Tag Archives: mikey weinstein

Weinstein Responds to Chuck Norris with Name-Calling

Apparently, Michael Weinstein finally got around to reading the columns by Chuck Norris, discussed here last week, and saw the number of MRFF-inspired incidents on the list.

His response was classic playground-bully Weinstein:  He called Chuck Norris names.

And then there are the septuagenarian martial arts film stars who proclaim biblical creationism as fact, can act almost as well as a bar of soap, and who are as smart as a box of rocks.

Chuck Norris, the intelligence-challenged Read more

Army Disavows Presentation Supporting Weinstein Ideology

The news of a US Army briefing seemingly supporting a doctrine of Michael Weinstein — and the firm decision by the Army to disavow the presentation — made surprisingly wide press this weekend.

At issue was a briefing given by a US Army Reservist on “Extremism and Extremist Organizations” (PDF, with notes) which listed “evangelical Christians,” “Ultra-Orthodox Judaism,” “Sunni Muslims” and “Catholicism” alongside “al Quaeda [sic]” as “religious extremism.”  (In fact, evangelical Christianity was at the top of the list.)  The briefer was apparently a Military Equal Opportunity officer, ironically enough.

An attendee of the briefing — who describes himself as an evangelical Christian — took issue, obtained a copy of the briefing, and provided it to the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty (CARL) and the military Catholic Archdiocese:

“Men and women of faith who have served the Army faithfully for centuries shouldn’t be likened to those who have regularly threatened the peace and security of the United States,” retired Col. Ron Crews, Read more

Chuck Norris, Religious Liberty, and Michael Weinstein

Chuck Norris recently cited “36 examples of religious liberty assault” (in Part 1 and Part 2) to defend an assertion that religious liberty is under attack in America.  About a third of his examples involved the US military, all of which have been discussed here before (amplifying remarks follow):

  • Culture and courts are also trumping citizens’ First Amendment rights who are refusing on religious grounds not to support or participate with groups and events that run contrary to their faith and practice. As a result, wedding cake bakers, T-shirt makers, bed and breakfast owners, pastry shops, high-school teachers, military chaplains, restaurant owners, photographers, parents, churches and others have been harassed, bullied, suspended, fired and sued for merely exercising their Christian beliefs. [As described by CARL.]
  • A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that a cross displayed as part of the Mt. Soledad Veterans Memorial in San Diego, Read more

MRFF Allies Target Troops’ Religious Freedoms — Out of Spite

It’s one thing to disagree with another person’s ideology.  It is quite another to participate in an event for the sole purpose of denying others access to that same support and religious liberty.

Advocates for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation recently bantered about attending a Strong Bonds marriage enrichment seminar not to strengthen their marriages, but solely to take surreptitious video of the illegal “indoctrination.”  It seems they are openly attempting to gather “physical evidence” for Michael Weinstein’s “war” on religious liberty in the US military:

According to his Facebook account that’s US Soldier Daron Williams telling Army spouse Katie Aerumnous to ‘record the prayer so you can file a complaint’ — about a voluntary event she would be choosing to attend — with the sole goal of denying future Read more

Weinstein USAFA Protest Attracts Dozens, Multiple Bodyguards

Last Friday Michael Weinstein sponsored a protest/picketing a few miles from one of the US Air Force Academy entrance gates.  Ostensibly, the objective was to make USAFA pull down a link to a website Weinstein had called “homophobic” and “misogynistic.”  This protest and the accompanying billboard (now a trend) were apparently the “action” he had ominously threatened.

The protest misfired on several counts, though the most entertaining by far was Read more

Even in a Down Economy, Michael Weinstein Gets a Pay Raise

In 2010, Michael Weinstein took a small hit to the salary he pays himself from “charitable donations” to his Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  He appears to have made up for that in 2011, the most recent year for which his financial data has become available.  (Weinstein, who keeps the books himself, didn’t report his 2011 finances until November 2012.)

In 2011, the MRFF increased its income by more than $150,000 (which included a $15,800 grant from the United Way of New Mexico, $110,000 in cash from the Rockefeller Family Fund, and $20,000 from the Aspen Community Foundation).  Weinstein’s compensation increased by just under $35,000, or about a quarter of the new donations, to just over $250,000 after taxes.  That brings Weinstein’s pay to just over 36% of everything donated to his “charity.”  Despite forlorn (and misleading) cries by his “research director,” Chris Rodda, that Read more

Michael Weinstein Says Christians Worse than Neo-Nazis

If you’re not the “right kind” of Christian while you serve in the US military, it seems Michael Weinstein — frequent critic of religious freedom in the US military — really doesn’t like you so much — and he apparently wants the government to come after you [formatting original]:

The forced imposition of fundamentalist Christianity throughout our American armed forces is the perpetual “flavor of the day,” and has been for decades [sic]…

[There is] continual, systemic proselytizing among United States military personnel. This brainwashing results in widespread, brutal stigmatizing of those opposed or indifferent to fundamentalist Christian doctrine–a savage trampling of their Constitutional rights!…

How…does allowing this utterly reprehensible nonsense to continue not produce a greater threat than the handful of neo-Nazis still Read more

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