Heretic
Posts : 3520
 | | Subject: An Officer's Experience in Our Christian Military 8/20/2009, 10:28 pm | |
| Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars: - Quote :
- Mikey Weinstein asked me to pass along this statement from an Army officer and West Point graduate about the constant problems he has faced in the military from aggressive Christian superiors who have badgered him relentlessly about his own religious views. The whole thing is worth reading.
- Quote :
- During my second year at the West Point, my Squad Leader for summer training expressed disapproval on numerous occasions with my being Jewish, and, during one mission, he grabbed my MRE (a military meal) as we sat down for lunch and handed me another. He ordered me to eat the pork chop and I reminded him that I refrain from pork for religious reasons. He told me that I could eat the pork or eat nothing. One of his peers, a female Jewish cadet, urged me to obey him and not to make him angry; I declined. The next day, my cadet Platoon Leader presented me with a written counseling statement detailing my signs of "anorexia" and a "troubling" refusal to eat which was detrimental to my health and indicative of "incapacity for leadership." I was filled with righteous indignation. I went through the Cadet and Commissioned Chain of Command and my rebuttal culminated with a conversation with the Active Duty Major in command of the summer training. When I explained the events in detail, he told me that my Cadet Chain of Command was right to be concerned, and spoke words I will never forget: "the Army is not in the business of catering to people like you." Those words have haunted me throughout my career as an Officer. They were the turning point for me--when I finally understood the message several of my leaders had been expressing to me all along: the Army has no place for people like me: dissidents who stray from the unofficially mandated military religion; conservative fundamentalist Christianity.
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When Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation describe this catastrophe of fundamentalist Christian usurpation of the command and control of our armed forces as a "national security threat of the gravest magnitude", they are precisely correct. It is injuring and killing our brave military members, specifically. It is desecrating the magnificent Constitution we swore an oath to, generally. And it is destroying our military's solidarity of purpose and ability to accomplish The Mission, completely. | |
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