As a secularist and as an Air Force veteran, I find it particularly galling when today’s airmen have to go back and fight legal battles that seemed well-settled long ago, but here we go again.
An atheist airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada was denied reenlistment last month for refusing to take an oath containing “so help me God,” the American Humanist Association said Thursday.
. . .
Air Force Instruction 36-2606 spells out the active-duty oath of enlistment, which all airmen must take when they enlist or reenlist and ends with “so help me God.” The old version of that AFI included an exception: “Note: Airmen may omit the words ‘so help me God,’ if desired for personal reasons.”
That language was dropped in an Oct. 30, 2013, update to the AFI. The relevant section of that AFI now only lists the active-duty oath of enlistment, without giving airmen any option to choose not to swear an oath to a deity.
Presumably, the earlier version of the AFI was written by people with some familiarity of how this sort of thing plays out in the courts:
There is little I can add to this, other than to say “Thank you!” to the AHLC for representing this individual and “Heads up!” to the USAF, who are losing bright young servicemembers on a regular basis because of an unconstitutional policy which elevates intolerance over inclusion.
