In my career, we had different commanders with different tolerance of personal displays. One (a great commander) would tolerate even encourage family and girlfriend pictures. One troop, of course, had to go to the extreme with nudies of his sweetie. We all liked it, but the commander said "no more". So, there were no more. That's the way it is in the military.
There’s always somebody to push the limits of tolerance, so suddenly, everyone has more restrictions put upon them.
Being a ‘rebel’ in the military is very risky. There are fragile egos at stake, and some will try to get even by making life a little more difficult for the ‘Wild Thang’.
I agree. If all were to have totally clear desks/areas with no personal displays whatsoever, then this Marine was wrong to go counter to that.
If, however, others were permitted to have personal items, then hers was selected for content discrimination.
The exception to that is ‘verse picking’. For example, if she’d been in a struggle with her superior officer and posted a scripture that addressed the struggle between herself and her supervisor, then it would not be content discrimination, but instead it would be addressing insubordination.
I don’t know the case that well, but I do have 24+ years active duty, most of it as a Chaplain.