The president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation compares Christianity to "a nest of rattlesnakes" after an ABC News report disclosed that Trijicon Corporation, a maker of gun sights, was inscribing references to Bible verses on its products, which are used by the US military.
Weinstein said troops have complained that an inscription on the Advance Combat Optical Gunsight, used by thousands of Marines and soldiers, includes “JN8:12,” a reference to John 8:12, a Christian gospel reference: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
The inscription on another optic includes “2COR4:6,” which refers to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
Weinstein said his group was glad to see the Marine officials say they are concerned, but is incredulous the service was not aware of it. After initially signing a $7.5 million contract with Trijicon in 2005 for 6,000 optics, it entered into an additional multi-year deal worth up to $660 million for as many as 800,000 optics.
“It’s like a husband and wife sleeping in a bed for two years and saying they weren’t aware of the nest of rattlesnakes in it,” he said.
Nice. Maybe Weinstein should rename his organization the Military Religious Disparagement Foundation.
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2 comments:
I was going to lay low on the commenting for a while, but I just have to respond to this one, Robert.
When you make an analogy, you're not creating a one-to-one comparison of the players. Take this example: if I'm speaking about a group of white people refusing to acknowledge racism in some scenario or other, and I say they're ignoring "the elephant in the room," would you infer that I'm comparing blacks to elephants? The point the writer was clearly making was how preposterous it is to claim to have overlooked something shockingly at odds with its surroundings.
Sometimes you can seem as touchy as the PC crowd, Bob.
@wally: touché. And the irony of it is that even though I no longer consider myself a Christian and have more in common with the MRFF than with Trijicon, I'm still offended by ABC News' attempt to turn this into a news story.
Trijicon has put Bible references on their gunsights from the beginning, and made no secret of it. The US military could presumably have asked Trijicon to omit the references on military contract work, and Trijicon could have decided whether money was more important than testifying to their faith. It might have resulted in Trijicon forgoing military contracts; other gun makers have done similar things when confronted with government restrictions, such as Barrett Firearms' decision to not sell their .50 sniper rifles to California police departments after that state demonised .50 as being associated with gang violence.
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