MRFF currently has over 260 clients at the Air Force Academy, including both cadets and faculty and staff members. Many of these clients belong to a group of over a hundred Academy cadets who, in order to maintain good standing among their peers and superiors, are actually pretending to be fundamentalist Christians. They leave Bibles, Christian literature, and Christian music CDs lying around their rooms; they attend fundamentalist Christian Bible studies; they feign devoutness at the Academy's weekly "Special Programs in Religious Education" (SPIRE) programs. They do whatever they have to do to play the role of the "right kind" of Christian cadets, in constant fear of being "outed." As the leader of this "underground" group of cadets wrote: "If any of us gave even the slightest indication that we weren't one of their number, our lives would be even more miserable than they already are due to the fact that we are all living lies here. Despite the Cadet Honor Code we all lie about our lives. We have to."
In the same email, the cadet quoted above explained how the reaction to the Gamble report led them to join this "'pretend to be an evangelical Christian' group," as they called it.
"Just one example of many I could talk about is Gen. Gamble says in his report that a polite 'no thank you' to Christian religious proselytizing is just fine and dandy. It is not for at least two reasons, Mr. Weinstein. First, if you try to be polite and say 'no thanks' to them they NEVER stop asking you repeatedly to reconsider. Second, you KNOW that eventually you are going to get 'them' mad at you by always 'politely declining.' I and many other cadets have seen and experienced this over and over again. This is why there is a large group of USAFA cadets (larger at least than the size of the group that Gen. Gamble says he interviewed) who pretend to be evangelical Christians in order to just be left alone. I was only vaguely familiar with that group and its ties to MRFF until what happened yesterday with that 'celebration' statement regarding the Gen. Gamble report being made about you and your 'Forces of Satan' in front of all the other cadets and that USAF Officer and NCO with absolutely noone saying a word of protest or discontent. I guess my reaction of shock was picked up by another cadet who is in that 'pretend to be an evangelical Christian' group. He or she spoke to me right afterwards and now I, too, am with them. And now I, too, am with MRFF."
Now, why would over a hundred cadets (many of whom are actually Christians, but the "wrong kind" of Christians, i.e. Catholic or mainline Protestant) feel that they have to pretend to be something they're not when Gen. Gamble's team found that: "Cadets and permanent party expressed a near-uniform belief that they can (and do) make their own choices to participate - or not - in religious activities, without repercussion."
Needless to say, none of the cadets who are pretending to be fundamentalist Christians participated in Gamble's investigation. They were afraid to. One of MRFF's faculty member clients, however, did participate. This faculty member was David Mullin, a Presbyterian who had recently stepped up to be the plaintiff in MRFF's effort to block former Marine Lt. Clebe McClary, a fundamentalist Christian speaker to whom "USMC will always mean U.S. Marine for Christ," from speaking at the Academy. Mullin, having already outed himself as a religious "dissenter," didn't think he had anything more to lose by speaking to the Gamble team, but shortly thereafter, his dog Caleb (a service dog trained to assist Mullin, who has a medical condition that causes dizzy spells) was poisoned while waiting in Mullin's office while he was teaching a class. Caleb, who nearly died, required three blood transfusions after being rushed to an emergency veterinary facility.
But it doesn't take something as dramatic as a dog being poisoned to send the message to the USAFA cadets that God comes first at the Academy. This message is drummed into their heads at every opportunity. In February, for example, at the Academy's annual National Character and Leadership Symposium (NCLS), the message was made clear by Paula Gould, wife of Academy Superintendent Lt. General Mike Gould.
Mrs. Gould, herself a former officer in the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve Command, began her presentation by talking about an entirely appropriate and relevant subject -- the discrimination she had to overcome as one of the first female Air National Guard pilots. But she quickly turned to other not so appropriate subjects, like how cute her husband is, and how she knew she had found the right guy when he took her to church on one of their first dates. (I don't think anything more needs to be said about the complete impropriety and downright bizarreness of Mrs. Gould talking to an audience of Academy cadets about how cute their Lt. Gen. Superintendent is like they were a bunch of her girlfriends.) The rest of Mrs. Gould's presentation consisted of showing a slide show of family photos, and repeatedly stating that the priorities of both herself and her incredibly cute husband are: "God first, family second, and job third." According to Mrs. Gould, if you follow these priorities, "you're gonna make it easier on yourself" and "live with joy in your life" because "you're doing the good, the just, the right thing."
Here are some video clip highlights from Mrs. Gould's NCLS speech:
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