Christian fundamentalist bigotry reigns at US Air Force Academy

[IndianaGreen]

This is not new news! Back in the 1970s a lawsuit was filed by ACLU on behalf of some Air Force cadets that objected to the mandatory Sunday chapel attendance at the academy.

Christian fundamentalism is as much a threat to our freedoms as Bin Laden's version of Islam, and Kahane's version of Judaism.

Christian fundamentalist bigotry reigns at US Air Force Academy
By Patrick Martin
30 April 2005

Evangelical Christians among the officers and cadets at the US Air Force Academy have created an atmosphere of systematic intolerance towards Jewish and non-religious students, according to reports by minority students and investigations by off-campus groups concerned about the rise of fundamentalist bigotry.

On April 19, academy officials revealed that 55 complaints against religious harassment by Christian fundamentalists have been filed in the last four years, including “saying bad things about persons of other religions or proselytizing in inappropriate places,” a spokesman said.

In response to the complaints, the academy has created a program called RSVP, for Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People, which consists of a 50-minute class that all 4,300 cadets are required to attend. Similar sensitivity sessions will be held for the 9,000 staff and employees of the academy.

According to an account published in the Los Angeles Times, Mikey Weinstein, a graduate of the academy and lawyer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who is Jewish, was outraged by the religious bigotry expressed against his son Curtis when he entered the academy. His son was called a “filthy Jew,” among other slurs.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/acad-a30.shtml

[Jim Sagle]

1. The neocon right will pretend there's nothing to see here....

just as sure as God made little green footballs.

[IndianaGreen]

6. I don't hear any of our LGF "friends" complain about the anti-Semitism

at the Air Force Academy. Why is that? Is conservative unity more precious than facing up to the inherent anti-Semitism of the Religious Right?

[Spinzonner]

2. How else are they going to find out who Jesus want them to bomb ?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. There's an article about the fundamentalists of Colorado Springs

in the current issue of Harper's.

Scary, scary people.

[Joey Liberal]

4. Close the Air Force Academy

The Air Force Academy is a waste of the tax payers money. So is West Point and the Naval Academy. Let the right wing cadets attend Bob Jones University, and let THEM pay for it. Those service academies have lost their way and need to go.

[Technowitch]

5. Do you *REALLY* want Bob Jones "University"...

...training and indoctrinating our elite armed forces officers?

The Academies do have some serious housecleaning to do, in my opinion, but at least they still have a sense of honor and duty. I'll take that over radical theology any day.

Throwing the baby out with the bath-water otherwise...