Pentagon Hires Anti-Conservative Activist Who Branded Fundamentalists as 'Christian Monsters'
The Pentagon has hired a Jewish activist who has been outspoken in his opposition to conservative Christianity to serve as a consultant and develop new policies on religious tolerance.
Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, has spoken out against a number of conservative Christian groups, calling them "Fundamentalist Christian Monsters."
MRFF, which says its primary goal is to advocate for the separation of church and state, has said that most of its members are Christian. Weinstein, however, has decried what he calls "virulent religious oppression" coming from conservative groups, comparing them to "bigots" from the Deep South during the civil rights era.
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"These days, when anyone attempts to bravely stand up against virulent religious oppression, these monstrosities cry out alligator tears in overflowing torrents and scream that it is, in fact, THEY who are the dispossessed, bereft and oppressed. C'mon, really, you pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers?" Weinstein wrote for The Huffington Post.
Weinstein has expressed disagreement especially with the conservative argument for traditional marriage, writing about pro-family groups: "The extremist, militant nature of these virulently homophobic organizations' rhetorically-charged propaganda."
Some of the conservative groups Weinstein has targeted include Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, and the Chaplains Alliance for Religious Liberty. He said that he agrees with the Southern Poverty Law Center's designation of these organizations as "hate groups."
In a column for Breitbart News, Ken Klukowski, senior fellow for religious liberty at the Family Research Council and on faculty at Liberty University School of Law, accused media sources of remaining silent on the Pentagon's appointment of a "foaming-at-the-mouth," "fanatical secularist."
"The military – America's most heroic and noble institution – includes countless people of faith, and this represents a radical departure from the U.S. military's warm embrace of people of faith in its ranks," Klukowski wrote.
According to Breitbart News, Weinstein will be pushing a policy to court-martial military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.
The Washington Post noted comments Weinstein has made comparing preaching to rape:
"This is a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished," the MRFF founder said in an interview.
According to MRFF, Weinstein is a registered Republican and a 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He also spent three years in the West Wing of the Reagan administration as legal counsel for the White House, and has been named by Forward Magazine as one of the most influential Jewish people in America.
