{"id":185642,"date":"2014-09-18T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T02:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/18\/air-force-talibaptist-leadership-caves-over-oath\/"},"modified":"2014-09-18T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T02:43:00","slug":"air-force-talibaptist-leadership-caves-over-oath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/09\/18\/air-force-talibaptist-leadership-caves-over-oath\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Force TaliBaptist Leadership Caves Over Oath"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After spending nearly a month threatening people who refused to swear to God to reinlist, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/article\/20140917\/NEWS\/309170066\/Air-Force-nixes-help-me-God-requirement-oaths\">USAF has reversed itself<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The Air Force has withdrawn a requirement that all airmen who take the oath of enlistment and officer appointment conclude with \u201cso help me God,\u201d the service announced Wednesday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The Air Force previously allowed airmen to omit those words, but removed that option in October based on its interpretation of 10 U.S.C. 502, 5 U.S.C. 3331 and Title 32, which contain the oaths of office. The Navy, Army and Marine Corps allow their service members to omit \u201cso help me God,\u201d spokesmen for all three services told Air Force Times last week.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">The Air Force sought a legal review of the rule by the Defense Department\u2019s General Counsel on Sept. 9, five days after the American Humanist Association announced it was representing an unnamed atheist airman, stationed at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, who was denied reenlistment for refusing to say, or sign a form, stating \u201cso help me God.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Monica Miller, an attorney with the AHA\u2019s Appignani Humanist Legal Center said the association would give the Air Force until Sept. 19 to reverse course.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">On Tuesday, Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the service was \u201cmaking the appropriate adjustments to ensure our Airmen\u2019s rights are protected.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe take any instance in which Airmen report concerns regarding religious freedom seriously,\u201d James said in the release announcing the change, which is effective immediately.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Translation: We never thought that anyone would notice our attempt to go all Taliban on the Air Force, and we are very sorry that we got caught.<\/p>\n<p>Whichever General Officer signed off on this abomination should be fired, as in no pension.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After spending nearly a month threatening people who refused to swear to God to reinlist, the USAF has reversed itself: The Air Force has withdrawn a requirement that all airmen who take the oath of enlistment and officer appointment conclude with \u201cso help me God,\u201d the service announced Wednesday. The Air Force previously allowed airmen &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,969,1006,978,1021],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-evil","category-military","category-politics","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185642\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}