COMMUNITIES DIGITAL NEWS – Are American atheists really a persecuted minority?
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Selected Article Excerpt:
To illustrate the power behind being accused of atheism, one need look no further than the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. The ever-controversial group supports the interests of U.S. Armed Forces members who face religious discrimination; usually at the hands of fundamentalist Christians. The MRFF’s detractors have smeared it as an atheistic propaganda outlet led by, of course, someone who does not believe in God.
Both claims are demonstrably false, which led the MRFF’s leader, Ronald Reagan Administration veteran and former Air Force Judge Advocate General Mikey Weinstein, to issue a legal warning. This was sent to a television host, Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, and Christian conservative stalwart Dr. James Dobson.
“We are very militant and aggressive, but our militancy and aggression is in support of the Constitution,” Weinstein tells me. “That’s why they devoted six minutes plus a few seconds [of] prime time Fox to me and my foundation, because we are so effective and they know that they can throw red meat to the not-terribly-well-educated, overtly uber-conservative people that watch their station and that are starving and salivating for this stuff.
“You throw the word ‘atheist’ out — that’s one of the worst things you can possibly be in the world of Fox, so that stirs up and gets people to watch, but of course it also stirs up people to make threats against us, and it also….creates this perception that unless you are an atheist, you can’t come to our foundation, which Fox has clearly — in many respects it’s a homage — they realize how effective we are, because if you’ll notice, they weren’t spending that much time castigating any other civil rights organization but ours, so I understand that, but we’re not going to take it anymore.”