclary-invitation\/","title":{"rendered":"MRFF Sues USAFA over McClary Invitation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Weinstein&#8217;s Military Religious Freedom Foundation has reportedly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gazette.com\/articles\/academy-112098-event-faculty.html\">sued the US Air Force Academy<\/a> over its decision to invite a Christian to a Prayer Luncheon.\u00a0 In an <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/mrff-accuses-usafa-speaker-of-illegal-conduct\/\">increasingly common scene<\/a>, even the <em>Air Force Times<\/em> was able to accurately summarize the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2011\/01\/airforce-academy-suit-013111w\/\">self-contradictory nature of the &#8220;religious freedom&#8221; group&#8217;s actions<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Five Air Force Academy instructors and an advocacy group are <em>suing to stop<\/em> the school from <em>holding a religious event<\/em>. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One Academy faculty member, David Mullin of the Economics Department, is listed by name; four others are listed as &#8220;John Doe.&#8221;\u00a0 Counsel appears to be David Lane, of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.killmerlane.com\/\">Killmer, Lane &amp; Newman<\/a> in Denver.\u00a0 Lane appears to have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2010\/04\/12\/david-lane-lawyer-who-rep_n_535058.html\">previously represented<\/a> Ward Churchill, the &#8220;Balloon Boy&#8221; parents, and a student suing her school over a canceled William Ayers speech.<\/p>\n<p>Contrary to his prior demands, the complaint indicates Weinstein no longer simply wants US Marine Corps (Ret) Lt\u00a0Clebe McClary disinvited.\u00a0 He wants the entire event <em>canceled<\/em>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is contended in this law suit [<em>sic<\/em>] that for the command structure of the AFA to undertake a purely religious activity such as this is a violation <!--more-->of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Plaintiffs who are all faculty or staff members, both civilian and military, at the AFA seek injunctive relief in order to stop this from occurring&#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>In sponsoring, organizing, advertising and generally adopting the Prayer Luncheon, the Defendant Commander of the AFA has used his governmental authority and promoted, elevated, endorsed and favored religion over irreligion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So it appears the lawsuit was always going to happen (no matter what the Academy did); simply un-inviting McClary would not have achieved the desired results of\u00a0Weinstein&#8217;s lawsuit.<\/p>\n<p>The 10-page lawsuit is often vague and at times seemingly self-contradicting.\u00a0 More importantly, the premise behind the suit could be applied to the entire military system of religious support &#8212; that is, the military Chaplaincy.\u00a0 The outcome would presumably affect not only <em>all<\/em> organized prayer events (including the one <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123240125\">recently addressed by the Air Force Chief of Chaplains<\/a>, MajGen Cecil Richardson), but could also impact military chapel services as well.<\/p>\n<p>As such, it is exceedingly unlikely the lawsuit will see much success, as has been the case with <em>every single<\/em> lawsuit Weinstein has filed against the US military to date.<\/p>\n<p>But when your objective is publicity and attention, rather than principled resolution for those whom you represent, a &#8216;shocking&#8217; lawsuit\u00a0supported by conspiratorial undertones is all that really matters.<\/p>\n<p>The MRFF apparently believes McClary is some kind of secret agent working with Academy Superintendent General Gould to take over the world:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Our&#8230;goal is to stop the hijacking of all branches of the military by Domionist [<em>sic<\/em>] Christians who believe that all wars are \u201cHoly Wars\u201d and they must cleanse the earth of all non-Christians to usher in the second coming of Jesus to reign for 1,000 years&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The USAFA has a long history of proselytizing their form of Domionist [<em>sic<\/em>] Christianity. Those that are mainline Christians, non-Christians and atheists are being harassed, beaten, overlooked for promotions, given bad reviews, forced out of the Air Force and called unpatriotic. The AF wants only \u201cWarriors for Christ\u201d who answer to a higher power (God) over our Commander-in-Chief&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Pastor Joan \u2013 Assemblies of God<br \/>\nMRFF \u2013 Advisory Board<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, the MRFF provides absolutely no evidence of this &#8220;long history&#8221; of &#8220;harassed, beaten,&#8221; and otherwise run-out-of-the-service members of the military, nor any evidence the Air Force &#8220;wants only &#8216;Warriors for Christ'&#8221;\u00a0&#8212; despite claims of\u00a0the ongoing &#8220;hijacking&#8221; of the military. \u00a0For something Weinstein claims is so ubiquitous, they seem to have a hard time providing facts to support their wild accusations.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, they&#8217;ve never provided any proof of their allegation that James Dobson and Dick Cheney are running the US in a <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/29\/weinstein-reveals-vendetta-in-demanding-removal-of-cross\/\">shadow government<\/a>, either.\u00a0\u00a0A good conspiracy is, by nature, impossible to prove &#8212; and that&#8217;s what the MRFF is all about: wild and unsupported conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Weinstein&#8217;s Military Religious Freedom Foundation has reportedly sued the US Air Force Academy over its decision to invite a Christian to a Prayer Luncheon.\u00a0 In an increasingly common scene, even the Air Force Times was able to accurately summarize the self-contradictory nature of the &#8220;religious freedom&#8221; group&#8217;s actions: Five Air Force Academy instructors and an advocacy group are suing [&#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":[506,5284,4,1379,1424,82,1396,1398,1385,189,1628,85,2,5218,7,11,17,10,171,65,1397],"class_list":["post-9190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-cecil-richardson","tag-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-clebe-mcclary","tag-conspiracy","tag-constitution","tag-david-lane","tag-david-mullin","tag-joan-slish","tag-michael-gould","tag-mike-gould","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-prayer","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-usafa","tag-ward-churchill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9190","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=9190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}