Police: Austin shooter belonged to an ultra conservative Christian hate group

[Fred Sanders]

52. I read the comment section, there is an excellent one there, which reads, in part:

"My son is in the Canadian Military. He is also an atheist. I had never considered that that fact would matter. After all, isn’t the purpose of the Military, at least ostensibly, to protect liberty and doesn’t that include freedom from as well as freedom of religion? One would think that if anyone should enjoy these freedoms, it would be the men and women who are willing to risk their lives for little pay to protect them. So when I saw this book on Netgalley, I thought it might give me some insight even though it is about the US Military.

Author Bonnie Weinstein and her husband Michael founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) in 2005 and since then, the Foundation has been nominated six times for the Nobel Peace Prize. However, as Ms Weinstein writes

‘…it has taken an extreme amount of intestinal fortitude to stay the course. We fight against those who, at worse, seem hell-bent on dismantling our Constitution, and at best, seem to have little idea of what they are talking about.’

The book, itself, is a very quick read divided between letters from some of the people who object to the Foundation and a list of some of the important successes it has achieved.

The letters are divided into categories and go from bad to worse . Many of the writers seem to aim their vitriol at Jewish people in general, believing, based solely on their name, that somehow the Weinsteins are motivated by a Jewish anti-Christian bias despite the work of the MRFF in aid of soldiers of all faiths or none including Muslims, atheists, and both Protestants and Catholics who do not share the same beliefs as the far right Christians and do not enjoy being a captive audience to the proselytizing of both fellow enlisted men and officers. The anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, racism, and gay bashing of these letters are, to say the least, shocking especially as it is all coming from self-avowed Christians.

"The worst letters are from the far right Christians who believe that the United States is a Christian nation and that the purpose of the Military is to bring their (ie far-right Dominionist) Christian values to the ‘lost’ nations and peoples of the world even at the end of a gun. If these letters are examples of how they want the world to look, it is truly a terrifying place. Here is an excerpt from one of the nicer and better written letters and, trust me, I am not being sarcastic when I say that:

‘…real Americans are lovers of Jesus Christ…Real Americans are not jews and real Americans know how the muslums have to be eliminated and real Americans know that the faggots deserve no safe and respect and especially not in the army of America.’

Apparently, Real Americans also won’t be tied to the tyranny of spell check or rules of grammar. By the time I finished reading these letters, I literally felt ill – I wanted to take a shower and wash my eyes and brain out. I found myself thinking (and hoping) that the writers of these letters must suffer from a mental illness and that they make up only a tiny fraction of the American population. Nothing, judging from these letters, is too vile, too beyond the pale in the fight to protect the rights of these so-called Christians to force their brand onto those who don’t share their beliefs."

Thank you.