Posted on 11/28/2015 6:58:57 AM PST by marshmallow
Charlotte, N.C., Nov 28, 2015 / 06:13 am (CNA).- The highest U.S. military court will hear the case of a Marine who says her religious freedom was compromised when she was ordered to remove a Bible verse from her work station.
In May 2013, Lance Corporal (LCpl) Monifa Sterling refused to follow a superior's order to remove a Bible verse from her workspace. In ruling on the case earlier this year, the U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals sided against Sterling, saying that significant damage could be caused by forcing military employees to work in the presence of a religious quotation.
"The implication is clear - the junior Marine sharing the desk and the other Marines coming to the desk for assistance would be exposed to biblical quotations in the military workplace," the court said in its ruling on the case.
"It is not hard to imagine the divisive impact to good order and discipline that may result when a service member is compelled to work at a government desk festooned with religious quotations, especially if that service member does not share that religion."
"The risk that such exposure could impact the morale or discipline of the command is not slight," the court continued. "Maintaining discipline and morale in the military work center could very well require that the work center remain relatively free of divisive or contentious issues such as personal beliefs, religion, politics, etc., and a command may act preemptively to prevent this detrimental effect."
The case centers on an incident two years ago, in which Sterling was stationed at Camp Lejune in North Carolina. A devout Christian, she chose to place at her workstation three slips of paper with the words, "No weapon formed against me shall prosper," a modification of the Bible verse......
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
If the mental discipline and calm of a soldier is so fragile that they can not maintain their thoughts in order because of exposure to a religious quotation with which they do not agree then they obviously should seek to find another profession because the profession of war is fraught with far greater exposures to far greater challenges to a calm and ordered mind.
Ms. Sterling’s staff sergeant demanded she remove the verse, but Ms. Sterling refused, saying she had the right to express her religious freedom.
The next day Ms. Sterling arrived to find the verses had been ripped down from her station. She put them up again. The cycle repeated until Ms. Sterling was court-martialed on Feb. 1, 2014.
She was convicted of disrespecting a superior commissioned officer, failing to go to an appointed place of duty, and disobeying a lawful order on four separate occasions ...
Yet Major Nidal passed out business cards with SOI, and that was fine and dandy!
In this case, I side with the military. The military is not a business, and unit cohesion is critical. Openly pushing religious views and/or political views in the office is unacceptable. What one does at lunch or at home is their business. What they did while sitting at a desk in the office was MY business.
You give up rights when you enter the military. The needs of the military trump personal rights. Anyone who doesn’t like it can get out.
“Is this why no one took notice when Major Hasan signed off on his clinical assessments with “Praise be to Allah?” They didn’t want to offend a non Christian?”
If someone had done that while working for me, I’d have nailed his butt to the wall. Same with putting “Jesus is Lord” in emails. Neither is acceptable in the military.
Sterling told military officials that the posted passage helped her summon patience when dealing with short-tempered Marines who were frustrated with their CAC problems.
In Sterling's first appeal, the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Appeals in February upheld the conviction. A military judge determined that the quotations, "could be interpreted as combative ... [and] could easily be seen as contrary to good order and discipline," court records show.
Other convictions included in Sterling's original case involved charges of refusing orders to perform duties for which Sterling said she was medically exempted. Those charges and convictions factored into her sentencing, but are not the subject of her current appeal to the military high court.
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/05/27/marine-monifa-sterling-bible-verse-court-case/28010365/
I tend to think perhaps that this had less to do with religion as it did with Monifa's attitude problems. Note that the quote seemed to be more about "her" and people who irritated her than with God.
No kidding, at first I thought this was from Duffle Blog.
Frankly, she sounds like someone that probably didn’t belong in the Marines in the first place.
“Openly pushing religious views and/or political views in the office is unacceptable.”
Which is why it was done throughout the military’s history??
I don’t think you know the first thing about military history or how to run the military.
If a military member cannot handle a Bible verse how are they going to handle fighting the enemy?? Pussies.
She was convicted of disrespecting a superior commissioned officer, failing to go to an appointed place of duty, and disobeying a lawful order on four separate occasions ...
Is there an Marine officer with any integrity and common sense left on active duty?..apparently not. The Air Force has been a sad joke for years..but the Marine Corps?
” Staff Sergeant Alexander”
Show the witch a picture of Arlington Cemetery!
I went through BCT not long after the My Lai "Massacre".Perhaps as a result of that incident we had a class in which the Lieutenant told us that no soldier has a duty to obey an "unlawful order" (his exact words).IIRC he gave at least a few general examples of what would constitute an "unlawful order".
Apart from ordering subordinates to murder unarmed,harmless civilians it's hard to imagine an order that's less lawful than the one in question.
Freedom of religion, not from religion.
“I don’t think you know the first thing about military history or how to run the military.”
Yeah...only spent 25 years in.
When the US was a much more homogeneous nation, it didn’t matter as much - but even then, I don’t recall (as a military brat) seeing religion pushed in the office. Church services are supported, and so are chaplains, and groups like the Navigators - but outside the office.
“Maintaining discipline and morale in the military work center could very well require that the work center remain relatively free of divisive or contentious issues such as personal beliefs, religion, politics, etc., and a command may act pre-emptively to prevent this detrimental effect,” the court ruled.”
Exactly. During my 25 years, I never saw a shared workstation with even family pictures, since it was SHARED - as in, other people used it!
In the US military it is offensive to suggest that a person believes they are protected from the enemy’s weapons.
The Almighty Barack Obama does NOT protect the US military from the enemy’s weapons, and every military man/woman is supposed to know that.
She should have “just obeyed orders” like all the Chiefs of Staff have done, this whole time that the foreign enemy combatant in chief has been giving the nation and world over to the Islamist buddies who put him into office.
Ya know, kinda like everybody did under Adolf Hitler...
Lt. Col Terry Lakin went through all the proper procedures and got NOTHING in response, from the military chain of command and from the US Congress. And though that’s been known, nobody has done a stinkin’ thing to correct and/or rebuke the failure in the chain of command and Congress.
The whole stinkin’ system is compromised. It is under the Beast.
“Her first duty was to obey the order.”
It depends entirely on what the order is. She was not engaged in a combat zone and that order countermanded centuries of hallowed tradition. Screw the punk who issued the order.
“Monifa’s attitude problems”
Monifa is not the problem. So-called conservatives who don’t have sense enough to defend basic Constitutional freedoms is the problem.
When the reset button is hit, whatever nation rises from the ashes should be run by people who DO understand this.
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