Atheist soldier claims harassment
But the short and soft-spoken specialist is at the center of a legal controversy. He has filed a lawsuit alleging he's been harassed and his constitutional rights have been violated because he doesn't believe in God. The suit names Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
"I'm not in it for cash," Hall said. "I want no one else to go what I went through."
Known as "the atheist guy," Hall has been called immoral, a devil worshipper and -- just as severe to some soldiers -- gay, none of which, he says, is true. Hall even drove fellow soldiers to church in Iraq and paused while they prayed before meals.
More here and here.
His story is a pretty familiar one to me. I went up against military chaplains more than a few times. The only way I could get the chaplain on my base in Iraq to stop sending proselytizing emails base-wide was to get the IG involved. And the pagans in my unit were only able to gather if we called it a "study group" and not a "religious meeting".
So with all that in mind, it's no surprise to me that an atheist soldier has had the same difficulties. I was able to resolve mine at the IG level, but the Army is worse on this then the Air Force, and a lot more stubborn and a lot more violent, so I'm not surprised he's had to file a suit. Based on what I saw when I was in, I absolutely believe he is right. Whether Hall will see justice or not remains to be seen, but he definitely deserves it.
Some parts of the article that especially ring true for me:
The issue came to a head when, according to Hall, a superior officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, threatened to bring charges against him for trying to hold a meeting of atheists in Iraq. Welborn has denied Hall's allegations.
I was in the exact same boat with a chaplain when I was in Iraq. Apparently you need to have a "Distinctive Faith Leader" in order to hold a religious meeting of your religion on a military base. Of course, how would atheists be able to accomplish this? What third party organization is out there to determine whether or not someone is a Distinctive Faith Leader of atheists, and do so to the satisfaction of the fundamentalist chaplaincy? Moreover, you can call any gathering of atheists a violation of those regulations, because of course an atheist gathering wouldn't be doing anything religious or have any religious trappings. In many ways, Spc Hall is in a worse position as an atheist than I was as a pagan.
"The average American doesn't have enough intestinal fortitude to tell someone to shut up if they are talking in a movie theater," Weinstein said. "You know how hard it is to take on your chain of command? This isn't the shift manager at KFC."
I know firsthand how hard this is. If I hadn't reached an acceptable agreement with the base IG and the chaplaincy, I would have had to take the matter further up the chain, and that would have been a very scary thing. On top of that, I got chewed out by my supervisor and my commander for not going through them first... but both of them led daily prayer meetings in the squadron, and I did not expect much (nor did I get much) help from them.
Hall was in Qatar when the lawsuit was filed on September 18 in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas. Other soldiers learned of it and he feared for his own safety. Once, Hall said, a group of soldiers followed him, harassing him, but no one did anything to make it stop.
I got in more than a few heated discussions with rabid fundamentalists, many of whom said that I couldn't be a moral person if I didn't have an ancient book of laws to base my life upon. I didn't make any friends when I told them that if I needed an ancient book of laws to tell me how to be a moral person, then I wasn't a moral person to begin with.
The Army told him it couldn't protect him and sent him back to Fort Riley. He resumed duties with a military police battalion. He believes his promotion to sergeant has been blocked because of his lawsuit, but he is a team leader responsible for two junior enlisted soldiers.
This is entirely possible. AFAIK, the Army promotes based off of a number of factors, one of which is a board. If they decide to shut you down, you will be shut down, and they will have plenty of "legitimate" reasons for it.
Hall said he enjoys being a team leader but has been told that having faith would make him a better leader.
"I will take care of my soldiers. Nowhere does it say I have to pray with my soldiers, but I do have to make sure my soldiers' religious needs are met," he said.
I took a lot of flak from superiors for not being their kind of religious. I had pagan friends in the Army and the Marine Corps who took even more. They faced harassment on a daily basis.
I think the biggest thing that the chaplaincy in the Air Force did to piss me off happened when my unit was about to rotate out of Iraq. Our little Air Force installation was squished onto the side of the runway at the baghdad airport. We had large Army camps and Marine camps and Iraqi Army camps completely surrounding us on all sides, and so there was a long way between us and the "wire", the final perimeter between "the base" and wild Iraq.
We had maybe 3 or 4 things actually hit our little camp while we were there. A rocket that hit in the grass on the other side of the runway and the taxiway from our power plant, and it caused no damage to anything but foilage. Another rocket that went right over a friends head and shot several feet into the ground just a few meters from him and his work crew, but it was a dud and did no damage. And then there was a mortar that landed in a pile of concrete dust, and was later found and safed by EOD. But our installation was a hard target to hit. The army camps took mortar and rocket attacks on a daily basis. The **** at Camp ******* and the **** at Camp ******* were bracketed by insurgents, and soldiers were injured or killed on a regular basis.
When our squadron was rotating out, we had a ceremony to hand off control to the squadron that was taking our place. At this ceremony, our chaplain had the nerve to announce that no airmen in our rotation had been injured or killed during our deployment, and it was because of God protecting our Air Force camp. He said that God had extended His shield of protection over our base to keep us safe.
This made me so fucking angry, because God had nothing to do with it, our safety was bought with the blood and lives of the shield of Army personnel that we had surrounding us, and by giving "God" the credit for it that asshole chaplain was cheapening their sacrifice.
Our military has been radicalized over the past couple of decades by fundamentalist Christians. It is an unhealthy trend and it needs to stop. Pagans, Atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, all are no longer welcome in God's Army. Our Crusades need to stop.
UPDATE: And it's worse.
When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.
But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. "People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!" Major Welborn said, according to the statement.
Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.
...
Specialist Hall said he did not advertise his atheism. But his views became apparent during his second deployment in 2006. At a Thanksgiving meal, someone at his table asked everyone to pray. Specialist Hall did not join in, explaining to a sergeant that he did not believe in God. The sergeant got angry, he said, and told him to go to another table.
...
Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley, Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation, threatened to "bust him in the mouth." Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.
I'm sure we can look for Major Welborn to face repercussions for this any time now.