Like hundreds of young men joining the Army in recent years, Jeremy Hall professes a desire to serve his country while it fights terrorism.

But the short and soft-spoken specialist is at the center of a legal controversy. He has filed a lawsuit alleging he’s been harassed and his constitutional rights have been violated because he doesn’t believe in God. The suit names Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
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No one with Fort Riley, the Army or Defense Department would comment about Hall or the lawsuit. Each issued statements saying that discrimination will not be tolerated regardless of race, religion or gender.

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Official Army Statement Regarding Atheist Jeremy Hall’s Lawsuit

Let’s put it this way.

We don’t discriminate based upon race.  Whatever the color of your skin, we’ll welcome you in.  If, however, you did not have a skin color—like in some sort of invisible man situation—then we’re going to turn the discrimination on full throttle.  And it is our constitutional right to do so. How could we be an effective fighting unit if we had invisible men running around with guns? Why, we’d have to tie a colorful helium balloon to each invisible soldier just to make sure we could keep track of them all, and then we’d probably get sued, just like when we did it to the gays. 

Or take gender. Do we discriminate against particular genders? No. Do we discriminate against the genderless? No. Do we discriminate against genderless languages? Two words: darn and tootin’.  We have to. For example, in Estonian, the word tema is gender-neutral and means both “she” and “he”. Now just imagine that you’re a commanding officer and one of your soldiers just says, “Oh no! A bullet is heading towards that male and female soldier over there! Of the two, I think tema should duck.” You’re not going to know who the heck they’re talking about! Hence, we don’t allow anyone of Estonian, Finnish, or Hungarian descent. Even if English is their only language, it is a risk we aren’t willing to take.

The same goes for religion. 

Additionally, we believe Atheist Jeremy Hall may harbor a special grudge because of a little experiment we had invited him to participate in. Following the old adage, “There is no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole,” we went out into the desert, dug a hole, put a few angry foxes in there, and then attempted to persuade Atheist Jeremy Hall to jump down into the fray. We figured that if he wasn’t an atheist, he’d be able to get into the hole no problem.  Sure, he might have a few scratches and a pinch of rabies, but at least we could save our discrimination for someone more deserving, like an invisible Finnish person.  And if he was an atheist, then just as he was stepping over the precipice, some sort of atheist deity would swoop down and rescue him from his foxy demise.

If atheism is a religion.

Which it’s not.

In conclusion, Army of One, or for polytheists, Army of a Whole Bunch.

Tags: politics, religion, military, foxholes, atheism, jeremy hall