Meet Michael Weinstein February 14, 2008

Meet Michael L. Weinstein, Esq.

Former military attorney in the Air Force, legal counsel in the White House under the Reagan Administration and General Counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, “Mikey” Weinstein has become a centerpiece figure in the fight for religious freedom in America’s military. As IsraelENews.com informs us, “the 1977 honors graduate of the Air Force Academy is suing the United States Air Force for allowing, even promoting, evangelical Christian proselytizing at his alma mater”:

“People say this is a Christian country founded on Christian principles,” he says. “The real essential aspect of this country, woven into the tapestry of the embroidery of how beautiful this country is, is one concept above all others, which is tolerance of diversity.

“The biggest crime I accuse the religious right of — and it’s a blood libel, a crime against humanity — is torturing that concept, by bludgeoning it and assaulting it, so that what it comes out as “tolerance for diversity’ equals “intolerance for us in the majority.’ My response is: Fuck you. Fuck you. How dare you?“

What is it that drives Mr. Weinstein to his goals, of making every religious stream represented equally in the military? Why is he so headstrong against what he perceives as an evangelical hegemony?

“Every single time radicalized Christianity has engaged the machinery of the state and the armed forces, we have ended up not with puddles and little streams, but with oceans and oceans of blood,” he says. “I’m not just talking about the Holocaust or the Inquisition or the four Crusades, I’m not just talking about the Black Plague; it’s the transition from Plan A to Plan B.

“In Plan A, evangelical Christians with a smile on their face will ask you to please, please, please accept their biblical worldview of Jesus. The problem with that is, inevitably, Plan A morphs into Plan B. They stop asking so nicely, and then you have the Holocaust…”

Provocative, but definitely worth reading. Weinstein’s Military Religious Freedom Foundation was founded in 2006 to combat anti-non-Christian discrimination in the religious arena in the armed forces, and Weinstein was recently nominated for JFK’s Profile in Courage Award.

His interview with IsraelENews.com is here, is an introduction to Mr. Weinstein, as well as the efforts of his organization. The MRFF combats cases of discrimination — ranging from a soldiers’ being expelled from mess halls for refusal to pray to Jesus for being an atheist to encouraging Christiantiy via having blatantly pro-Evangelical speakers speak to soldiers to boost morale.

Weinstein has been called the “field general of the godless armies of Satan”, and laughs at his title — he wished it could get him free food:

WEINSTEIN: …On Sundays, they’ve been throwing my photo up on the jumbotrons in their sanctuaries mostly in the southeast, mostly in “red states.” Underneath my picture they put down “field general of the godless armies of Satan.” There are enough nuts out there that actually believe this.

I’ve tried to make this worthwhile. I go to McDonalds, and I order a couple of hamburgers, a Diet Coke, and some fries. They charge me $5.61, and I tell them I’m the “field general of the godless armies of Satan,” but they still make me pay. It doesn’t even seem to work.

As IsraelENews.com also notes, “the Christian right has been successful in spreading its fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades.” It is only when a voice of dissent arises from an “outsider” group that the mandate for diversity in all spheres of American government (and military) becomes as germane and relevant as it is in our cities and streets.

One love to Reb Mike Weinstein. May he be successful in all his efforts, and my there never be another case of a soldier being subjected to:

A 2004 survey indicated that half the cadets at the academy reported hearing religious slurs on campus.

One documented “joke” went like this:
“Why do Jews make the best magicians?

“Because they can go into a building and vanish in a puff of smoke.”
Jewish cadets complained about being called “Christ-killers” and being told that the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus.

Ken y’hi ratzon.