Roy Exum
Mikey Weinstein, a self-avowed atheist whose goal in life is to eliminate religious faith from our military, just got a well-deserved and quite pointed slap in the face from the United States Air Force. In a news release that was seemingly lost in last week’s tinsel and glitter, there was a rebuttal to Weinstein’s charge that when members of the Air Force football team were shown praying during the Mountain West Conference championship game, it was “a scandalous outrage.”
Weinstein, the spokesman for a group called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said televised footage of Falcon players kneeling as they prayed triggered his organization to make a formal complaint to the Pentagon.
“It’s a disgrace. It’s a putrid example of fundamentalist Christian supremacy, triumphalism and exceptionalism and it has to stop,” Mr. Weinstein said.
“Those individuals that are dressed in the Air Force uniform, that’s their uniform of the day. They’re members of the military and they are under different rules than the civilian counterparts they’re playing on the field,” he charged, causing the Air Force to immediately call for a Board of Inquiry.
Two days before Christmas, the academy issued the board’s finding. “The United States Air Force Academy places a high value on the rights of its members to observe the tenets of their respective religion or to observe no religion at all,” an official statement read.
“Recently the United States Air Force Academy received a complaint about its football players kneeling in prayer. An inquiry was initiated, which found the football players' actions to be consistent with Air Force Instruction 1-1 and its guidance on the free exercise of religion and religious accommodation.”
“The United States Air Force Academy will continue to reaffirm to cadets that all Airmen are free to practice the religion of their choice or subscribe to no religious belief at all,” academy officials said in the statement. “The players may confidently practice their own beliefs without pressure to participate in the practices of others.”
Weinstein was enraged by the answer and is threatening to pursue a court order before the football team faces Cal in the Armed Forces Bowl tomorrow afternoon. Either way, it’s a safe bet the Air Force players will be seen kneeling before the 2:00 (EST) kickoff, this to further smash the atheist’s claim of church vs. state.
In an email to the Air Force Times on Christmas Eve, Weinstein continued his rant. “This outrageous internal administrative decision to allow its football team to engage in massive orchestrated sectarian Christian prayers right before kickoff for the world to see on television is a monstrous travesty and brutal breach of federal constitutional law and Department of Defense/Air Force regulations.”
He even added, “…the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is in consultation with its litigators to decide if it is possible to go into federal court to obtain injunctive relief to stop this pernicious and pervasive practice of fundamentalist Christian supremacy, triumphalism and exhibitionism.”
We must never forget it is because of our Air Force, and other armed forces, that Weinstein can carelessly throw around words like “outrageous,” “travesty,” and “supremacy” with no threat of retaliation.
The inquiry board’s ruling makes me want to hum the Air Force hymn.
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The best Christmas story that I saw last week was that George Pickering, of Montgomery County, Texas, got to spend Christmas with his son, George III. In January of 2015 George III, age 27, had suffered a massive stroke and was declared brain dead. After the elder Pickering’s ex-wife and another son had signed consent forms, the order was written to begin a “terminal wean” at the Tomball Regional Medical Center in Houston.
About the same time, an anguished (and pretty drunk) George II showed up and, brandished a 9 mm pistol, promised “I’ll kill you all” if anyone laid a hand on his comatose son. Well, a three-hour standoff began and SWAT team negotiators tried to reason with the distraught father. George II kept talking and crying over George III while standing guard.
Miraculously, during the siege George III began to respond. He squeezed his dad’s hand on command and by the time another son wrestled the gun away from his dad, George III had opened his eyes. As the family attorney, Phoebe Smith recounted, “The SWAT team had their own doctors and when they entered the critical care room, they saw my client’s son was not brain dead because he was making contact, following their commands, and were amazed by this.
“The most amazing thing was that my client was right and that his son did survive. When you see him now, he is the picture of health. I don’t think he would have survived if his dad hadn’t slowed down the process.”
When George II regained consciousness, the contrite and now fairly sober father immediately surrendered to police, soon after pled guilty and served 10 months in jail. As his fully-recovered son told news reporters, “There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I’m here now because of it. It was love. It was love.
“The important thing is that I’m alive and well,” George III said kindly. “My father is home and we’re together again.”
royexum@aol.com