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From: Michael L Weinstein <mikeyw4444@icloud.com>
Subject: Unconstitutional Violations Under Your Leadership at Lexington, Kentucky VAMC, Troy Bowling Campus
Date: November 14, 2023 at 8:30:27 AM MST
To: Russel Armstead
Cc: Tanya J Bradsher, Mikey Weinstein <mikey@militaryreligiousfreedom.org>
Russell Armstead
Executive Director
Lexington, Kentucky Veterans Administration Health Care System
RE: Executive Director Armstead, on behalf of its 12 military veteran client patients at your Lexington, Kentucky VAMC facility, MRFF demands that you immediately remove the illicit, unconstitutional Christian proselytizing material (from the “Gideons International”) organization from the referenced POW/MIA “Missing Man Table” display which is under your personal control and direction.
Dear Executive Director Russell Armstead,
My name is Mikey Weinstein, and I am the head of a large civil rights organization called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF, https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org). MRFF currently represents well over 85,000 active duty, reserve, National Guard, and military veteran clients as well as many clients among the 17 national security agencies and DHS (Coast Guard) and DOT (U.S. Maritime Service). MRFF’s specific mission is to protect the constitutionally-mandated wall separating church and state in the above-referenced governmental venues.
MRFF has been retained by a dozen military veterans who are also patients under your leadership as Executive Director at your Lexington, Kentucky Veterans Administration Medical Center (VAMC), Troy Bowling Campus, 1101 Veterans Drive, Lexington, Kentucky, 40502-2235.
Of these 12 honorable American military veteran patients/MRFF clients, 7 are practicing Christians, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, 2 practice the Jewish faith, 1 practices the Islamic faith, and 2 follow non-faith traditions.
Executive Director Armstead, I won’t belabor the point here. The POW/MIA “Missing Man Table" display in the main lobby at your Troy Bowling Campus VAMC facility has sectarian Christian proselytizing material from the "Gideons International” organization prominently displayed on it to the utter exclusion of any other religious faith on non-faith tradition. If you are perchance somehow NOT familiar with the absolutely sectarian “Gideons International” Christian proselytizing mission, please just Google it and you will then clearly see, sir.
Please see the e-mail below from one of our 12 MRFF client complainants on this sordid matter, which provides excellent detail as to the scurrilous, unconstitutional violations occurring under your direction, sir.
Executive Director Armstead, you’re allowing this partisan display to promote and proselytize Christianity and ONLY Christianity is an atrocious and singularly ignominious act of illicit, unconstitutional Christian supremacy, exclusivity, triumphalism, and exceptionalism. It viciously violates not only the No Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and its construing caselaw but your own VA regulations as well.
The display of Christian proselytizing material as the sole religious item in a VA medical center display is in clear violation of the VA’s own regulations and policies regarding religious displays, which state that a display “should not elevate one belief system over others,” such as VA Directive 0022, "Religious Symbols in VA Facilities," January 31, 2020, (emphasis added):
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