Skip to content Skip to footer

Air Force Base Names Homophobic, Anti-Semitic Chaplain as “Officer of the Year“

Ponder the far-reaching ramifications of what the US Air Force has just done here.

A major war is being viciously waged against the United States of America, a war that’s global in scope and poses a terrifying threat to our national security interests. The ruthless attacks, which this conflict has generated, have inflicted grievous damage to nothing less than the U.S. Constitution itself, as well as the foundational core values of the United States armed forces. While the mainstream media has been woefully asleep regarding this raging conflict, the Pentagon has verified through its own official publications that the war has already led to vast transformations within the armed forces. Religious fanatics are spearheading this pernicious worldwide campaign and, no, I’m NOT referring to Shia or Sunni Islamic jihadists…. but “jihadist” was a good guess. I’m referring, of course, to our very own fire and brimstone fundamentalist Christian crusaders, both within uniform and without, who have seemingly infiltrated every echelon of the United States armed forces. These religious extremists are bolstered by legions of civilian zealots, parachurch organizations, legislators, and persons of influence who are carrying out their own grievous massacre of bedrock civil rights under the banner of “religious freedom.”

You want the latest proof? Witness the appalling appellation and homage recently given to USAF Chaplain (Capt.) Sonny Hernandez, 445th Airlift Wing Chaplain Corps: freshly crowned as the “Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Individual Mobilization Accession Company Grade Officer of the Year” at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton, Ohio. The official statement regarding this newly benighted Company Grade Officer of the Year sounds wonderfully amazing and ecumenical. Well, don’t cue the U.S. Air Force band rendition of Kumbaya yet, folks – the plot’s about to thicken with bountiful bile and phlegm.

Upon reading the generic claptrap emanating from Wright-Patterson AFB’s Public Affairs department, we at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) had a hunch. Indeed, a simple Google search for Chaplain Hernandez and a brief perusal of his sermons indicate that the man is not only a fanatical, fundamentalist Christian supremacist, but he’s also an egregious homophobe and classic anti-Semite.

Just take the sermon “Wrath of God,” which Hernandez delivered at his church, Sovereign Grace Baptist Church in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. I invite those who can stomach such violent hatred to try, and try hard, to listen to this putrid, bigoted oration. In it, the Chaplain stormily decries “abominations” deserving the “hatred of God about the perfect justice of God Almighty which is going to come upon those who loathe at his sovereignty. To those who burn with enmity against his law and his good works which have clearly been manifested throughout history, this is clearly his righteous judgment that’s going to take place upon those who bathe in their sin and boast in their debauchery.” Later on in the sermon, Hernandez provides us with an example of such “perfect justice” in the form of a howlingly moronic explanation of a virus “many of you may have heard of the virus called HIV,” a “due penalty” for the “detestable and abominable” act of homosexual love. In true quack fashion, the hate-preacher then uses cherry-picked statistics to buttress the radical right-wing canard of HIV being a “gay thing,” a consequence of his claim that “God gave them over to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” and that God has thus abandoned them.

Hernandez then takes the time to veer from the topic of “perversion” into theological anti-Semitism, claiming, “It’s almost identical to how Jesus was delivered into the hands of wicked men. In Mark 15:15, the Bible tells us that Pilate wishing to satisfy the Jews released for them Barabbas and then what happened? They scourged Jesus and delivered him to be crucified.” Wow, “Pilate wishing to satisfy the Jews?” This Air Force unit’s “Officer of the Year” blames “the Jews” in classic Old School anti-Semitic fashion despite the fact that Mark 15:15 doesn’t say “Jews” – it says, “the crowd” or “the people.”

In the sick mind of Hernandez (and sadly, to the “flock” he propagandizes with searing prejudice every Sunday) such bitterly hateful bigotry is “true love,” and those Christians who disagree with him are themselvesabominable, unprofitable, and unqualified for every good work, grace or mercy under heaven.

As a civil rights foundation which represents over 41,000 active duty, veteran, and civilian military personnel, about 96% of whom are practicing Christians themselves, we at the MRFF have long been wise to the fact that the DoD Chaplaincy is riddled with absolute bigots of the likes of USAF Poster Child Hernandez. You know, the types of major league religious extremist creeps who make Tomas de Torquemada seem like a career minor leaguer – and they’re as ubiquitous as cockroaches. For every anti-Constitutional dominionist theocrat discovered in the U.S. armed forces, there are thousands of others, big and small, hiding furiously and burrowing into the Pentagon’s worldwide woodwork. And you had better be sure that they’re laying their perverse proselytizing eggs with reckless, unconstitutional abandon.

In such conditions of almost unimaginable infestation, we “pest control experts” at MRFF were NOT at all surprised by the fact that the senior leadership at the 445th Airlift Wing saw fit to reward Hernandez for his loathsome “spiritual labor.”

Now dear readers THINK, please, what all of this crap actually means. Ponder the far-reaching ramifications of what the U.S. Air Force has just done here. It has just singled out for magnificent and honorable recognition, in stiff competition no doubt, this particular virulently gay-bashing, homophobic chaplain who-for good measure- still blatantly blames “the Jews” for killing Jesus. Ah, yes that ol’ anti-Semitic blood libel still plays so well in 2015, eh, bro? Hey, got Vatican II, Chaplain Hernandez? Ruminate, just for a quick second here, on the clear message sent by the Air Force in officially so honoring and rewarding an officer festooned with such blood-curdling hatred for others. T-H-I-N-K, dammit!

After all, this is the same U.S. Air Force that assigned a fundamentalist Christian “’ex-gay’ therapist,” Mike Rosebush, to a titular role at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) Center for Character and Leadership Development. This is the same U.S. Air Force which trumpeted quite institutionally the virulently anti-Jewish Christian snuff porn, The Passion of the Christ, back in 2004 while my two Jewish sons and Christian future daughter-in-law were attending USAFA. Indeed, this is the very same film which also spews the same ancient anti-Semitic Jew-baiting slurs repeated by Hernandez. And most recently, this is also the same U.S. Air Force which apparently left unpunished Colonel Mark H. Slocum, Commander of Seymour Johnson AFB’s 4th Fighter Wing in North Carolina, after he claimed that the U.S. is “Doing the Lord’s Work” (i.e. embarking on a Crusade) in the Middle East. Oh, yes indeed, and the very same U.S. Air Force which has officially sanctioned its armed, uniformed Security Force gate guards at Robins AFB, Georgia, to “assess” all who enter the base with that oh-so-sweet greeting of “Have a blessed day.” Oh, and let’s recall that this deplorable decision to allow the sectarian “gate blessings” came merely two days after the Security Forces squadron commander ordered his troops to cease and desist from blessing all entrants literally within 3 minutes and 10 seconds after MRFF’s demands were made to him on behalf of numerous MRFF clients (most of them Christians) at Robins AFB.

So, my friends, the next time some fanatical Jesus freak from the “Family” Research Council, the American “Family” Association or the “Liberty” Institute (or some other Orwellian-named fundamentalist Christian hate-group) comes along and tries to sell you the unadulterated crap that the U.S. military under President Obama has become a “hostile environment for Christians,” in general, and hideously hostile to those poor, oppressed, pious military chaplains (like “Officer of the Year” Chaplain Hernandez) in particular, inquire about whether they also have some magic beans or love potions to sell you. You may then inform them with the cold, hard, irrefutable facts of the uber-dominating, Dominionist Christian influence pervading our armed forces, and the war on realreligious liberty that is being waged.

Question: Are Americans REALLY so breathtakingly gullible and willfully ignorant as to believe the pathetic and terribly transparent con-job of “persecution” and victimization being fraudulently sold by the radical right-wing Christian faux-“religious liberty” movement? If the answer is yes, then it won’t be long before we find ourselves in the grizzly grip of a theocratic dictatorship of Christian fundamentalism/totalitarianism at the helm of the most lethal military apparatus devised in the history of humankind; the United States military.

Up is now down, black is now white and sunny day is now rainy day? Designating a hate-monger like Capt. (Chaplain) Hernandez as its USAF’s unit’s “Officer of the Year” Poster Child provides a terrifying glimpse into just what such a near term futuristic catastrophe awaits us all if we don’t act passionately and tirelessly to STOP it and demand DoD adherence to the United States Constitution.

We’re not going to stand for it. Are you?

You don’t bury your head in the sand. You know as well as we do what we’re facing as a country, as a people, and as a global community. Here at Truthout, we’re gearing up to meet these threats head on, but we need your support to do it: We must raise $50,000 to ensure we can keep publishing independent journalism that doesn’t shy away from difficult — and often dangerous — topics.

We can do this vital work because unlike most media, our journalism is free from government or corporate influence and censorship. But this is only sustainable if we have your support. If you like what you’re reading or just value what we do, will you take a few seconds to contribute to our work?