To its founder

Published On: October 13, 2015|Categories: MRFF's Inbox|Comments Off on To its founder|

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About his view of God bless… sign in Hawaii military installation, a letter:

I read the article quoting Mr. Weinstein as having declared that the sign “sends the clear message that your installation gives preference to those who hold religious beliefs over those who do not.”  Clear? No, sir, it is not clear. Can you read English, sir? If I tell you “I like apples”, will you declare to me that I like all kinds of fruits or that I eat only apples? You won’t, but you are with the sign. Did you always have personal hatred toward anything related to Christian God or father figure? But, no matter, people as close minded as you will rarely become self-critical enough to ponder if one’s own opinions are well backed up by reasons and facts. It is just annoying that your organization is deceiving naive Christians into believing as if it protects their freedom of religion. It should be honestly labelled as Club for Disrupting Christians’ Freedom of Religion (CDCFR). Thank you for reading into one ear and out to another.

(name withheld)

 

Dear (name withheld),
Our mission is “well backed up by reasons and facts.”
We are not an atheist organization nor are we anti-Christian. Mikey is Jewish (and prays to the same Father we do 3 times a day) and 80% of the Board, Advisory Board, volunteers and supporters (244 in total) of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) are Christians. In fact, 96% of our 42, 711 soldier clients are Christians. We fight for the rights of Christians more than any other religion. 
 
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) does NOT act on its own but at the request of our soldiers’ and their complaints of the blatant disregard and trampling of the Constitution and the Military Code of Justice; blurring the lines between the separation of church and state. Every complaint is vetted by Mikey who was a JAG lawyer at the Air Force Academy for 10 years; worked in the West Wing under Ronald Reagan; and held positions in private practice. 
 
Our military is secular – which includes those of other faiths or no belief system – and it must not advance one religion over another according to the Constitution, Supreme Court rulings and the Unified Code of Military Justice. Religious activities must be in the hands of the Chaplains on Chapel grounds, not in the hands of the Commander on base-wide grounds.
As defenders of the Constitution we fight for the separation of church and state.
“…but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Article I, III)
 
This means that from the President to Congress to the military – no one’s job is based on their religion.
 
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (Establishment Clause), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (Free Exercise Clause).”(First Amendment)
 
The Establishment Clause means that you cannot favor one religion over another even though it is in the majority. This clause respects the RIGHTS of all religions. Our military is SECULAR and there are people of other faiths that don the uniform that love this country. 
 
The Free Exercise Clause means that our soldiers are free to exercise any religion they want or no religion at all but cannot elevate one God above others.
“Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.” Thomas Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists (1808) ME 16:320. 
 
This is his second known use of the term “wall of separation,” here quoting his own use in the Danbury Baptist letter. 
 
This wording of the original was several times upheld by the Supreme Court as an accurate description of the Establishment Clause.
 
Jefferson’s concept of “separation of church and state” first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, “The word ‘religion’ is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted.” The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the “separation” paragraph from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, “coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured.
 
In 1878 “separation of church and state” became part of the Establishment Clause BY LAW.
 
The Supreme Court heard the Lemon v. Kurtzman case in 1971 and ruled in favor of the Establishment Clause.
 
Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the Lemon Test.
 
Government action violates the Establishment Clause unless it:
1. Has a significant secular (i.e., non-religious) purpose,
2. Does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion,
3. Does not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion.
 
The sign fits into all 3 and therefore it is a violation of the Establishment Clause. 
 
Parker v. Levy: 
 
“This Court has long recognized that the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society… While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment, the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections. … The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it… Speech [to include religious speech] that is protected in the civil population may nonetheless undermine the effectiveness of response to command.  If it does, it is constitutionally unprotected.” (Emphasis added) Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 1974
 
The sign broke both the Lemon Test and Parker v. Levy and is constitutionally unprotected.
Under the aforementioned laws, the sign must be moved to chapel grounds or allow signs of other religions and those of no faith, to be placed beside the “God Bless” sign currently standing.
 
Pastor Joan
MRFF Advisory Board Member
Dear (name withheld),
Mikey was occupied with important issues and asked if I could reply to you while he was in the bathroom.

Disclaimer:  I’m not an official spokesperson for Mikey or MRFF and nothing I write should be construed as official MRFF policy or as having Mikey’s specific approval.

 

I am also writing under a pseudonym (that’s a ‘false name’ to you), because I have no desire to be trolled by religious nut cases at my personal e-mail address.
 

Be advised that not only can Mikey read English sir, he can also understand it; which you evidently do not.

Your convoluted apple analogy defies understanding so let me just say that when a sign placed in contravention of one’s sworn duty to ‘protect & defend’ the U.S. Constitution, by one who should clearly know better, it is a defiant negation of all our nation is supposed to stand for – one of those things being freedom of, and from, state religion, which the posting of the ‘Dog Bless’ sign at MCB Hawaii clearly is.

 

As for hating Christians; that’s a really juvenile accusation since the majority of those whom Mikey defends (>95%) are Christians; just not the kind you’d approve of… so I guess that, in your book (and that of the Hawaii base C.O’s book), they don’t count.  And, there’s the rub.  What you advocate is that those whom you approve of get the benefits offered by society, but those whom you disapprove of get hind teat, if that.

 

While you chide Mikey as ‘deceiving naive Christians’ it is you who subscribe to a christofascist theocratic theology in which respect for the individual is allocated only to those individuals you approve of; not to all.

 

Thanks you for reading into one year and out the other.

 

Marshalldoc.

 

Dear Joan,

The laws you mention below, don’t they apply to the group of people that make up military and/or government? The individual or group of individuals who put the sign do NOT make up either government or military, and therefore the laws don’t apply to them. Also, the speech prohibited on military members has to give some sort of problem in ability to command, and the sign’s presence does not go against it, so that particular law does not apply to this case….

(name withheld)

 

It doesn’t matter who put it up. It’s on government property and it must adhere to the laws.

Joan Slish

 

Dear (name withheld),
Can you read the Constitution? The separation of church and state, initiated by the founders, requires that the government not be seen as in any way implying or suggesting the favoring of one religion or belief system over another. For that reason, the MRFF asked that the sign in question, having been complained about by members of the military who felt it violated said separation, be moved to the chapel grounds, where it rightfully belongs, or simply taken down.

How is it that you and other apparently thin-skinned Christians find such a simple observation about an obvious violation to be an attack on Christianity? You’re quick to criticize Mr. Weinstein as being “close minded” while the blinders you sport insist a dark conspiracy exists because of a simple desire to protect the religious freedom of the women and men in the military.

Your message reeks of the fear that someone is trying to take something away from you. It’s a rather pathetic demonstration of a lack of the very faith you attempt to proclaim.

Mike Farrell

(MRFF Board of Advisors)

 

Dear (name withheld) –

I am writing in response to your October 12, 2015 email to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (“MRFF”).  As upset as you appear to be with MRFF, I assure you it is nothing to how upset I am about the time I lost attempting to decipher your rambling, ignorant, stream-of-consciousness email.

 

You attempt to express some vague political opinions about Planned Parenthood and nuclear weapons, yet you fail to mention a single act by MRFF with which you disagree.  The closest you come to even almost referencing the work of MRFF is the statement, “Like it or not the [C]onstitution is full of our Christian God.”  This is simply not a fact – there is absolutely no mention of God anywhere in the Constitution.

 

To the contrary, the Founders very specifically decided to create a government based on democratic principles, rather than religious principles.  The First Amendment protects the freedom to practice any religion (or no religion) – not just Christianity.  It further prohibits the establishment of any particular religion.  Additionally, Article 6 provides, “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.”

 

These are the constitutional protections we fight to ensure for all brave men and women in uniform.  You say you will fight to defend your rights, yet we are the ones fighting to defend rights.  From what I can tell, you don’t do anything other than steal valuable oxygen from those around you.

 

Blessed be,

 

Tobanna Barker

MRFF Legal Affairs Coordinator

 

Dear (name withheld),
First, apologies for the late reply, this mailbox is only checked occasionally.

It’s not ‘my’ implication, as you imply.

Allowing “God bless” sign on a government property is enough to be recognized as pushing for “state religion”, so you imply.

It’s U.S. law upheld repeatedly in our legal system based on our Constitution.  Why do you imply otherwise?  The unrelenting pressure by those who desire a ‘Christian’ theocracy despite clear & repeated legal precedent rejecting that pressure suggests a motive other than that of exercising the ‘will of the people’; rather exercising the will of a few whose beliefs allow them to think their theology overrules the peoples’ will.

Your reference to the odious Saudi theocracy, non-sequitur though it is, is relevant in that it personifies the very religious excesses engendered by an overarching governmental religion.  Our founders recognized that risk (having fled a Christian theocracy in England) and specifically wrote it out of our governmental structure.  Saying that the un-Constitutional sign on government property (although property specifically designated for such signs exists on the base’s chapel grounds) is ‘nothing compared to SA’ is to suggest that the Saudi theocracy is an appropriate yardstick for American governance and that anything less odious than their oppressive regulations is therefore okay…  did you think that through before you wrote it?

Lastly, the non-religious use of ‘’Dog’’ by non-believers & others has nothing to do with either belief in the divine (upon which the sign is based, otherwise why call on Dog for ‘blessings’?) or any belief that such supplications are anything more than breaking wind.  Does my expletive ‘Dogdammit’ when I stub my toe on a chair suggest a belief that Dog will actually damn the offending piece of furniture to the flaming pits of hell for all eternity?  Please, use logic.  Your argument suggests that any ‘Dog’ equivalent; ‘Allah’, ‘Buddha’, ‘Shiva’, ‘Odin’, or any other ‘Dog’ figure’s name would be equally non-offensive and non-coercive, although I doubt you’d stand for it… and neither would MRFF although MRFF demands equal billing for those entities absent compliance with the letter of the Constitution.

Marshalldoc.

Allowing “God bless” sign on a government property is enough to be recognized as pushing for “state religion”, so you imply. How about Saudi Arabia where its state religion does not allow other religion and even criminalizes an attempt to evangelize in its territory? The sign by itself on a piece of USA government property is nothing compared to SA, don’t you think?
Besides, the word “God” is used not only by Christians but also by atheists and others not affiliated with religion, so I don’t see how the sign equals coercing one religion.
Any reply to my comments above?
(name withheld)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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