Cross found at academy pagan worship site

[icymist]

An Air Force Academy staffer who helped build a worship area for pagans and other Earth-centered religions says he and others are the victims of a hate crime because someone placed a wooden cross at their site.

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, a self-described pagan who sponsors the group that worships at the site, said the incident was akin to someone leaving a pentacle or a pagan symbol at the Cadet Chapel's altar. The cross, made out of railroad ties, was found Jan. 17 at the worship site.

Longcrier accused academy officials of not taking the group's complaint seriously, telling the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in an e-mail that "we have been thrown under the bus by the system we trusted, and the hate crime against us has been ignored."

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Mikey Weinstein, president of the MRFF and a 1977 academy graduate, characterized the academy’s response as delayed and tepid. He wondered why it took the academy more than two weeks to inform cadets of the incident and said the academy leaders finally spoke out about the incident only after his foundation contacted Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz’s office. Longcrier had requested that the MRFF get involved on his group’s behalf, Weinstein said.

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