LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This WSW article talks about the 'whitewash of systematic bigotry' perpetrated at the USAF Academy. An excerpt:

If leaders at the US Air Force Academy—which trains young men and women to serve as officers in a branch of the US military—promote and tolerate religious discrimination against non-Christians, and openly espouse evangelical views in the course of official academy functions, this is clearly a violation of these Constitutional protections against the “establishment” of religion.

However, among the Christian-right forces which dominate the Bush administration and the Republican Party, and which are exercising increasing control over the functioning of all aspects of government in the US, any affront to the effective institutionalization of Christian fundamentalism is heresy and akin to religious persecution.

Colorado Springs, where USAFA is located, is home to more than 100 evangelical Christian organizations, including Focus on the Family, the New Life Church and the International Bible Society.

Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s vice president of public policy, commented following the release of the Yale Divinity School study on the Air Force Academy, “If 90 percent of cadets identify themselves as Christians, it is common sense that Christianity will be in evidence on the campus.... I think a witch-hunt is under way to root out Christian beliefs. To root out what is pervasive in 90 percent of the group is ridiculous.”

Representative David Obey (Democrat of Wisconsin), a Catholic, was denounced by fundamentalist forces for proposing language in an amendment to a Defense Department appropriations bill that called on the secretary of the Air Force to develop a plan to ensure that the Air Force Academy “maintains a climate free from coercive religious intimidation and inappropriate proselytizing by Air Force officials and others in the chain-of-command at the Air Force Academy.”

Representative John Hostettler (Republican of Indiana) attacked Obey for waging “the long war on Christianity in America [that] continues today on the floor of the House of Representatives.... Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can’t help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians.”

In fact, the majority of congressional Democrats have remained silent on the controversy at the Air Force Academy, fearful of being cast as “anti-Christian” and lacking in the supposed moral values espoused by the Christian right.