{"id":9928,"date":"2011-03-09T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T08:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=9928"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:15:28","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:15:28","slug":"rock-beyond-belief-equitable-treatment-or-atheist-discrimination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/09\/rock-beyond-belief-equitable-treatment-or-atheist-discrimination\/","title":{"rendered":"Rock Beyond Belief: Equitable Treatment, or Atheist Discrimination?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Weinstein’s “religious freedom” foundation has raised a hullabaloo over the decision by organizers to cancel<\/a> the atheist “counter-event” to last year’s Christian “Rock the Fort.”\u00a0 Quoth the ever-eloquent Weinstein:<\/p>\n

There is a DoD Directive which says that the Department of Defense may never provide a selective benefit for one entity and not provide the same benefit for another, and the Billy Graham Evangelical Society received a benefit that was not afforded to Rock Beyond Belief.\u00a0 They have treated us horribly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Weinstein and supporters of the “Rock Beyond Belief” event claim the “horrible” treatment is a result of being treated differently<\/em> than “Rock the Fort,” or that the military “reneged” on its promise of the “same support” for RBB as RtF. \u00a0This “disparate” treatment, then, is proof the military is actually trying to promote<\/em> Christianity.<\/p>\n

Then again, Weinstein thinks everything<\/em> is proof of some sort of\u00a0Christian conspiracy.<\/p>\n

The long and short of it is that there is a process by which Fort Bragg approves events and their support to them — and, at least for the time being, only a few people know exactly what that process is.\u00a0\u00a0It appears evident\u00a0Fort Bragg decided “Rock Beyond Belief” met the minimum requirements for support; thus, it approved<\/em> the event.\u00a0 It did not approve the requested venue (the parade grounds), but instead offered a theatre based on the description of the event as\u00a0primarily non-chart-making speakers and musical performers.<\/p>\n

While it might not be the desired outcome for RBB, the venue and justification do not seem unreasonable.\u00a0 Weinstein apparently disagrees.<\/p>\n

RBB must stand on its own with regard to meeting the requirements for support — it did so, and it was approved.\u00a0\u00a0The only caveat is Fort Bragg cannot deny support to “Rock Beyond Belief” purely because of its ideology, because Fort Bragg has supported events of other ideologies in the past (“Rock the Fort”).\u00a0 Beyond that, the proper standard is equitable<\/em> treatment, not equal<\/em> treatment.\u00a0 For example, an event with a projected attendance of 400 is not comparable<\/em> to one with a projected attendance of 4,000; one composed exclusively of lecturers is not comparable<\/em> to one composed exclusively of athletic events.\u00a0\u00a0The non-comparable<\/em> events\u00a0are reasonably not<\/em> entitled to identical\u00a0levels of support.<\/p>\n

There is no indication at this point that Fort Bragg’s process unfairly discriminated against “Rock Beyond Belief,”\u00a0or that any decision made about RBB had anything to do with its ideology.\u00a0\u00a0It appears Weinstein is making demands for special <\/em>treatment, rather than similar<\/em>\u00a0treatment to every other event.\u00a0 Given the public statements, it appears that\u00a0unless Fort Bragg volunteered precisely the same<\/em> logistics as went to “Rock the Fort,” right down to the same number of portajohns, someone (read: Weinstein) was going to complain.\u00a0 This was true regardless of any differences (say, in projected crowd size) between the two events.\u00a0 That’s a patently ridiculous expectation.<\/p>\n

To recap:\u00a0 The atheist\u00a0“Rock Beyond Belief” asked for and received<\/em> permission to host an\u00a0event on a US military facility.\u00a0\u00a0That wasn’t good enough for Weinstein, and “Rock Beyond Belief” canceled itself because it wasn’t satisfied with the response.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Fort Bragg will now make a public exception to its standard policies — though that would seem futile since the event has been canceled.<\/p>\n

In any case, this isn’t about “Rock Beyond Belief” anymore.\u00a0 It’s about Michael Weinstein, who joined up with RBB\u00a0several months ago.\u00a0 Now, by sheer coincidence, he’s found (some might say he’s created<\/em>) yet another vehicle with which he can sue the US military.\u00a0 He’s lost four similar lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0already, and he’s left a trail of broken promises and unrequited “victims” along the way — quickly dumping each case for a “better” vehicle for his agenda without even bothering to\u00a0file (a passionately promised) appeal<\/a>.\u00a0 This is only his latest opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Weinstein’s “religious freedom” foundation has raised a hullabaloo over the decision by organizers to cancel the atheist “counter-event” to last year’s Christian “Rock the Fort.”\u00a0 Quoth the ever-eloquent Weinstein: There is a DoD Directive which says that the Department of Defense may never provide a selective benefit for one entity and not provide the same benefit for another, and […]<\/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":[88,20,429,5284,175,4,1023,85,2,5218,7,1066,10,171,1126,1056],"class_list":["post-9928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-atheism","tag-billy-graham","tag-chaplain","tag-chris-rodda","tag-churchandstate","tag-fort-bragg","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-mwr","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-rock-beyond-belief","tag-rock-the-fort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9928","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=9928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9928\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}