Non-Christian Air Force Cadets Cite Harassment

[nana]

Non-Christian Air Force Cadets Cite Harassment
By David Kelly
The Los Angeles Times

Wednesday 20 April 2005

The academy, which has received more than 50 complaints, says it is requiring students to attend a class on religious tolerance.

Denver - The Air Force Academy, still recovering from rape and sexual harassment scandals, is facing charges that some Christian cadets have bullied and berated Jews and students of other religious backgrounds.

School officials said Tuesday they had received 55 complaints over the last few months and were requiring students - and eventually all employees - to attend a course on religious tolerance.

"Some complaints had to do with people � saying bad things about persons of other religions or proselytizing in inappropriate places," said academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker. "There have been cases of maliciousness, mean-spiritedness and attacking or baiting someone over religion."

About 90% of the academy's 4,300 cadets identify themselves as Christians; the school's commandant, Brig. Gen. Johnny A. Weida, describes himself as a born-again Christian.

Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and a lawyer in Albuquerque, said that his son Curtis - a sophomore at the academy - had been called a "filthy Jew."

"When I visited my son, he told me he wanted us to go off base because he had something to tell me," Weinstein said. "He said, 'They are calling me a � Jew and that I am responsible for killing Christ.' My son told me that he was going to hit the next one who called him something."

Weinstein, 50, said he wanted Congress to investigate what he said was a pervasive Christian bias at the academy.

"When I was at the academy, there wasn't this institutional notion that if you didn't accept Christ you would burn eternally in hell," he said. "I want the generals to come out and say, 'Yes, we have a systemic problem and we are working to fix it.' "

Air Force officials said they got an inkling of a problem after reading the results of a student survey last May.

Many cadets expressed concern over religious respect and a lack of tolerance. Then "The Passion of the Christ," Mel Gibson's film about the crucifixion, was released. Hundreds of movie posters were pinned up in the academy dining hall advertising the film. Cadets did mass e-mailings urging people to see it.

School leaders denounced the e-mails, saying students should not use government equipment to promote their religion.

At that point, officials began looking into the situation.

"We started getting people coming forward," Whitaker said. "Folks sent e-mails to the chaplain describing events - none of which were reported when they happened. Many of the complaints have been addressed."

Two years ago, the academy's reputation was tarnished by a scandal in which dozens of female cadets said their complaints about sexual assaults had been ignored.

In response to the complaints of religious intolerance, the Colorado Springs, Colo., campus created the RSVP program, which stands for Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People.

The cadets are required to attend a 50-minute class; soon all 9,000 employees of the academy will have to take part.

"A lot of this is just insensitivity or ignorance," Whitaker said. "These are people who are going into a very diverse Air Force, where they will have to deal with people of all faiths."

Weinstein called the RSVP program window dressing for a more serious problem.

"It's Jim Crow, it's lipstick on a pig, it's eye candy," he said. "I love the academy, but they are lying when they say this isn't a systemic problem. Do you know how much courage it takes for these kids to come forward?"

The academy is about 60% Protestant and 30% Catholic. Included in the number of Christian cadets are 120 Mormons. There are 44 Jews and a handful of Hindus and Buddhists at the academy, officials said.

Colorado Springs is home to more than 100 evangelical Christian organizations, including Focus on the Family, the International Bible Society and New Life Church, whose pastor, Ted Haggard, heads the National Assn. of Evangelicals.

Tom Minnery, vice president of public policy at Focus on the Family, denounced any acts of bigotry but said it was Christians who were facing discrimination.

"If 90% of cadets identify themselves as Christian, it is common sense that Christianity will be in evidence on the campus," he said. "Christianity is deeply felt and very important to people ... and to suggest that it should be bottled up is nonsense. I think a witch hunt is underway to root out Christian beliefs. To root out what is pervasive in 90% of the group is ridiculous."

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This is such a crock, the minorities are the ones being harrassed but the grimdamentalist Christians manage to spin it around so that they're the victims in order to furthur justify their harrassment of anyone who isn't a follower of their version of God. Before I'd believe in that vindictive, warmongering, racist, sexist God I'd become an atheist.

[Moses]

The Academies have clearly deteriorated. My theory, based on the one near here, is that this occurred during the Reagan Administration. Ideologues were appointed in the leadership and in the faculty. And these ideologues were not high calibre leaders or thinkers (ideologues never are, I would posit-- but these were typical shabby Reaganite types). Their ideology was also shabby, and included injecting relligion into military matters. E.g. during Reagan, Bin ladin's org was officially referred to as "freedom fighters" at the Academy near here. The students were taught that Bin Laden et al were fighting for religious freedom!! My era was Nuclear Navy and so didn't see this undercurrent of sleezy leadership. There is possibly a connection between the projection of military power, its association w/ religion, and, at the same time, a deterioration of quality in the Academies that makes them incompetents. Dangerous incompetents.

I agree w/ Weinstein-- this is a major problem that needs to be addressed through congressional oversight-- oops-- i forgot-- congress has been taken over too. I think there are only two good members of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate now: Levin and (definitely second) Reed. -- these are the only two who would be concerned about professionalism and quality of the military.

The assertion that these academies should be subjugated to theocrats is in itself frightening. But clearly it has-- look at the leadership.

[Moses]

May 15, 2005

Air Force Chaplain Says She Was Removed for Being Critical
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

A chaplain at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs who has accused her superiors of using their positions to promote evangelical Christianity among the cadets says she was fired from an administrative job because of her outspokenness and was given orders to ship out to Japan.

An Air Force task force, meanwhile, has finished an investigation at the academy into charges by the chaplain and others that officers there were inappropriately proselytizing the cadets.

The academy chaplain, Capt. MeLinda Morton, said she had disagreed with her boss, the academy's chief chaplain, Col. Michael Whittington, after a critical report by a team from the Yale Divinity School was released to the news media in April. The report, dated July 2004 and which she helped write, found that some academy chaplains were insensitive to the religious diversity of the cadets.

Captain Morton said her boss asked her to denounce the report and defend the academy, but she told him she agreed with it. She said that about two weeks later, on May 4, she received an e-mail message from Colonel Whittington dismissing her from her position as his administrative assistant, or "executive officer." However, she remains a chaplain, retains her rank and earns the same salary.

"That is pretty plainly, in my mind, retribution," Captain Morton said. "That makes a big point on a staff. The point is, 'We don't regard Mel as trustworthy, and we humiliate her by firing her.' However, in the whole scope of things, that's pretty minor to what's going on in the academy."

She also said that in March she received orders to transfer to Okinawa, and from there could be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Captain Morton said she was surprised because in December she was told by Colonel Whittington that she would be staying at the academy through summer 2006 to see several projects through. At the time, Captain Morton was developing a sensitivity training program for the academy and was involved in pastoral care for cadets who were victims in a sexual abuse scandal that swept the academy in 2003.

An academy spokesman, Lt. Col. Laurent Fox, said in an interview that Captain Morton's dismissal as executive officer and her reassignment to Okinawa were entirely routine, and not retribution. He said that Captain Morton was removed from her position in order to make way for a new executive officer because Colonel Whittington was leaving the academy in June and Captain Morton is leaving in July.

"We don't see this as a dismissal," Colonel Fox said. "This kind of a transition is a normal process that happens in squadrons across the Air Force."

Colonel Fox said he knew nothing about a meeting that led to a quarrel over the Yale Divinity School report. A request to interview Colonel Whittington was denied because he was being interviewed by the task force investigating the religious climate at the academy. The task force is expected to release a preliminary report on May 23.

Complaints about the religious climate at the academy first surfaced after fliers were passed out in the dining hall advertising a showing of the movie "The Passion of the Christ." An alumnus of the academy, Mikey Weinstein, grew concerned after he visited his son at the school last year and learned that he had been subject to repeated religious slurs because he is Jewish.

Mr. Weinstein, who served in the Reagan administration, said yesterday that he became enraged and set out to see if others had similar experiences. He said he has now spoken with 117 academy cadets, staff members and faculty members who complained about religious intimidation and proselytizing at the academy. Of the 117 people, 8 are Jewish, one is an atheist, about 10 are Catholic and the rest are nonevangelical Protestants.

His son was interviewed by the task force this week, Mr. Weinstein said. He said he was not interviewed by the task force, even though "I have a boatload of information," he said.

"I can't reveal people's names, but I thought it might be useful," he said.