A Defense Department article on Equal Opportunity opened with an interesting sentence on the military culture:
Black or white, Christian or atheist, West Coast or East Coast, service members come from all walks of life, with every culture having its own beliefs, values and style of leadership.
It has long been understood that the US military is a cross-section of Read more
It seems the prior article on the White House petition to “end discrimination” against military atheists struck a chord, most notably with its creator, Dustin Chalker.
Chalker posted a response to the article with his MRFF ally Chris Rodda as an independent blog. Not all of the assumptions Rodda and Chalker made were necessarily accurate, but the response here, as some have seen, has been interesting. Most who have commented failed to actually read the story behind any of Chalker’s accusations, making such deep and thoughtful statements as “You’re a coward” easy, if logically unsupported, diatribes to make in their passionate support of Chalker.
Though he never indicated so himself, Rodda claims Dustin Chalker – who sued the Department of Defense as an Army Sergeant – is now the civilian “Mr.” Chalker, though she contradictorily uses his rank in the present tense.
Both Rodda’s and Chalker’s comments contained factual errors, though accuracy has never been Rodda’s strong suit. Some of the more salient points of Chalker’s comment are below:
Chalker said it was “lying” to say his lawsuit Read more
The director of the Air National Guard, LtGen Harry Wyatt recently addressed a graduation of an Equal Opportunity course for the Reserve Component. Wyatt described “equitable treatment” as a “moral imperative:”
[Equal opportunity] graduates are the ‘change agents’ that help to educate people on the need — the moral imperative — to be equitable in our treatment of all people.
The semantic choice is interesting, if you think about it, because he doesn’t say equal treatment. Equitable means “fair;” equal means “the same;” the distinction is often missed.