WISCONSIN STATE JOURNAL – In the Spirit: The dark side of ‘Beautiful City’

Selected Article Excerpts:

• The presence of an armed security guard in the lobby of the Bartell Theatre in Madison last Saturday suggested it would not be a typical night of community theater.

• StageQ, a local theater company, was staging “This Beautiful City,” a documentary play that tells the stories of real-life people — conservative Christians, atheists, secular progressives — in Colorado Springs at the time of the Ted Haggard scandal.

• One of the play’s characters is Michael Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

• The organization works to ensure that active-duty military personnel are free to practice any religion — or be free of religion — while in the U.S. Armed Forces. It has at times taken unpopular stands by representing Muslims, Jews, atheists and Wiccans, among others.

• Weinstein, 57, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, was in Madison to attend the play, participate in an audience talk-back session and sign copies of his latest book, “No Snowflake In An Avalanche.”

• His organization hired the bodyguard.

• Earlier in the week, a district court judge in Dallas dismissed a lawsuit brought by Weinstein against a former Navy chaplain whom Weinstein said used so-called “imprecatory prayers” to try to incite others to harm him. Such prayers often quote Psalm 109, which calls for the death of an opponent and curses on his widow and children.

• “I think the judge was having trouble understanding that these are not like other prayers,” Weinstein said in an interview. “These prayers are code. They essentially are trolling for assassins.”

• Weinstein anticipates an appeal. “I’d like to show a jury that the people praying like this are in cahoots with the people who’ve shot out windows at my house, slashed my tires and left dead animals on my porch.”

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