The highest military court in the United States has ruled against a former Marine who was given a bad conduct discharge after she refused to take down Bible verses from her workstation in 2014.
As previously reported at Conservative Review, Monifa Sterling was a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune in May 2013 who kept a Bible verse on her computer in three places. The verse, taken from Isaiah 54 simply said, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.”
A non-commissioned officer in her chain of command ordered that she remove the verse and Sterling said that she couldn’t. The next day, Sterling arrived to find the verse ripped down from her work station, so she put them up again. The cycle continued until she was court-martialed in early 2014. .......See more at
My Take - They post this with the intent of claiming this is so terrible. Okay....I'm going to surprise a lot of people. This gal got exactly what she deserved. She disobeyed a direct order from a superior. This is the military! She wasn't a civilian. She has no right of free speech in the military. She has no right to protest or promote anything in the military. She posted this on a military work station, and the military owns that station. This was not her personal locker. Get it? Military personal have few personal rights and the only orders a soldier is allowed to disobey is an illegal order....and this wasn't an illegal order.
I served and hated it. I hated not being able to tell higher ranking personnnel to shove it, especially snotty nosed officers. I hated the disrespectful manner officers treated enlisted men. I hated all the pettiness. I hated the officers then and I still do. But that's what you tolerate in the military and if you're unwilling then don't serve, otherwise there's a penalty to be paid.
When I served during the Vietnam years I had to go, and I believed it was my turn. My father served during WWII and took part in seven major invasions. All my uncles served in WWII, Korea or overseas. One uncle served in both WWII and Korea, and was never the same after Korea. I had an older second cousin who was a career Navy Seal. I felt it was my turn.....and I served.
Here's the big difference. The military in my day wasn't an all volunteer military - this gal chose to serve - no one made her. She has no right to whine when things didn't go her way. The military isn't a democracy. She deliberately started a war with her superior creating a diciplinary problem that couldn't be ignored....this had to be addressed or his control over his personnel would have disappeared and more problems would have ensued. And I'm willing to bet this wasn't the first time she created these kinds of problems.
The military isn't a democracy because democracy is antithetical to military discipline, and I think she got off light!
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