Pity mail

Dear Military Religious Freedom Foundation,

You need a new category besides hate mail. Pity mail. I pity your misdirected malice towards Christians trying to exercise their rights. Your deceitful efforts to muzzle others is hypocritical. You would be better off attacking smokers. Second hand smoke is far more dangerous than genuine patriots expressing their beliefs. Mr. Weinstein is an embarrassment to all fellow alumni for his misanthropic antics.

(name withheld)

Dear (name withheld),

Thank you for your kind note. Like so many others, I always enjoy a good laugh when I read e-mails from imbeciles such as you. Like those of so many other Fundamentalist Christians, your e-mail makes clear you’re operating under the false assumption that religious predation on the government’s dime is your religious right; obviously you couldn’t be more wrong. Your right to practice your religion ends precisely when it begins to infringe on the rights of others. Since rational thought apparently doesn’t come naturally to you, let me try to explain in simple terms you may yet be able to grasp.

Let’s use the analogy you provided and we’ll see whether or not you can keep up. A smoker’s right to smoke ends when it begins to endanger someone else’s life; this is why the government can limit where smokers can smoke, because second hand smoke actually endangers the lives of others and impinges on others’ right to be free of the carcinogens present within tobacco smoke. In the same manner, all Americans are free to believe or not believe what they will; however, they are not free to impose and inflict their beliefs on others, and particularly not at the government’s expense.

In your misdirected missive you allege that the Foundation’s efforts are “hypocritical,” when in fact it is your position that represents the height of hypocrisy. You believe Fundamentalist Christians should be able to utilize government funding to foist their beliefs on everyone else, but God forbid anyone ever tries to even build a mosque in your home town. The sad reality is this: it’s actually people like you who seek to muzzle everyone else. And here’s the real irony: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation works night and day to protect the religious rights of everyone; we work to keep religious predators like you from muzzling everyone who doesn’t share your beliefs. In truth, 96% of our clients are Christians who face discrimination from Fundamentalist extremists like you who consider them to be not Christian enough. That’s right; the vast majority of our clients are actually Christians! Unlike you, we’re not trying to muzzle anyone’s religious convictions; we’re just protecting real patriots from the illicit efforts of religious predators, like you.

Finally, you refer to religious predators as “patriots” – this is a lie (or in your case, possibly a delusion). As a veteran I can attest to the fact that all service members take an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which makes those who seek to subvert the U.S. Constitution, traitors. Those within the U.S. Military who seek to use their positions of power to prey upon those under their command are simply that – traitors. The U.S. Constitution provides for a clear separation between Church and State, and here’s why: “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.” That is a direct quote from not only one of our Founding Fathers, but one of the authors of the Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution – James Madison.

So, in conclusion, you assert that those who turn their backs on their oaths and the U.S. Constitution are patriots; further, you call us misanthropes for defending the right of American service men and women to be free from religious predation, and defending the U.S. Constitution from those like you who would tear it down, when in fact you are the misanthrope for seeking to restrain the rights of others to be free from your particular brand of religious extremism. It is in fact people like you, and your proxies within the U.S. Military, who are the traitors to the U.S. Constitution and this great Nation, and it is individuals like Mikey Weinstein, who take their oath to defend the Constitution seriously, who are the real patriots. You and your kind are nothing more than intellectually and morally vacuous human beings trying to foist your ignorance and intolerance on everyone else.

Thanks again for the laugh.

Wishing you happy holidays and a pleasant tomorrow,

Akiva David Miller
Veterans Coordinator
Military Religious Freedom Foundation