Michael L. Weinstein

Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein is an attorney, businessman, and former Air Force officer. He is the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and author of With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military in which he describes his fight against alleged coercive Christian Fundamentalist practices by some members of the military.

Military Service and Education

Weinstein graduated with honors from the United States Air Force Academy in 1977, consistently earning placement on the Superintendent's List throughout his studies. A second generation graduate of USAFA, Weinstein eschewed the option of becoming a pilot, instead making the decision to study law, arguing that "The law was what protected us, what kept us free... I was good at writing, good at arguing." It was here that the young Weinstein encountered a string of incidents of psychological harassment (including notes emblazoned with swastikas and anti-Semitic slurs), death threats, and two violent incidents of hazing where he was ambushed, beaten, and in one incident, hospitalized. ^[1]

Beginning his legal studies shortly after his appointment as chief of the secure systems branch of the 2049th Communications and Installations Group at McClellan Air Force Base, Weinstein soon qualified for the Air Force law school program and earned his juris doctorate degree in three years. Weinstein subsequently served as a U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General (JAG) officer for ten years. ^[2]

Legal and Political Career

He also spent over three years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House as legal counsel to the White House. He began with an appointment to the Office of Budget Management, and was soon named the Committee Management Officer of the much-publicized Iran-Contra Investigation in his capacity as Assistant General Counsel of The White House Office of Administration, Executive Office of the President of the United States.

Weinstein served as the first General Counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corporation and left Mr. Perot's employ in 2006 to focus his full-time attention on the nonprofit foundation he founded in March 2006 to directly battle the evangelical, fundamentalist religious right; the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This foundation was formed as a watchdog organization to protect religious freedom in the Military in accordance with Department of Defense Directive 1300.17, Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services.^[3][4]

Advocacy and Activism

Weinstein's ire was provoked when, contrary to his assumptions that the religious and constitutional climate at USAFA had improved since leaving USAFA, his younger son Curtis, an Academy cadet, was exposed to Christian proselytizing of an insultingly patronizing and anti-Semitic nature, including questions from upperclassmen inquiring "How it felt to kill Jesus". The hegemony of evangelical intolerance at the Academy was also confirmed by Weinstein older son Casey, a 2004 Academy graduate, who alleges that "Senior cadets would sit down and say, 'How do you feel about the fact that your family is going to burn in hell?'" ^[5]. This galvanized Weinstein into challenging the perceived religious intolerance present within the ranks of the military in general and the US Air Force Academy in particular; Weinstein later recounted in his autobiography, "It is naturally of great personal consequence that Curtis's and Casey's encounters with religious bigotry occurred at the Academy, which is where I first encountered it as well. Of course, from a historical perspective, Jews have always had the unfortunate role of scapegoat thrust upon them. But I'm under no illusions that what happened to my Jewish sons and my Christian daughter-in-law could not have happened to the son of a patriotic American Muslim or Buddhist or agnostic or atheist. I wouldn't be surprised if it already had." ^[6]

In October 6, 2005, following those and several other alleged incidents of forceful and aggressive evangelical Christian proselytizing towards Air Force Academy cadets, Weinstein sued the United States Air Force for its lax enforcement of safeguards against the intrusion of fundamentalist religious campaigns within the U.S. Air Force. U.S. District Judge James A. Parker, who presided over Weinstein v. U.S. Air Force, dismissed the case on a technicality, stating that "No Plaintiff claims to have personally experienced any of the things described under “Factual Allegations"... while at the Academy or after leaving the Academy."The only fair reading of Plaintiffs’ factual allegations limits them to practices and events at the Academy and policies as they affect persons, other than Plaintiffs, at the Academy...Not a single Plaintiff has alleged any personal factual situation that has allegedly impinged on that Plaintiff’s constitutional rights since the Plaintiff left the Academy." ^[7]

On September 17, 2007, Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a Federal lawsuit [1] in Kansas City, KS against the United States Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Major Freddy J. Welborn, accusing the defendants of allowing a "pervasive and pernicious pattern and practice of unconstitutional religious rape of freedoms of our U.S. military.^[8] On March 5, 2008, the lawsuit was re-filed in Federal court to include allegations that co-plaintiff Army Specialist Jeremy Hall was denied a promotion due to the filing of the original lawsuit in September 2007.[2]

In the wake of the Fort Hood shooting, Weinstein attracted attention once again to the possibility that a hostile environment dominated by "fundamentalist Christians" constantly trying to proselytize others played some role in contributing to the psychological pressure on Major Nidal Malik Hasan. Hasan himself reportedly had made claims that he had faced harassing insults related to his Arab ethnic background and Islamic faith. ^[9].

Weinstein's forthright expression of concern regarding religious intolerance aimed towards military members of the Muslim faith was significant, insofar as "Mainstream Jewish groups had generally declined to comment on the shooting at Fort Hood" in its immediate aftermath despite numerous reports of Islamophobia within the armed forces^[10]. Such incidents have included a US Air Force Academy event featuring the virulently anti-Muslim "ex-terrorist" Walid Shoebat, a man widely suspected to have falsified his history of Palestinian militancy for the sake of profit-seeking while advancing a radically evangelical Christian agenda which includes fervent Christian Zionism and an argument that "most Muslims seek to impose Sharia in the United States," and that to prevent this, state security agencies must "look at the entire pool of Muslims in a community." ^[11]

A significant MRFF victory ^[12] arrived in 2011 when the US Air Force, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Foundation, revised its training course taught to nuclear missile launch officers. The course, defended by a spokesman for the Air Force's Air Training and Education Command as meant to "“help folks understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. In the missile launch industry, it takes a certain mindset to be able to walk in the door and say, yes, I can do that” ^[13] included a presentation, Who Are You When No One Is Looking: Five Ethical Principles For Service To The Air Force, which largely revolves around Biblical imagery and scriptural text as well as prominently-featured quotations from the Christian Just War Theory of St. Augustine of Hippo in addition to former Nazi Party member and SS Officer Wernher Von Braun, who is quoted as stating that "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon (the ballistic missile) to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world best be secured."^[14] MRFF client and missile officer training attendee Damon Bosetti recounted to the media that he and his Air Force colleagues would refer to the religious portion of the ethics training course as the "Jesus loves nukes speech". ^[15]

Awards and Recognition

In 2006, Mikey Weinstein was named as one of Forward Magazine's "Forward 50", a list of the most influential Jews in America ^[16]. Weinstein has also received a nomination for the JFK’s Profile in Courage Award and received the Buzzflash Wings of Justice Award ^[17]. In addition Mikey was honored by a distinguished civil rights organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice with the Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Risk-Taker Award, in honor of having taken extraordinary risks in pursuit of justice. ^[18]

Mikey Weinstein's organization MRFF has been nominated twice in 2010, and once in 2011, for the Nobel Peace Prize. ^[19]

Weinstein will be named Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s 2011 “Person of the Year” at a meeting of the AU Board of Trustees on Nov. 07, 2011, at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. “We’ve never named a ‘Person of the Year’ before, but I can’t think of anyone more deserving than Mikey Weinstein,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Esq., executive director of Americans United. “Time and again, he has stuck his neck out to defend the religious liberty rights of the men and women serving our country in the armed forces.”

Media

Weinstein appeared in the film adaptation of James Carroll's best selling book, "Constantine's Sword", which details the 2,000 year history between the Church and the Jews.

Weinstein has appeared many times on major cable and network TV news networks and is a frequent guest on national radio networks as well. His constitutional activism has been covered and profiled extensively in the print media including the Associated Press[3], The New York Times[4], the Washington Post[5], the L.A. Times[6], the Denver Post[7], The Nation [8], The Guardian[9] and many other national and international newspapers and periodicals[10] including Time magazine[11].

References

1. ^ Weinstein, Michael L. and Seay, Davin, p. 188 (2006). With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military. Thomas Dunne Books.
2. ^ Weinstein, Michael L. and Seay, Davin, p. 14 (2006). With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military. Thomas Dunne Books.
3. ^ "DoD Directive 1300.17, "Accommodation of Religious Practices Within the Military Services"". DTIC.mil. 3 February 1988. Archived from the original on 18 November 2007. http://web.archive.org/web/20071118131744/http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/130017.htm. 
4. ^ "About the Foundation". Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Archived from the original on February 19, 2009. http://web.archive.org/web/20090219002445/http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org/about2.html. 
5. ^ Harwood, Matt. Alternet. (July 12, 20). http://www.alternet.org/belief/147511/meet_the_military_man_battling_dangerous_christian_extremism_in_the_military/?page=entire
6. ^ Weinstein, Michael L. and Seay, Davin, p. 208 (2006). With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military. Thomas Dunne Books.
7. ^ "Air Force Academy Case Will Be Appealed". Americans United for Separation of Church and State. December 2006. http://www.au.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8766&abbr=cs_. 
8. ^ An Interview with Michael Weinstein , Philadelphia Jewish Voice (February 2008 Issue). Retrieved on 2008-05-27.
9. ^ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6511591/Fort-Hood-shooting-Nidal-Malik-Hasan-said-Muslims-should-rise-up.html
10. ^ http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/05/islamophobia-in-the-military-major-concern/
11. ^ Priest, Dana and Arkin, William (December 2010) Monitoring America, Washington Post
12. ^ The Washington Post, August 2 2011Air Force suspends ethics course that used Bible passages to train missile launch officers Retrieved August 2, 2011.
13. ^ The Washington Post, August 2 2011Air Force suspends ethics course that used Bible passages to train missile launch officers Retrieved August 2, 2011.
14. ^ Leopold, Jason. Truth-out.org July 27, 2011 http://www.truth-out.org/air-force-cites-new-testament-ex-nazi-train-officers-ethics-launching-nuclear-weapons/1311776738 Retrieved August 2, 2011.
15. ^ The Washington Post, August 2 2011Air Force suspends ethics course that used Bible passages to train missile launch officers Retrieved August 2, 2011.
16. ^ http://www.forward.com/forward-50-2006/
17. ^ http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/newsletters/2007-07/award.jpg
18. ^ http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/press-releases/jfrej_release.html
19. ^ MRFF Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

External links

• Military Religious Freedom Foundation
• "These people should be court-martialed", Salon.com

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