Wiccan widow threatens to sue over memorial plaque

[PatGund]

This woman lost her husband, and what she's asking for is that the memorial plaque have the same emblem of his faith as other plaques. The VA is dragging their heels though

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=37253

"Last fall the cemetery administration updated its rules, and now only requires historic information about the religion and other documentation supporting the use of a specific faith symbol.

But administrators did fast-track an application in 2004 to put allow a Sikh symbol to be put on veteran’s headstones. Stewart said she is frustrated that Wiccans did not receive the same consideration.

Bill Chrystal, a retired Navy chaplain and friend of the Stewarts, said the VA’s continued stonewalling has caused other problems as well. He was scheduled to hold a memorial for fallen Nevada troops later this month, but was told by state Veterans Affairs officials that Roberta could not speak because of the controversy with her application."

The members of her husband's unit are also backing her up as well.

[Kutjara]

1. This should be the official definition of 'petty minded.'

Like it's going to destroy civilization as we know it to let this woman mourn her husband's death in the manner she chooses.

Or have we regressed so much that we can't 'suffer a witch to live'? Maybe that's it. We've regressed economically, socially, racially, sexually and politically to the point where a new round of witch trials aren't beyond the bounds of possibility.

Every day this country depresses me a little bit more.

[xchrom]

2. we were never that enlightened.

i've believed for a long time now that it's time to cast very critical eye on amrican culture and society.

this is another example of our collective ignorance and lack of conscience.

[shadowknows69]

11. As a whole

we are pretty much a bunch of unruly thugs.

[greekspeak]

3. I can't beleive that this is even an issue! Let the man have his memorial

And let his widow get on with her life. Good gravy, for once I would like to see the government stop being a the mouthpiece of the prudish fundamentalists and get back into the freedom business.

[Jawja]

5. Yes, don't we have

freedom OF religion? A denial of her right to what she believes to be an appropriate symbol is a blatant attempt to establish "acceptable religious beliefs." I hope she fights this unConstitutional policy.

[jody]

4. VA already approves many Emblems of Belief including

ATHEIST

HUMANIST EMBLEM OF SPIRIT

ECKANKAR

Other approved markers at Emblems of Belief Available

[clovis29]

24. Great site! Thanks!

And I agree that this seems petty. I don't see "Wicca" there -- is it perhaps a different symbol?

[Hekate]

30. I believe the Triple Moon has been approved, but there are others...

...just as with Christians.

Multiplicity of symbols for individual sects can't be the problem, because Christianity seems to have dozens -- Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Episcopalians, Methodists -- the list is endless and each sect has its own logo.

I think the problem is that the very existence of Wicca and other Neo-Pagan religions rattle the cages of the ignorant. Nonetheless, the US military has officially acknowledged their presence and approved their symbols -- full acceptance is another matter, especially under the reign of the Talibaptists.

Hekate

edited for typo

[politicat]

33. Triple moon is not approved.

Nor is the pentacle.

And the atheist symbol is of a very specific organization (American Atheists) not the full body of non-believers (not that we're organized enough to HAVE a symbol).

The simple premise - that if you allow one, you must allow all - is offensive and scary to those in charge.

I'd actually like to see someone get a stone carver to just go out and put the symbol on the stone. If it's in a public cemetery (not a federal one) what are the feds going to do?

And what about people like my friend J, who is atheist, but whose religion is NASCAR? He seriously worships at the altar whenever possible. It would be most appropriate to have the NASCAR logo on his Veteran's tombstone rather than the AA symbol, but that one's not recognized.

[Hekate]

37. Thanks for updating my info. I was going by a visual memory of a headstone

design that I must have seen someplace else. It really doesn't make sense to allow symbols for some religions but not others, does it?

Hekate

[LibertyLover]

6. Boy they have some real major faiths there

Like the Missionary Alliance of Hawaii or Konko-kyo. And Eckenkar, wow - I'm betting there are thousands of soldiers who believe in Eck. What I find interesting is that in the Seicho-no-ie symbol, the swastika is clearly used (and yes, I know all about its origins in Asia as a symbol of the sun and a good luck symbol). Next Tuesday I will be attending the interment of the founding elder of the Nomadic Chantry of the Grammarye, a Wiccan group incorporated in Maryland and a 501(c)(3) religious organization, at Arlington. Rosemary fought hard to get the pentacle on her husband's marker. We had all hoped that by the time it came to bury her, there would be no issue about the pentacle. If you allow one symbol, you have to allow all. How much simpler does the argument have to be?

[shadowknows69]

7. I told this to a carfull of my taxi customers

Soldiers all that just came back from the wars and they didn't know about this and seemed very outraged at it. As well they should be. To listen to some of them you can tell they know they're being shit on bad by this administration. They go through the motions for each other and that brother/sisterhood that I can't even conceive of, not for George Bush.

[Solon]

8. Hope she sues, and wins...

She's not the first to ask for this, its been TEN DAMNED YEARS of this Bullshit. Freedom of Religion MY ASS!

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usva&c=words&id=10603

[shadowknows69]

10. What's more insane is that the army officially recognizes Wicca

If it was a total exclusion of it I could almost understand, We're used to that. Try to get a pagan yule symbol next to the nativity in smalltown USA sometime.

[PatGund]

13. Yeah I know

Been way too long, and I have circlemates and friends back in the US that are hoping this gets solved before they pass on.

This is absurd. And the Nevada VA is being petty by not letting Ms. Stewart speak.

[shadowknows69]

9. I wish all declared wiccan soldiers could somehow strike

without getting courtmartialed. I'll bet the army would find there are more of them than they think. I've met a LOT of Wiccan soldiers. I'll bet they number more than Eck followers. It's obscene that these soldiers have to die without any recognition of their faith.

[knight_of_the_star]

16. I will second that

A sizeable chunk of most pagans I know are either active duty or vets, I would think we should get recognition but no such luck with these wannabe Torquemundas in office.

[BoneDaddy]

12. Yeah

We have freedom of religion in this country....such bullshit.
I hope this woman sues the brass off of them.

[noonwitch]

14. The VA had a point about Wicca not having one symbol

There isn't one symbol recognized by all wiccans that represents their faith, nor is there one organization to contact. Not every wiccan wants to use a pentacle for the symbol, some use spirals or other symbols instead.

Really, though, they should contact Circle Network or their legal branch, Lady Liberty League. They could help from either position-they can help the widow get the VA to get with it, or they could help the VA come up with an acceptable wiccan symbol to use for the next time the issue comes up (and it will). It doesn't seem like the time for a confrontation yet, if there is a more peaceful solution to be found.

[PatGund]

15. Actually

Selena Fox and LLL are behind the current drive to get approval from the VA

They've also been behind several OTHER attempts that have been stalled by the VA

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usva&c=words&id=10603

[enlightenment]

17. The VA is splitting hairs.

That atheist symbol is cute, but were I to be buried (which I'm not planning on) I wouldn't want it on my tombstone -- if anything, a simple "null" would more accurately represent my position on the matter.

Nor is there a single atheist organization -- that would be akin to having anarchists unionize. :evilgrin:

I appreciate your position, but they're parsing the rules to prevent a "satanic" symbol (since I'm sure that's how they see it) from coming to roost in their precious cemetery.

[jody]

19. Not "their precious cemetery" but "our national cemeteries".

:hi:

[enlightenment]

29. Good point --

thanks for the reminder (and I should remember, since my dad is requesting burial at Arlington -- hopefully not for a couple more years at least).
:blush: :hi:

[crikkett]

20. well i saw a number of symbols of xtian faith

on that page of approved symbols.

Funny how the xtian scientists have a copyright on their symbol

[Hekate]

31. The VA is wrong to use that as an excuse when Christians have dozens of...

... symbols/logos for each individual sect of that religion.

It's no skin off the VA's nose to allow the Triple Spiral, Triple Moon, Goddess, Pentacle, or anything else. It's just ignorance and discrimination.

Many of my pagan friends, male and female, are active duty military personnel or vets.

Hekate

[newswolf56]

18. It might be useful in this controversy to contact Sen. Harry Reid,

since one of the more obviously malicious obstructors is the bureaucracy of the Nevada Department of Veterans Affairs. Not to mention the fact it would force Reid to clarify his stance on freedom of religion.

[BikeWriter]

21. The bastids! Give the hero his symbol!

[madmark]

22. if anybody knows, what is the scientology symbol?

the exploding volcano?

[clovis29]

25. Dollar sign n/t

[Dead_Parrot]

35. lol... nt.

[Pacifist Patriot]

23. *sigh* Why can I see them caving and then...

carving a pentagram star upside down? AGGHHH! No brainer folks. Just do it!

[Dead_Parrot]

34. As it happens...

The "upside-down" or "horns-up" pentacle is also significant: but it then becomes a symbol of rank within wicca. The one-point-up version is normally recognised as a symbol of the faith in general.

[Greyskye]

39. "upside-down" pentacle also = Masonic

The "upside-down" pentacle is also a Masonic symbol.

Just something I always found amusing.

[jberryhill]

42. Your avatar would be a great one....

Reduce, re-use, recycle...

[Wrinkle_In_Time]

26. We had some discussion on DU about this story earlier...

... http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=573260

There is a link on the va.gov site: Request for an emblem of belief not on the list (PDF) which is the official way to get them to recognise the issue. No telling how effective it is.

[LibertyLover]

27. It's not very effective at all - that's the problem

Recently there have been several attempts to get the VA to recognize the pentacle as a religious symbol for Wiccans. The Pagan Headstones Project, Lady Liberty League, Pete Pathfinder's Aquarian Tabernacle - the VA simply stalls, requests more information or changes the requirements so that you have to start over again. I'm not directly involved, but my former high priestess was. Her husband, a World War II veteran, died several years ago and was buried at Arlington. Rosemary got involved with the Pagan Headstones Project when the VA refused to permit Abe's marker to have a pentacle. Sadly Rosemary died several months ago and will be interred at Arlington next week, with the VA no closer to approving the pentacle than when her husband died.

[CornField]

28. This is just silly

The government shouldn't be in the business of decided which religion gets what symbol. Just provide the families a book with all sorts of symbols and allow them to choose one.

The kicker in this article?

"Currently the National Cemetery Administration has 38 permitted religious symbols for headstones and plaques, but none for pagans or Wiccans."

[UncleSepp]

32. HEBREW (Star of David) - huh??

Shouldn't it be Jewish? It's not Hebrew-ism.

[AlienGirl]

43. It dates back to 1943 on dog tags

PRESCRIBED SERVICE UNIFORM CHANGES WAR DEPARTMENT
No. 25 Washington 25, D.C July 1943
AR 600-35, 10 November 1941, is changed as follows:

69. Tag, identification.....
.....
The religion of the wearer, when stated, will be stamped in space 18 of the fifth line if that space is vacant, otherwise in space 18 of the fourth line, and will be indicated by a capital letter as follows: C for Catholic; H for Hebrew; and P for Protestant.

BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY OF WAR

http://dogtagmachines.com/HISTORY/More_History/more_history.html


Your guess is as good as mine why they used H instead of J...if not better.

Tucker

[newswolf56]

36. The corporate ruling class fears Wicca even more than it fears Communism:

The central deity of Wicca is the Great Goddess -- not just humanity's first and oldest deity, but also the personification of the cosmos: Gaia, Mother Nature in the original and ultimate sense. Indeed one of her most ancient titles is Mother of All Being, such that the essence of the original creation story was simply that, "in the beginning was the Mother and she gave birth." Wicca, by its restoration of this ancient wisdom, therefore threatens to heal the artificial division between the Abrahamic god (or man as the image of that god) and Nature. This healing is even more potentially terminal to capitalism than the redistribution of wealth demanded by economic democracy. Communism threatens the ruling class with economic justice but Wicca threatens the ruling class with the extinction of the very ethos that brought capitalism into being, the ethos that (whether secular or theological) now rationalizes capitalism's continued existence. Wicca jeopardizes this ethos by threatening to end the warfare between man and nature ordained by the theologies of Yehveh, Jesu and Allah -- the false hatefulness that facilitates not only capitalism's rape of the environment but the male supremacist subjugation of women as the human embodiment of nature.

For a thorough and extensively documented treatment of these connections, read the epic work by Barbara Mor and Monica Sjöö The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth.

The resurrection of the Goddess is in fact the essence of the "revolution in consciousness" the old Counterculture claimed as its wellspring, and it is potentially the most revolutionary development in human history. Wicca in its socioeconomic and environmental form -- ecofeminism: socialist environmentalism founded on Wiccan spirituality or (for the secular-minded) on the Gaia Hypothesis -- is the first fruit of this revolution. And it has already terrified the topmost levels of the capitalist hierarchy into tyrannical response: just as the corporations financed Islamic fundamentalism to stop forever the growth of Middle Eastern Marxism, so now are the corporations funding Christian theocracy in the United States to counter the explosive growth of Wicca and other forms of Goddess-worship.

Nor is the establishment's hostility to the Goddess anything new. There is strong evidence -- circumstantial but compelling -- that one of the clandestine purposes of the CIA's Operation CHAOS (which far more than the FBI's COINTELPRO destroyed the Counterculture from within) was obstructing the widespread emergence of the proto-Wiccan consciousness that had begun to develop, particularly via the Back-to-the-Land Movement, but also as a strong thread within the Feminist Renaissance and the burgeoning Environmental Movement. Bear in mind the CIA’s analysts were educated at the nation's finest (Ivy League) universities, where the old mythologies of Europe were still taught, and therefore surely had the capability to recognize what was going on: the new vision was especially evident in the better rock lyrics of the era.

The government's implacable hostility to Wiccan symbols on U.S. military graves is merely the latest chapter of this (renewed) war-against-the-Goddess that dates back to the 1960s. Therefore (save as a ploy to encourage relaxed vigilance), approval of Wiccan symbols on those graves is extremely unlikely. Indeed I would take the present bureaucratic resistance as the precursor to a much greater, much more openly vicious purge: literally, the resumption of witch trials, this time based on the argument that a Wiccan (or anyone else who recognizes the Goddess) is by definition a threat to the Abrahamic/patriarchal/corporate order -- in other words, a dangerous subversive.

(I apologize if I have covered too much material in too little space; this has been a working day, and I am trying to get this vital material up before the thread dies.)

[Coventina]

38. Gee, whatever happened to "SUPPORT THE TROOPS"?

Oh yeah, that's right.

They're only supported when marching off to die.

Once they are wounded or dead, they are useless.....

[PatGund]

40. And the cynical side of me......

....thinks that there's a mindset in the RW that only good white "Christian" war dead mean anything.

Anyone else who dies while serving their country? Too bad, so sad, pity they're in hell now.....

[Fovea]

41. If you are Wiccan, Gay, Non-English Speaking,

Liberal, or simply not white enough, you are not good enough to be remembered among the patriotic dead.

Isn't that what they are saying to us?

Ok you pasty white, homophobic, ignorant, sibling fuckers, go fight for your SUV's gas yourselves!