Christianists make lemonade out of Air Force rules
February 10, 2006Uncategorized
Do fundies fret and squirm after the wristslapping? Nope. They send out press releases that cast it as a victory:
New Guidelines Clarify Religious Expression for Airmen
Air Force says it will protect free exercise of religion.
While the actual violation was on the part of the Christianists, who both abused those who worshipped differently or not at all and sought to establish Christianity as the official religion of the Academy, this press release's message is predicated on the fallacy that it was the freedom to practice religion that was at stake and therefore that the Academy's statement is a corrective to that injustice.
Here's a quote from Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy at [James Dobson's] Focus on the Family Action: "'We applaud these guidelines,' he said. 'We hope they will bring an end to the frontal assault on the Air Force by secularists who would make the military a wasteland of relativism, where robust discussion of faith is impossible.'"
Huh?! Whah?
Ingenious.
So what happened after a fanatical Christianist minority at the Air Force Academy went overboard and abused the first amendment?
There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus and another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.Church-State separation advocates (aka good Americans as stipulated in the Constitution) demand protections for those who suffer as a result and the Academy revises its rules (by essentially restating the first amendment's injunction against the establishment of a state religion, that little thing the Christianists like to forget).
Do fundies fret and squirm after the wristslapping? Nope. They send out press releases that cast it as a victory:
New Guidelines Clarify Religious Expression for Airmen
Air Force says it will protect free exercise of religion.
While the actual violation was on the part of the Christianists, who both abused those who worshipped differently or not at all and sought to establish Christianity as the official religion of the Academy, this press release's message is predicated on the fallacy that it was the freedom to practice religion that was at stake and therefore that the Academy's statement is a corrective to that injustice.
Here's a quote from Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy at [James Dobson's] Focus on the Family Action: "'We applaud these guidelines,' he said. 'We hope they will bring an end to the frontal assault on the Air Force by secularists who would make the military a wasteland of relativism, where robust discussion of faith is impossible.'"
Huh?! Whah?
Ingenious.
