Fallen soldier's wife wants Wiccan symbol on headstone
http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1584012.php
I just ran across this story on the Army Times website. The gist of the story is that a Soldier was killed in Afghanistan. He is to be remembered on a memorial wall in a cemetery. So far so good. The problem comes when it turns out that the Department Of Defense does not recognize the Wiccan religious symbol (a pentagram in a circle), and therefore cannot have it put on the wall. There are about 30 symbols recognized by the DoD, even including an atheist symbol.
Really this seems like a non-issue. The DoD should simply say, "You're right, we missed that one," and immediately authorize it for display on the wall along with everyone else's religious symbol. In the story, I can't even find anyone who opposes the addition. So, I'm curious as to why it has taken so long to recognize this religion. Since I've been in the Army, I've personally known more than one Soldier who has claimed Wiccan as their religion, so I know its not some extremely isolated cases, there are a decent number of people out there with this.
This is really something that should have been addressed and taken care of years ago and the process for adding new religious symbols to the system should be a simple process. The DoD really has no place to deny anyone's religious symbol for use on their grave. Regardless of what anyone thinks, these Soldiers fought and died for the religious freedom that they are being denied and it needs to be fixed now.
It was a quiet day here… nothing new and exciting. The wind has come again and without the rain, its getting dusty. The sand is blowing around pretty good and has grounded our helicopters except for emergencies. Visibility is poor (maybe 100 meters). The good news is that high winds make it hard to accurately fire a mortar in at us.
When I read the news, I feel that I should be scared of the city of Baqubah, which we sit on the edge of. But, aside from one of two explosions a week, usually from our EOD teams blowing stuff up, I haven't seen what the big deal is. Sure, people get killed in shootings – but people get killed in shootings in New York or LA every day too.
It is becoming time for the Iraqis to start taking care of themselves (which they are beginning to). We have to now give them the chance to take care of their country. We have come to the sink or swim portion of this rebuilding, its time to take off the floaties.
1 comment:
It's on this weeks edition of the Army Times. I figure that it's only a matter of time now before they do that. I find it sad that they can recognise some "atheist" symbol but not a wiccan one. I may have to see if I can find out what that symbol is as I didn't realise that atheists had a symbol.
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