Washington – The congressman who represents Colorado Springs says guidelines proposed in response to complaints of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy go too far in scrubbing religion from military life.
“We don’t want to do something that keeps someone from living their faith, or from expressing their faith,” Republican Rep. Joel Hefley said Thursday at a meeting of the academy’s Board of Visitors, its oversight panel, in Washington. “We see this in schools across the country. They’re so afraid of anything religious.”
On the other side of the debate, Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, a 1977 academy graduate, filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against the Air Force, citing what he calls a long-standing climate of religious coercion at the academy.
Weinstein alleges his son, now an academy cadet, was called an “(expletive) Jew.” He demands that commanders at the school stop actively recruiting for evangelical Christian religions.
“It is a shocking disgrace that I have been forced to go to federal court to stop the U.S. Air Force from violating fundamental precepts of the Constitution: the separation of church and state and the establishment of a national religion,” Weinstein said.
An Air Force spokesman told The Associated Press in response to the lawsuit that the military branch is “committed to defending the rights of all our men and women, whatever their beliefs.”
The proposed rules on religious tolerance, issued Aug. 29, cover the entire Air Force, not just the academy. They call on the Air Force not to promote one religion over another and define the role of Air Force chaplains and leaders on religious matters.
For example, the rules would allow prayer at an official meeting as long as the idea isn’t to turn the meeting religious but rather to add a heightened sense of solemnity.
Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, the deputy Air Force chief of staff in charge of developing the guidelines, agreed with Hefley that the regulations might lean toward inhibiting expression of religion.
“The ‘nonestablishment’ people are happier than the ‘free exercise’ people right now,” Brady said, referring to two clauses of the Constitution’s First Amendment provisions on religion. “You’re not the first to tell us this.”
But Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the watchdog group whose complaint prompted an investigation into the religious climate at the academy this year, said the new rules are reasonable and the congressional complaints are driven by conservative Christian groups.
“The rules allow for appropriate expression of religious belief, while reminding officers in the command structure not to subject their subordinates to religious proselytizing or pressure,” said group spokesman Robert Boston.
Staff writer Mike Soraghan can be reached at 202-662-8730 or through The Post’s Washington and the West Web log at www.denverpostbloghouse.com/washington.
