Atheist Jason Torpy tilted the irony meter recently when he touted his recent visit to Arlington National Cemetery.
The event provided the opportunity to remember the service of all those hundreds of thousands at Arlington Cemetery, our nation’s most sacred shrine.
The atheist considers Arlington so “sacred,” in fact, he thinks the government should yank the crosses out of it — something even the ACLU doesn’t advocate.
Mike Farrell, better known as BJ Hunnicutt of M*A*S*H fame, apparently thinks his “service” with Father Mulcahy qualifies him to speak with authority on the US military chaplaincy. He authored a lengthy piece on the Huffington Post written in the style of Chris Rodda; that is, heavy on vague accusations and light on facts:
Today, a huge percentage of our military chaplains, according to thousands of aggrieved American servicemen and women, present themselves as fevered salesmen for a fundamentalist version of Christianity rather than as simple, caring souls with a willingness to listen and no attached quid pro quo. These religious hucksters see themselves as “government-paid missionaries” and the youth under their domain “as ripe as black bananas.”
Farrell fails to quantify or provide support for his “huge percentage,” and provides no source other than the vague anecdotes of Michael Weinstein’s MRFF “clients.” (Farrell, conveniently enough, is a member of Weinstein’s advisory board.) Farrell is also apparently blind to his own prejudice, calling people who hold beliefs with which he disagrees “hucksters.”
He authoritatively continues: Read more
Or so he says:
According to his public statements, US Army Captain Miles Cone was in “violation of orders from a superior officer” during the benediction at his June 8 graduation from Read more
Last year a Houston Veterans’ Cemetery director was accused of banning all religious references from funerals occurring at her facility (as well as using the chapel as a storage shed, among other things). A lawsuit was filed, and settled. The consent decree prohibited the cemetery, then run by Arleen Ocasio, and the VA from interfering with or prohibiting religious references in the ceremonies.
This year, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) has sponsored a bill that would codify in law the ruling in that consent decree.
Problems arose in Houston when the cemetery director misinterpreted [the] law to prohibit all religious speech. Read more
Updated with BrigGen Lee quote on Michael Weinstein.
Sixty-six members of Congress called on Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to investigate the US Air Force for an environment of “hostility towards religious freedom” — the fourth time in recent months they’ve made such an accusation.
The Congressional letter (PDF) essentially said that Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz’s September policy letter had created a “chilling effect” on religious freedom as Airmen attempted to comply with his guidance:
The decisions that have been made in reliance upon this policy go beyond what is required by the US Constitution. The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of religion; however, the mere discussion of religion or reference to God certainly does not rise to that level.
The Congressmen said the Air Force had “capitulated” to organizations Read more
In 2010 West Point Cadet Alan Spadone was disenrolled for failing to participate in a remediation program after admitting to violating the Honor Code. He was directed to begin serving as an enlisted soldier, as he had already begun his third year at West Point when he committed his violation in the fall of 2009.
He filed civil complaints on multiple counts, including everything from the remediation program was unreasonable to the government was trying to “enrich itself” by making him serve as a soldier. Those claims were all dismissed in a recent ruling:
Spadone has not established that his suspension and disenrollment from West Point violated the APA or his right to due process, and Spadone failed to demonstrate a waiver of sovereign immunity for his claim of unjust enrichment.
Interestingly, however, Spadone is permitted to continue his claim that the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution was violated when Read more
As predicted last November, Michael Weinstein went fishing for controversy over military-themed Bibles and finally managed to manufacture a scandal out of the nearly decade-old Holman series of military-themed Bibles carrying official military service seals.
But what that led to is even more interesting, for Weinstein may have let slip (again) his real target in his “war” against religious freedom in the US military.
For its part, the military says the decision to withdraw permission for Holman to use the seals was administrative housekeeping. Weinstein’s research assistant Chris Rodda cried malarkey, saying the military never would have revisited the permission if not for the MRFF inquiries.
As it has in the past, the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, representing 2,000 military chaplains, is calling on Congress to investigate why the military is so keen on bowing to pressure from the MRFF.
The end result is the Holman Bibles can be Read more
Competing opinion pieces at the UT San Diego debate the appropriateness of the Camp Pendleton crosses, memorials that have stood on a remote hill on a US Marine base for years until an atheist found out they were there.
Ever-sensitive atheist Jason Torpy, the original complainant who found out about the crosses on the internet, reminds people the crosses “violate religious neutrality,” since the presence of religious symbols on government land is apparently totally forbidden:
Two 13-foot Christian crosses stand on restricted federal land as a result of unauthorized actions by private individuals…All of this speaks to a Marine-led Christianization of the military Read more