First of all I would like to express my appreciation for all the feedback, suggestions and support I received in response to my previous post regarding religious discrimination at the Iowa City VA Hospital & Clinic. I followed up on many of your suggestions, including contacting Congressman Loebsack’s office – an idea I got from Mchll’s note. I sent out a bevy of e-mails late last night and by first thing this morning I heard back from Congressional staffers in Loebsack’s Iowa City office.
Unfortunately, I didn’t hear back from any other Congressional offices – in fact, I learned that now days the majority of Congressmen/women automatically screen out e-mails from outside their represented Congressional Districts. I received at least a half dozen e-mails apologizing, but explaining that my e-mail would neither be viewed, nor responded to because I live outside a particular Congressional District or represented State.
Thankfully my new contacts within Congressman Loebsack’s office seem very credible in their desire to assist me in my on-going conflict with the Iowa City VA. I have also managed to obtain a new contact within Iowa’s ACLU. Both of these developments, I believe, bode well for a positive outcome in the long term.
This morning I also had two other phone conversations related to this issue. I had a follow-up conversation with Kate Fiegen, the business and health care reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. I think we’ll see an article come out of this soon. I also got a phone call from an old friend, a Rabbi in Tzvat, Israel. He had received word of my struggle through a mutual friend of ours and called to give me the name and telephone number of an American Air Force reservist who had recently visited him in Tzvat. This reservist had given him first-hand accounts of heavy-handed Christian proselytizing (very nearly coerced conversion, actually) in the United States Air Force. Obviously I plan to follow up with this reservist beginning tomorrow and will assist him in any way possible in seeking a remedy for this egregious behavior. At the bare minimum I will put him in touch with my friend, Mikey Weinstein, Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation – these problems are precisely the ones that the MRFF are aggressively addressing at this time with the two pronged approach of public pressure and legal action.
I want to mention here my gratitude toward Mikey Weinstein for his on-going support of my specific cause. He has addressed my issues within the blog section of the MRFF website, as well as in an interview he gave to INN World Report along with MRFF board member, Ambassador Joe Wilson. If you haven’t checked out the MRFF website lately, it is worth your time.
Regarding the big powwow today at the Iowa City VA – it was more of an anti-climax than anything. Neither the Iowa City VA’s supervising Chaplain, nor did Iowa City Rabbi Jeff Portman show up. (Rabbi Portman has, for many years, been the Jewish contact person for the Iowa City VA’s Chaplain Services.) I had received word this morning of Chaplain Davison’s inability to attend, but was surprised that Rabbi Portman neither called nor showed. So it was just the patient advocate, the Assembly of God Chaplain (who I refer to as the VA’s "proselytizer-in-chief"), my Rabbi (Rabbi Avremel Blesofsky) and me. The only issue apparently resolved at this time is that the hospital has supposedly now acquired kosher food and is bringing in a VA trainer to educate the Iowa City VA staff regarding the basics of kashrus.
Regarding proselytizing, Assembly of God Chaplain David Brown expressed that he couldn’t imagine why I would have a problem with his visits. He asserted that he had regularly visited many Jewish patients at the Iowa City VA over the years without a complaint; although he did admit that he continued to visit one patient after he had specifically requested a Rabbi visit him instead – according to Chaplain Brown, the patient didn’t seem to mind too much, at least he hadn’t protested strenuously like me. Chaplain Brown made it clear that he was absolutely confounded by my objections since he found no basis for them. Clearly this guy just doesn’t get it!
In the end both the Patient Advocate and the Chaplain placed the onus on me, claiming that I should have more strenuously objected at the time (an immediately called the Patient Advocate’s office) – an assertion that’s absurd on the face of it since, despite the fact that I was sedated and wired to a heart monitor at the time, I had vigorously objected.
Regarding all other instances of religious bias and or discrimination, the Iowa City VA Patient Advocate expressed a rather tepid willingness to explore the problems, without promising any change in policy or procedure.
So where am I going next with this?
I will continue to dialog with both Congressman Loebsack and Senator Harkin’s staff. I will also continue to provide regular updates to Mikey Weinstein at the MRFF as well as attorneys at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Most important, however, I plan on aggressively pursuing my new contact at the Iowa ACLU. The meeting today only served to confirm my hypothesis that, short of legal action, the Iowa City VA will not substantially alter their course of religious discrimination and Christian proselytizing. When confronted with on-going examples of discrimination they will continue to minimalize and obfuscate of the facts as well as blame the victim. I hope to change that.