A military watchdog organization filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a US Army major, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The suit charges the Pentagon with widespread constitutional violations by allegedly trying to force the soldier to embrace evangelical Christianity and then retaliating against him when he refused.
The complaint, filed in US District Court in Kansas City, by the nonprofit Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), on behalf of Jeremy Hall, an Army specialist currently on active duty in Speicher, Iraq, alleges that Hall's First Amendment rights were violated beginning last Thanksgiving when, because of his atheist beliefs, he declined to participate in a Christian prayer ceremony commemorating the holiday.
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1 comment:
It always strikes me as odd that the US was founded by people who were supposedly trying to escape the religious intolerance of England, has it written into their constitution that there will be no state religion but need to go to court to get such things enforced.
Over here, in the bad old country, we get by just by refusing to do as we're told (and the armed forces don't insist on such obedience) where religion is concerned.
So let's go through this again: a bunch of people leave a place of religious intolerance in order to set up a state that eventually becomes more religiously intolerant than… …oh, dear, still not sorted this out.
Please explain.
PS I don't hold anyone personally responsible unless they absolutely deserve it :-)
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