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MRFF DEMANDS U.S. AIR FORCE TAKE SWIFT CORRECTIVE AND PUNITIVE ACTION

USAF Academy Promotes
Reprehensible Homophobic
Website as Source for Jewish
Holiday Information

UPDATE: Wednesday, February 20, 2013

USAFA uses horrendously homophobic uncredentialed website to reference Jewish holidays, alongside usage
of the reputable and well-known About.com
to reference Christian holidays.

Shamefully, whoever drafted this abhorrent
"NOTAM" document clearly knew of an extremely
thorough resource for information on Jewish holidays
(click here to view this legitimate reference page), yet instead chose to publicize the execrable "JewFAQ" website throughout the U.S. Air Force Academy.


MRFF FEATURED BY
COLORADO SPRINGS
INDEPENDENT

UPDATE: Air Force called
out for homophobic link

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Selected Article Excerpts:

  • Nearly a week after the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Mikey Weinstein called out the AFA for offensive links on a Web site, the AFA has not corrected the problem — and others within the school are joining Weinstein in calling for immediate action.
  • "MRFF is now making a specific demand to [Lt. Gen.] Mike Gould the superintendent to take down the link," Weinstein said, calling the offending site "pernicious, homophobic, and clearly misogynistic." [...] Weinstein said if his demands are not met by 5:30 p.m. tomorrow, his organization will take action.
  • Weinstein says he is pursuing the issue on behalf of 22 AFA staff members, faculty and cadets who are offended by the links. One of those clients is now announcing his opposition publicly. (A very bold move, given that of the MRFF's 397 [Air Force Academy] clients, he is only the second to go public.) Steven Samuels, Professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership and a 20-year employee, has written a letter to Weinstein for publication.

Please note:
MRFF's original demand letter, Prof. Samuels' letter,
and other letters of support MRFF has received are
included at the following link:

Click to read this article at CS Indy


MRFF FEATURED BY
COLORADO SPRINGS INDEPENDENT

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Click here to read article
(please pay particular attention to the
comment section below the article)

Mikey Weinstein is on the warpath again. The founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who has stirred many a controversy over the years, is now attacking the Air Force for links on a website. The Air Force site gives information about religious holidays, but for the Jewish religion it connects to a Web site that is fiercely homophobic. The Air Force has yet to respond to calls from the Indy seeking a response.

Weinstein's letter is as follows:

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

General Mark A. Welsh III
Chief of Staff, United States Air Force
1670 Air Force Pentagon
Washington, DC 20330-1670

Transmitted via email and UPS Overnight Delivery

Re: [USAFA] HCX NOTAMs Religious Accommodation For the Period: February 2013

Dear General Welsh,

It is with profound bewilderment, shock, and no small amount of disgust that I write this letter to bring to your immediate attention a recent "Notice to Airmen" (NOTAM) of Religious Accommodations that was circulated by the Chaplain’s office of your alma mater and mine, the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). Contained within the February, 2013 Religious Accommodations NOTAM are links to a virulently anti-gay website known as "Judaism 101," or www.jewfaq.org. This reprehensible act represents either a regrettable gross error in judgment and scrutiny or a wretchedly intentional offense only further establishing the already universally known fact that the religious climate at USAFA remains hostile, unwelcoming, and adverse. On behalf of 21 lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) USAFA cadets, faculty members, and staff who comprise its clients for this current matter, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF: www.MilitaryReligiousFreedom.org) firmly protests this foul act and demands immediate remedial action and swift punishment for all of those responsible.

The NOTAM in question is meant to inform cadets and faculty of the major religious holidays occurring in a given month, and what these holidays signify. Each holiday description is accompanied by a link to a non-governmental website. Every Jewish holiday contains a link to "Judaism 101." To quote the USAFA NOTAM (http://www.usafa.edu/hc/NOTAMs%20Feb%202013%20fpd.pdf):

Fast of Esther (Ta’anit Esther) – (21 February 2013, Thursday): Jewish: Ta’anit Esther commemorates Esther's three days of fasting in preparation for her meeting with the king.
a. Website: http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday9.htm
b. POC: Ch, Maj Joshua Narrowe

At a glance, this website that bills itself as an "online encyclopedia of Judaism" appears to be a no-frills resource offering basic information on the Jewish faith. While the website contains information about various Jewish holidays, a cursory perusal of the website’s contents indicates the perniciously hateful predilections and prejudices of its bigoted and virulently homophobic author.

Worse yet, the website isn’t even owned or managed by a remotely recognized Jewish organization or authority on theological matters of the faith, but by a mere private citizen who appears to be wholly and officially unaccredited in such definitive matters. On his "About the Author" page (http://www.jewfaq.org/author.htm), Mr. Tracey Rich states clearly that he does "not claim to be a rabbi or an expert on Judaism; I'm just a traditional, observant Jew who has put in a lot of research." In other words, the "encyclopedia’s" scribe is an admitted hobbyist and dilettante on the matter. This travesty would in itself be innocuous enough if not for the mocked-up authoritative presentation of utterly hate-filled material on his ostensibly "encyclopedic" website. Taken as a whole, this outrage is in essence no different from USAFA linking a Ramadan description to the website of an extremist Muslim, self-appointed "expert" on Islam. Indeed, an equivalent move would be to link the descriptions of Christian holidays, from a Baptist denominational perspective, to the website of Pastor Fred Phelps’ utterly despicable Westboro Baptist Church! The material on Rich’s website includes suggestions that homosexual males should be put to death as per the Torah. Additionally, it includes a speciously hideous comparison of the originating cause of homosexuality to that of kleptomania. This disgrace is an open slap in the face to all lesbian, gay, and bisexual USAFA cadets, faculty, and staff. Additionally, the website contains the absurd and perverse notion that males who masturbate should have their hands chopped off. Quoting just a portion of Mr. Rich’s barbaric explanation of sexuality in regards to the Jewish faith:

Sexual relations between men are clearly forbidden by the Torah. (Lev. 18:22). Such acts are condemned in the strongest possible terms, as abhorrent. The only other sexual sin that is described in such strong terms is the sin of remarrying a woman you had divorced after she had been married to another man. (See Deut. 24:4). The sin of sexual relations between men is punishable by death (Lev. 20:13), as are the sins of adultery and incest….I have seen some modern Orthodox sources suggest that if homosexuality is truly something hardwired in the brain, as most gay activists suggest, then a man who acts upon that desire is not morally responsible for his actions, but I am not sure how wide-spread that opinion is. In any case, it is not quite as liberal a position as some would have you believe: essentially, it is equivalent to saying that a kleptomaniac would not be held morally responsible for stealing.

Jewish law clearly prohibits male masturbation...Jewish law takes a very broad view of the acts prohibited by this passage, and forbids any act of ha-sh'cha'tat zerah (destruction of the seed), that is, ejaculation outside of the vagina. In fact, the prohibition is so strict that one passage in the Talmud states, "in the case of a man, the hand that reaches below the navel should be chopped off." (Niddah 13a)

General Welsh, I hope you are as thunderstruck as I am about this debacle of debasement. This webpage ironically notes a specific warning that its viewers should "please exercise appropriate discretion," something the USAFA chaplain’s office completely and miserably failed to do when it circulated links to this vile website. Considering the shockingly hateful nature of this "USAFA-approved" website's material, and the fact that Mr. Rich openly admits that he's not a Rabbi or any other type of accredited or recognized expert on Judaism, one must seriously question why an allegedly esteemed academic institution such as the United States Air Force Academy chose to use this heinous website as a definitive and comprehensive, universal reference for that particular faith? This perversity is like the 13th stroke of a crazy clock that casts grave doubt not only upon that 13th hour but also every hour that preceded it. Indeed, the inclusion of the jewfaq.org links calls into very serious question the dubious professionalism and/or intentions of the NOTAM compilers, as well as the "wisdom" of the Chaplain’s office, recently honored as USAFA's "Team of the Quarter" (Q4, 2012) for its heavily criticized, exclusionary 2012 "Religious Tolerance and Diversity Conference." This disingenuous and transparent propaganda event abjectly refused to invite non-theists, despite having invited them just two years prior – the only other time such a "religious diversity" conference has been held at USAFA. But it hardly stops there. This very same quantum of suspicion and mistrust is also directed at the administrators and commanders at USAFA, and the entire USAF chain of command leading up to your very own office, General Welsh, at the Pentagon. Given the substantial "unconstitutional train wreck" history of the oppressive religious climate at USAFA and the gross indecency of the nefarious published content on the website, MRFF fervently and immediately demands that links to the website no longer be used forthwith as educational reference points for matters of the Jewish faith. Furthermore, MRFF demands that those parties responsible for this ignominious disaster face swift and decisive corrective measures of punishment for their world-class malfeasance or misfeasance.

There is a saying, General Welsh: "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is completely indistinguishable from malice."

Sincerely,

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq.
Founder and President
Military Religious Freedom Foundation

CC:
Michael B. Donley, Secretary, United States Air Force
Lt. Gen. Richard C. Harding, Judge Advocate General (TJAG), United States Air Force
Lt. Gen. Michael Gould, Superintendent, United States Air Force Academy
Maj. Gen. Howard Stendahl, Chief of Chaplain, United States Air Force
Edith A. Disler, Lt. Col. (USAF) Ret., MRFF Director for LGBT Affairs

To view the letter as sent on MRFF letterhead, click here


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MRFF's Inbox

We receive an enormous amount of emails at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, both from our
supporters and detractors. "MRFF's Inbox" allows us
to share this correspondence with you:

Gay, Jewish and not "Out"

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF, I am one of the MRFF’s clients regarding the current situation with the USAFA Chaplain’s website’s disparagement of LGB human beings. I am a cadet in the Class of 20XX and am in Cadet Squadron XX. I do not have much time as I have to get to class. But I wanted to thank you and MRFF for standing up for those of us who are LGB here at USAFA. I am gay, female and Jewish. I am not “out” either as a gay person or a member of the Jewish faith. Because if I was, life here would be much harder than it already is. It would be brutal. That’s messed up but that’s the way it is. My future in the Air Force would be clouded forever. No matter that DADT is now officially gone.That website used by the USAFA chaplains to “explain” Judaism is so terrible, speaking again as a gay person and a Jew. I may have a choice about being Jewish but I have no choice about my sexuality. I was born “that way” and am not ashamed. Saying that I am like a “kleptomaniac” because I am gay is so low that it does not deserve a reply by caring people. Thak you and the MRFF for taking up this fight.

v/r

C/XX XXXXXX X. XXXXXX (all other ID info. withheld)


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