The Camp Pendleton cross was simply illegal, and the Marine Corps quickly did the right thing and had it removed requested a legal review. (There is an almost identical story where a cross was indeed removed at Camp Marmal very recently. I wonder how that legal review is going to turn out at Camp Pendleton… come on leadership – get ahead of this. Take this cross down too.)

Existing and long-standing military regulations specifically ban this. No atheists ‘sued’. A mistake was corrected and nobody was punished. And no atheists were calling for anything more extreme than ‘fix the situation’.

But when American Atheists VP Kathleen Johnson went on Fox News last week to explain, it was utterly impossible to correct all of their factual errors in the 30 seconds or so she was permitted to speak. She spoke well when finally given the turn, but this type of coverage is so maddening and dishonest.

After my short list of Fox News errors in the story, a few commenters added to the list.

Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF) President, Jason Torpy, spotted one that I missed. They need to hook these guys up to a lie detector, like a trashy episode of Maury Povich.

Jordan Sekulow shows his lack of honesty. He stated that atheists are concerned about the level of evangelicals in the military, referring directly to MAAF demographics showing that 66% of military chaplains, verses less than 19% of the population. Yet in the same interview, he claimed that 90% of the military is Christian, when the same demographics show that less than 70% of the military is Christian. His motto is to use facts when they’re convenient; otherwise, just make things up. http://www.militaryatheists.org/demographics.htm

Side note: the “No atheists in Fox News” image and phrase from the post yesterday was my own creation. I guess my mad photoshop skills fooled a few people who commented. I thought “reason for tide still unexplained” would be a dead giveaway, but I’m glad people noticed it either way.

Also, I’m still the Military Director for American Atheists. Kathleen didn’t get ‘demoted’ from VP back to her old job or anything. If you want to donate money to our increasingly high profile military activism efforts, we could use the funds!