On April 12, the Army officially started allowing its members to identify as humanists, who previously had to identify simply as “no religious preference.” A study by the Defense Equality Opportunity Management Institute found 3.6 percent of the U.S. military unofficially identify as humanists, so the change isn’t massive in terms of who it will effect. But it does give officials more to work with when planning a soldier’s funeral and, perhaps more importantly, lowers the hurdles for one day adding humanist chaplains. “This is a big victory,” Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, told RNS. “This is one part, and the easiest part, of a very long list of other reforms that have to happen before we have equality, not just belief or no belief but theistic belief and nontheistic belief like ours” …
