Rock Beyond Belief Cancelled

Justin Griffith, organizer of the Rock Beyond Belief concert at Fort Bragg, NC, is now saying that the event will have to be cancelled.

Jen McCreight has a good rundown of the backstory, but the tl;dr version is that Billy Graham's organization held a "Rock the Fort" concert at Fort Bragg, with full support (monetary, personnel, and official endorsement) of the base, even though it was explicitly billed as an evangelical event.

When Griffith organized a similar secular event, he was originally promised a level of support similar to that given to Graham's organization. But then the base denied financial support to the event. And then said that all advertising for Rock Beyond Belief would have to carry a disclaimer that it wasn't endorsed by the base. And then the event was moved to a small indoor venue, rather than a larger outdoor one, which effectively killed it.

Now the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is planning to sue for religious discrimination, in violation of the first amendment.

Good.

I normally try to be fair, and to look at the other side before jumping to conclusions, but in this case I can't see this as anything but a giant dick move on the base commander's part, and an illegal one at that. I could have understood moving the event to a smaller venue, since Rock Beyond Belief could have been expected to draw a much smaller audience than Rock the Fort in North Carolina. Except, of course, that Rock Beyond Belief was supposed to feature Richard Dawkins, who could easily be expected to attract thousands of people.

If the facts reported by Griffith are correct, this should be a very simple case. Let's hope that this sends the message that the military (and the US governement in general) can't favor one religion over another, or religion over irreligion.

Update: I notice that billygraham.org used to have a bunch of pages about Rock the Fort, as recently as February, but these seem to have disappeared. Please tell me I'm paranoid for suspecting that they've been scrubbed in response to Rock Beyond Belief.