Tag Archives: mikey weinstein

Air Force Major Steve Lewis Can Keep His Bible on His Desk

Peterson AFB has ruled that Major Steve Lewis was within the rules when he kept his Bible on his desk:

We have concluded that no abuse of liberties has occurred, and Maj Lewis’s behavior and the workplace environment at the RNSSI are well within the provisions of Air Force Instruction 1-1, Air Force Standards, paragraphs 2.11 and 2.12, “Free Exercise of Religion and Religious Accommodation” and “Balance of Free Exercise of Religion and Establishment Clause.”

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein was livid, naturally, as he doesn’t like it when Christians have the same religious liberty protections as everyone else. Therefore, he filed an immediate and aggressive…FOIA request. Actually, he didn’t even file it. Weinstein — who pays himself nearly $1,000 a day, every day, for his “work” in his charity — instead had a volunteer log onto the Air Force eFOIA site and submit the request for him.

Todd Starnes commended the Air Force for the right call, Major Lewis for his conduct, and then laid a gauntlet at Weinstein’s feet:  Read more

Military Christians Aren’t the Only Ones Exercising Their Faith

philcross

…they’re just the only ones criticized for doing so.

Given the way the American culture has drifted over the past few years and the impact that drift has had on religion, religious freedom, and the military, it might be forgivable that people would assume conservative Christians are the only ones publicizing their beliefs from within the military.

That’s an easy framing, but it is not an accurate one.

It turns out that other “liberal” religious beliefs — and even non-beliefs — have been just Read more

Jason Torpy on ChristianFighterPilot.com, Polite Religious Discourse

From Jason Torpy, perpetually-offended former Army atheist and current voice for the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, in response to the publicity surrounding recent articles on God and Country:

torpy1

Jason Torpy exactly. a troll best ignored. if the topic can’t be found somewhere legitimate, then there’s no reason to talk about it.

torpy2

Jason Torpy best not to repost this troll’s poison

It would seem Jason Read more

MRFF Focuses Bible Attack on Display, Accommodation

Former Assembly of God pastor Joan Slish, an advisory board member of Michael “Mikey” Weinstein’s MRFF, is a constant source of delightful insight into the MRFF’s sometimes opaque logic. Most recently, she responded to an MRFF detractor, as she often does, with a 1,000-word post that was nearly identical to every other post she makes. There were a couple of notable deviations, however.

Referencing the recent accusation by Mikey Weinstein that USAF Major Steve Lewis should be punished for having a Bible on his desk, Slish said [emphasis added]

To place the opened, highlighted, underlined Christian Bible on a military desk 24/7 for other service members to see elevates the Christian God above all others and is in violation of the Constitution, Separation of Church and State under the Establishment Clause, Reynolds v. U.S., Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Lemon Test, Parker v. Levy and AFI 1-1, Section 2.12.

Yes, the MRFF appears to believe that a Bible on a military member’s desk is the state establishing religion. Apparently ISIS is doing it wrong. Put a Koran on a desk and the caliphate is won, according to Mikey Weinstein.

We’ll ignore Slish’s ignorance regarding a citizen being in “violation” of court cases. (That’s not the branch of government that makes or enforces laws, Joan.)

The relevant issue is her contention that the Bible was, in Read more

To Major Steve Lewis & Peterson Air Force Base: Ignore Mikey, and He will Flee. Guaranteed.

by Sonny Hernandez

It is always demoralizing to hear perplexing tales of snowflake liberals in the Armed Forces who become incensed over the mere presence of a Bible. As a result of just such an offense, an Air Force officer is now under investigation after years of keeping an open, highlighted Bible on his desk, leading to another of Mikey Weinstein’s inconsequential tirades.

There is an underlying issue of why Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is disdainful towards an open, highlighted Bible on Major Steve Lewis’s desk. Weinstein abhors the Bible, which Christians adore! As I have stated on multiple occasions, Mikey Weinstein does not contend with anyone who distributes material that references Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, leprechauns or fairies. Why? It is because none of them exist! Weinstein always contends with references to God because he knows God exists, which is why his anti-God suppression is invariable.

There is a reason Mr. Weinstein rejects the Bible. Weinstein does not reject the truth of the Bible because it contradicts itself; instead, he rejects the Bible because Read more

US Air Force Removes Bible From Airman’s Desk

Michael “Mikey” Weinstein celebrated yesterday after his complaint resulted in a Peterson Air Force Base officer having a Bible removed from his desk. As cited by Fox News:

“[The Bible] is very obviously a statement of Christian preference, Christian primacy,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told me. “Had that been the Book of Satan or the Koran there would be blood in the freaking streets.”

He accused Maj. Steve Lewis, a supervisor at the Reserve National Security Space Institute, of “harboring and encouraging a truly abhorrent example of First Amendment civil rights violations.”

To be fair, Mikey Weinstein has been after Bibles-on-desks for a long time. It’s just that for years the Air Force has been telling him to take a hike:

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., asked James if it’s acceptable for an airman to have a Bible on his desk…

James told Vitter: “Having a Bible on your desk, that doesn’t seem like it should be banned.”

Air Force spokeswoman LtCol Laura Tingley: “I can tell you that military members are allowed to have religious materials on their desks.”

(The Air Force issued some of these statements and Read more

A Tale of Two Chaplains: The Hypocrisy of Mikey Weinstein and Tom Carpenter

Mikey Weinstein’s MRFF and Tom Carpenter’s Forum on the Military Chaplaincy
advocate “Do as I say… not as I do.”

Last week, the Forum on the Military Chaplaincy’s hypocrisy was on full display. Tom Carpenter, a homosexual lawyer and former US Marine fighter pilot, co-chairs the Forum and seems to be its primary voice. Carpenter berated the religious expression of Air Force Chaplain Sonny Hernandez and called him unfit to serve — while the Forum Carpenter simultaneously leads says it supports a military chaplaincy with “free and diverse religious expression.”

It seems Carpenter and his Forum only support diversity of religious expression when they agree with the content of that expression.

Last week Carpenter also seemed to join with Michael “Mikey” Weinstein — a Forum ally — in criticizing military chaplains who attended an awards event hosted by the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, a group of chaplain endorsers that advocates for religious liberty within the military. The Forum re-posted reports on the MRFF’s accusations with the ominous statement that the “Air Force [is] in hot water again,” and didn’t contravene one of its own who agreed with Weinstein’s acerbic calls for punishing the chaplains. When others defended the chaplains, Carpenter weighed in by saying they were “clueless” about the rules and regulations regarding wear of the uniform. Carpenter clearly felt Chaplain (MajGen) Dondi Costin and the other chaplains in attendance were in the wrong.

So why didn’t Carpenter feel so strongly about his own event?

In early April, the Forum on the Military Chaplaincy hosted Read more

Precedent? Bible-Quoting Court-Martialed Marine’s Conviction Upheld

Monifa Sterling was court-martialed by the US Marine Corps for a variety of charges. One was failure to obey an order, when she refused after being told to remove three print-outs of a paraphrased Bible verse from her desk.

With the help of the First Liberty Institute, Sterling appealed to the highest military court, the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, on the basis that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protected her religious exercise. (Despite some ignorant mockery from Mikey Weinstein’s Chris Rodda, the remaining charges for which she was convicted were not appealed, meaning her Bad Conduct Discharge wasn’t going to change.)

In a 4-1 ruling (PDF), the court upheld her conviction on that charge.

One interesting result was the court seemed unanimous in its “reject[ion]” of the logic used by the lower court, the US Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, which said (PDF) the order to remove the signs was  Read more

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