MIKEY’s OP-ED – No Pleasure Ride On A Unicorn: The Case For “Uncivil” Civil Rights Activism

Published On: August 19, 2013|Categories: Mikey's Op-Eds, News|1 Comment|

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  • As the founder, president, and principal spokesperson of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), since 2005 I’ve witnessed over 34,000 servicemember, veteran, and civilian clients plead for relief from egregious actions and attempts at literal spiritual molestation. Whether we’re talking about the relentless whine of unconstitutional proselytization from superior officers and NCOs or the outrageous, coercive, and violent bigotry visited upon religious, irreligious, and gender and/or sexual minorities, meaningful resistance to superiors simply isn’t an option within the U.S. military.In short, “Get the freakin’ hell out of my face, sir or ma’am” is not an option for military subordinates in the armed forces of the United States.Enter the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. We follow Einstein’s homily about the need to fight evil as our cherished mantra and Prime Directive. We are ever mindful that confronting this vicious hatred can be done in more than one way. Indeed, while the heroic Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. espoused “We shall overcome” as his mantra, it was Malcolm X who claimed “No, we shall come OVER” as his modus operandi. We are the sole civil rights organization representing the myriad browbeaten and oppressed sailors, soldiers, marines, airmen, cadets, midshipmen, and armed forces veterans, of a literal rainbow of faiths and no faith, who’ve had no recourse but to reach out to us when faced with the sick-minded, fundamentalist religious zeal that possesses many high-ranking military authorities. It is precisely this irrational proselytizing lust that clearly supersedes the perpetrators’ fealty to the oaths they swore to defend and protect the Constitution.However, I’m frequently criticized – to put it mildly – for being “impolite,” “intemperate,” “abrasive,” and “uncivil.” Similar to the yellow bellied would-be allies of the civil rights movement who saw fit to referee the “divisive rhetoric” of the most outspoken fighters, in private these fair-weather friends have had no choice but to admit that “Mikey Weinstein and MRFF are right!”
  • Will a gentle, refined tap on the shoulder and whisper in the ear suffice for the Training and Education Command of the United States Marine Corps when they deride our valiant atheist, agnostic, secular, humanist, and freethinking members of the Corps as potential suicide liabilities?
  • Will polite reminders that racism and discrimination are unacceptable halt the sort of blindly stupefying Islamophobic and anti-Arab bigotry that courageous Sgt. 1st Class Naida Christian Nova, a faithful Catholic, faced when she deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan?
  • Who can possibly believe that the grave and macabre distortions of the Christian faith contained in the “Christian Just War Theory” course taught to countless Vandenberg Air Force Base nuclear missile launch officers (for a quarter of a century) could possibly be corrected through a card dropped in a suggestion box?.
  • Seriously, now, can anyone in their right minds doubt that a friendly chat over a cup of coffee is far from enough to stop pathologically bigoted extremists such as the retired Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin from spreading their vitriolic, twisted, anti-Muslim poison to members of our military on the taxpayer’s dime?

Click to read this article at Truthout

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One Comment

  1. Bill August 21, 2013 at 10:07 am

    There’s an old saying, “You attract more flies with honey than with vinegar.” This vulgar condescension does not make your cause attractive. It makes you appear as if you do hate religion, and religious people. Look at Gandhi and Martin Luther King. You never heard such crude rebukes from their lips. They attracted people to their cause because of their compassion, which make the rightness of their cause stand out all the more.

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