Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense – Pete Hegseth – is apparently working to ban the military from contacting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. This is more nonsense from America’s worst president ever and his SecDef toady.
No member of the military may be compelled to curtail – except in the most limited of military circumstances and when it directly impacts military discipline, morale and the successful completion of a specific military goal – the free exercise of their religious practices or beliefs.
I can understand Trump not understanding this policy but am somewhat surprised that Hegseth, who served, apparently is lost in toadiness to his boss.
Start with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
MRFF Mission
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
MRFF recognizes that military life requires individual adherence to shared patriotic principles. MRFF also recognizes the need for military personnel to at times temporarily relinquish some Constitutionally granted personal freedoms for the sake of military discipline and objectives.
However, MRFF believes that religious faith is a Constitutionally guaranteed freedom that must never be compromised, except in the most limited of military circumstances, because of its fundamental importance to the preservation of the American nation and the American way of life.
Additionally, MRFF adheres strongly to the principle that religious faith is a deeply personal matter, and that no American has the right to question another American’s beliefs as long as they do not unwontedly intrude on the public space or the privacy or safety of another individual.
Therefore, MRFF holds that:
No religion or religious philosophy may be advanced by the United States Armed Forces over any other religion or religious philosophy.
No member of the United States Armed Forces may be compelled in any way to conform to a particular religion or religious philosophy.
No member of the United States Armed Forces may be compelled in any way to witness or engage in any religious exercise.
No member of the military may be compelled to curtail – except in the most limited of military circumstances and when it directly impacts military discipline, morale and the successful completion of a specific military goal – the free exercise of their religious practices or beliefs.
And this from Mikey Weinstein:
I take ABSOLUTELY no pleasure in the fact that the hideous, fundamentalist Christian nationalist, and overall piece of shit Pete Hegseth’s rise to Secretary of Defense, specifically, and the ascendancy of tRump and MAGA, generally, completely prove me and MRFF to have been 100% correct regarding the above quote so many years ago.
But even my words from seventeen years ago, as foreboding as they were, do not adequately express the Christian nationalist cataclysm now occurring in our armed forces. For that, there are no words.
Behold, my friends, the latest of the slew of official military memoranda and other documents that have been flooding into the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) over the past few weeks.
This memo, released yesterday by our nation’s oldest military academy, West Point, orders all cadet clubs for women, blacks, and other ethnic minorities to be immediately disbanded, and all other clubs to be re-evaluated to make sure they’re MAGA-approved. (The academy’s Christian clubs will no doubt be spared in this purge of non-MAGA-conforming student activities.)
… Then there’s one, also from yesterday, which went Army-wide, implementing Trump’s anti-trans executive order, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”
If you are not able or otherwise unwilling to comprehend the in-your-effing face significance here, I am truly very sorry for you.
Perhaps expeditiously expand your reading list to include George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale?
Welcome to Nazi Germany, circa 1933.
You have a choice; either collaborate or resist: ethically, morally, and legally.
MRFF and I have made our choice.
If you are reading this, you will know what that choice is.
Now FREAKING make yours!
The Saga of Crooked Donald 