Religious Intolerance Alleged at Military Academy

Feb. 19, 2005 — -- The U.S. Air Force Academy, one of the nation's elite military training grounds, is still trying to repair the damage from a 2003 sexual assault scandal. Charges of sexual assault from scores of current and former cadets were often met with indifference -- and even retribution.

Now the academy is dealing with a new controversy over charges of religious intolerance. Of the roughly 4,000 cadets at the Air Force Academy, about 93 percent are Christian. Minority students say they've been subjected to verbal abuse and made to feel like second-class citizens.

Curtis Weinstein said he experienced this on the softball field from a cadet whose name he didn't know. "He knew I was Jewish and referred to myself and my religion using the f-word, calling me, like, an f-ing Jew, and blaming me for killing Jesus," Weinstein said.

Weinstein said he didn't know to whom he could file a complaint, so he went to his father, Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 graduate of the academy.

"He just didn't know what to do," his father recalled in an interview with ABC News, taking a deep breath. "I was pretty thunderstruck. I'm not someone who's ever at a loss for words. He told me that the next time this happened -- that the next time a cadet or someone did that -- that he was going to fight."

The elder Weinstein has taken a lead role in addressing charges of religious intolerance at the academy. "What you have is a lusty and thriving religious intolerance that is objectively manifesting itself in prejudice and discrimination," he said, "and is obliterating the First Amendment of the Constitution."

ABC News has learned of charges that, during a class on the Holocaust, one cadet told a Jewish cadet the Holocaust happened because Jews killed Christ.

Freshman Hila Levy said that Jewish students often have to fight to get permission to leave campus for religious services, and that in the process they get a bad reputation that they're trying to avoid campus activities like parades or football games.