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From: (Active Duty Junior Enlisted Member's e-mail address withheld)
Subject: Thank you to the MRFF from 38 junior enlisted troops
Date: February 10, 2024 at 11:02:04 AM MST
To: Information Weinstein <mikey@militaryreligiousfreedom.org>
To Mr. Mikey Weinstein and the MRFF organization.
We are 38 junior enlisted (military branch withheld) members on active duty stationed with the (unit designation withheld) at (military installation name withheld). We are proud war fighters in a combat ready unit. 27 of us are Christians and the rest are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and those of our battle buddies who describe as nonreligious.
Earlier this past week we were notified via our usual unit comms. channels that there was to be a special “Valentine’s Day Event” to be held in our largest HQ facility assembly area during normal duty day lunch hours. Attendees were advised to be in uniform and that they could bring spouses and kids.
We all thought this might be fun until the rest of the info followed. The “theme” was to be “Jesus Wants You To Be His Valentine”. At first we thought it was some type of bad joke. But then we saw in the follow on comms. that a military chaplain stationed here who is a Capt. would attend and would deliver a Valentine’s sermon on how the "greatest love of all is Jesus’ love for all of us”. After the sermon there was to be something called an “altar call” for those attendees who wanted to accept Christ right then and there as their personal savior.
Now we knew for sure that this was as jacked up and FUBAR as possible!
We did some digging and found out that 2 junior officers and 2 senior enlisted troops were the organizers and all 4 of them belong to some NGO military Christian outfits which push to get (military branch name withheld) troops to become full on Christians.
2 of us met with the organizers to tell them that this was FUBAR but as they are all senior to us in our chain it was hard to do this w/o getting jacked up and FUBAR’ed ourselves. They were totally angry that we were against this event. They actually accused us of being “anti-Christian and woke” by trying to protest it. They told us that it wasn’t made mandatory (their announcement comms. never said that by the way. Not that that would’ve made a difference) and that "Valentine's Day has always been a Christian event as it’s all about SAINT Valentine". They taunted us by sarcastically asking if we were also “now going to protest SAINT Patricks Day”?
They denied our objections and told us “if you don’t like it just don’t come then.” As if being in this tight combat unit we really had any choice?
Most of us don't have college degrees yet but we KNOW when something stinks like this did. The (military branch name withheld) depends on everyone watching each other’s 6 especially with a large combat unit like ours. They beat that into us from the get-go with good reason in basic and follow on combat training. This “Jesus Wants You To Be His Valentine” event destroys all of that.
We did some fast web research and immediately discovered the MRFF. We called Mikey Weinstein who answered his own phone and got him some key contact information about our commander which Mikey asked us for. He told us that this event violated the time and place and manner requirements of the law and our own (military branch name withheld) regs.
48 hours later we received word that the entire event had been scrapped! And there’s now some sort of (military unit designation withheld)-level investigation going on as to how this thing ever got as far as it did w/o our command section apparently even knowing?
All the props and respect and thanks in the world to Mikey and the MRFF! MRFF got it done!
The only thing now is whether any of us who protested will face any kickback reprisal?
If they try that we will go right back to the MRFF as a shield.
(All active duty military member’s names, ranks, MOS/AFSC, unit, and installation withheld)
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