You posted a lot of examples as to why you agree with the Military on the decision they made.
But in the end - you are simply afraid of a Bible on a desk.
Think about what this says about you.
I am not afraid. But the purpose of a military is its mission, not for people to use working hours for their own use, no matter what that use is. And if that activity is even slightly disruptive, it is doubly wrong.
The purpose of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is not justice, as such, but “To preserve order and discipline in the military.” For this reason, criminal sentences are far different from what they are in the civilian world. Homicide, under some circumstances, may be punishable by only 3-4 years in prison; but child molestation could warrant 30-40 years, because it is considered very damaging to morale. There is even a criminal charge for when no other criminal charge exists.
Yet let us return to what is being argued here. There are soldiers, in an extremely hierarchical organization, who are displaying their religious affiliation. And there would be no problem with that on the surface, except that it implies a priority, any priority, beyond the military mission.
It implies a lack of partiality, favoritism or prejudice. And there is no statement or act that can prove otherwise, except the discretion of not openly displaying it during duty hours.
Let me cite you the tap dance that this means in real terms. I knew a Captain in the Army who was a blond haired, blue eyed, Irish Muslim. A convert who had married an Iranian woman. Even back in the 1980s, this was looked at askance, and he always had to behave in a manner above reproach, but was still periodically investigated.
Yet he was the recipient of considerable harassment, invariably from Christians, but once, likely inadvertent at first, from a military Chaplain. At first the Chaplain did not seem to grasp that he was a Muslim (as white people are not Muslims); but then he decided to spend a lot of time, yes, during duty hours, trying to convince him to convert.
The final straw was when the Chaplain discovered that before being a Muslim, he had been a Catholic, a religion that the Chaplain considered heretical. This culminated in a screaming match in the Captain’s office, with no hesitation on the part of the LTC Chaplain to try and “pull rank”.
With the intervention of several senior officers, the two men were escorted separately to the post commander’s office, where the post commander relieved the Chaplain on the spot, and was close to ordering him thrown in the stockade.
This is not the purpose of the military, or the military mission. And it went far beyond “leaving a Bible on a desk”. But scale and scope for such things do not matter to the military. When someone is hired to do a job, it is not persecution if they are told to not use their work time for other things, and to not distract others during their work time with other things, either.
This is not unreasonable. I can’t even count how many deeply religious people I knew in the military, but it was not a problem for all but a very few of them.