Veterans' Administration Needs to Approve Symbol

Sergeant Patrick Dana Stewart was a loving father and husband - and was killed-in-action when his Chinook helicopter was shot down by Taliban terrorists on September 25^th, 2005. When he was buried alongside Chief Warrant Officer John Flynn - who was also on that fateful mission - Sergeant Stewart's memorial marker was left blank. Why was this? After all, CWO Flynn's memorial marker was properly inscribed with his name and the symbol of his religious faith - a cross. Why hadn't Sergeant Stewart's memorial marker been engraved? Well, it was because Sergeant Stewart was a Pagan, or more appropriately a Wiccan - and there was no approved symbol for Pagan or Wiccan markers. When Mrs. Stewart was offered a blank memorial marker - in other words, a marker with just her husband's information inscribed on it with no religious symbol - she refused that and opted for no marker to be put up. For the next year, Roberta would join in a struggle that continues today: to have the pentagram approved as a religious symbol with the Veterans' Administration, and thus allow the headstones and memorial markers of Pagan and Wiccan veterans to be marked appropriately.

This particular issue of getting the pentagram approved didn't start with the plight of the Stewarts'. Instead it starts back in August of 1997 with the Archpriest of the

Aquarian
Tabernacle
Church

- Pete Pathfinder Davis - preparing and then sending the appropriate materials to the Veterans' Administration requesting that the pentagram be added to the National Cemetery Administration's list of approved symbols. The Veterans' Administration summarily ignored the request with no response until a response letter was sent in November 27, 2001 - over four years later. This response letter noted that the Veterans' Administration was drafting new procedures for emblem additions to the National Cemetery Administration's approved symbols list.

In December of 2003, the

Aquarian
Tabernacle
Church

once again prepared the materials necessary for the request, and submitted them to the Veterans' Administration. Again the application was ignored. In April of 2005, Reverend Davis wrote to the Veterans' Administration urging consideration of the 2003 request. The Veterans' Administration responded back that they were in the process of revising the submission procedures again, and that they had no record of the 2003 request. In October of 2005, an

Aquarian
Tabernacle
Church

member made a Freedom of Information Act request to the Veterans' Administration concerning the issue. The response from the Veterans' Administration contained a copy of the 2003 request, which they had stated they had no knowledge of just six months prior to the Freedom of Information Act request. In January of this year (2006), the

Aquarian
Tabernacle
Church

once again prepared and submitted a request for the symbol to be added to the National Cemeteries Administration list - their third request in less than nine years.

Other Pagan groups have also submitted similar requests for the Pentagram to be added to the National Cemeteries' Administration list of approved symbols. In September of 1998, Reverend Rona Russell, a Priestess of the Isis Invicta Military Mission of the
Temple
and Lyceum of Isis Fortuna, submitted a request on behalf of several former and active military members. Reverend Russell made several attempts to garner information on the status of her request in 1999, and finally received notification on July 29^th that there would be a decision forthcoming. When she had not heard anything back by the end of the calendar year, she contacted the Veterans' Administration in January and February of 2000 to again request an update on the status of her request. Reverend Russell has never received any status on her request that was submitted in 1998.

During these particular procedures, the Veterans' Administration has approved the symbols for other groups, whom have submitted their requests after the original requests by the

Aquarian
Tabernacle
Church

and Reverend Rona Russell for the inclusion of the pentagram. In March of 2002, the Christian and Missionary Alliance submitted a request to have their religious symbol added to the National Cemeteries Administration's list of approved symbols. The symbol was approved on July 3^rd of 2002 - four months after the request had been initially made. The Humanist "Emblem of Spirit" was approved on July 25^th, 2003 with the initial request made on June 21^st of 2002 and a second request made on September 20^th of 2002, a total of thirteen months from initial request to approval. The Presbyterian Church, which had been using the Christian Cross as its primary symbol, made a request for a secondary symbol on July 2^nd of 2003. The secondary symbol was approved on October 9^th of 2003, for a total of four months. The symbol for Izumo Taishakyo Mission of
Hawaii
took only six weeks for approval in 2004. The symbol for Soka Gakkai International -

had their Buddhist symbol approved in less than eleven weeks. The Sikh emblem was approved in less than two weeks, expedited so that the symbol could be placed on the headstone of an Army Sergeant killed-in-action and buried in

Arlington
National
Cemetery

.

…and still the requests from the

Aquarian
Tabernacle
Church

and the request of Reverend Russell languish in a wait-and-see status. Where the requests by other, lesser-known groups of faith have been quickly approved; the requests on behalf of the Pagan belief systems is on-hold. Where the Sikh Sergeant was given expedited status to the request for his symbol of belief; the symbol for Sergeant Stewart is on-hold - nearly a year after his burial.

On September 13^th of this year (2006), the state of Nevada's Office of Veteran's Services approved the use of the pentagram on the memorial marker of Sergeant Patrick Stewart, after discerning that it had the authority to make such a decision under the 32 Code of Federal Regulations Part 39, Section 39.24 which reads as follows: "Neither the Secretary nor any employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs shall exercise any supervision or control over the administration, personnel, maintenance, or operation of any State veterans' cemetery." In effect, this allows the State of
Nevada
to overcome the long wait that the Stewarts' have had to endure at the hands of the Veterans' Administration at the National level. While this effectively brings the issue of Sgt. Stewart's plight to a close, it only begins to address the need for the approval of the requests that have been made to the National Veterans' Administration.

Utilizing all of this background information, it is a little difficult for many individuals who are Pagans - myself included - to not come to a determination that there is something wrong with the process here. Don't get me wrong - I'm not advocating a conspiracy theory here at all. Instead, I am seeing a pattern that resembles a form of quiet discrimination on the part of the Veterans' Administration. According to the Military Pagan Network, the rough estimate of the number of Pagans in the military is approximately 4,300. Furthermore, the United States Air Force reported in 2004, that Wicca was the third-largest non-Christian religion in that branch of the military - ranking behind Judaism and Buddhism.

The Veterans' Administration's nearly ten years of reluctance, stone-walling, and claims of "lost paperwork" are starting to wear thin. Like many of the Pagans that are currently wearing a military uniform, I served in the Military as a Pagan. Like any other member of the military, Pagans follow their Oath of Enlistment. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder with members of other faiths in operations of combat and peace-time. They are afforded the same benefits that these other military members are given - including the right to burial in a

National
Cemetery

. Unlike the vast majority of their military brethren, that burial will not include a pentagram marking their chosen faith on their memorial markers. In my eyes, as a veteran of combat and of peace-time military service - that is a shameful thing. Those Pagan veterans deserve the same respect that their fellow Christian comrades were and are given. Faith is an integral part of who and what a human being is about and those symbols on those graves are representations of how this great country comes together as a unified mass of individuals. Individuals who can be radically different from one another on issues such as religious belief, but still come together to make this a UNITED States of America. We owe it to our veterans to have the Veterans' Administration to approve the symbol after such a long and lingering wait.

Furthermore, no family should have to endure the long wait that has happened with the Stewarts' over an issue of such small importance as the approval of a religious symbol. Nor should any family have to accept a blank memorial marker while the Veterans' Administration drags its collective feet over the approval process. Nor should an approval process linger on for almost ten years in length. It is well past time for the Veterans' Administration to acknowledge this symbol. There are other Pagan families out there that have loved ones that have died and are waiting for the passage of this symbol before interring them to a

National
Cemetery

, as they should be as fallen veterans. This is not an issue that should be left up to each individual state to decide willy-nilly - this is an issue that speaks volumes of the respect we have for those that chose to serve in the ranks of the military. It is not the Pagan religion that I am speaking of honoring with the inclusion of this symbol. It is the individual veteran, who just happens to be a Pagan that I am speaking of honoring with the approval of this request. The individual who stood up and joined the ranks of the military, to serve and defend our country, our Constitution, our way of Life - even if it didn't agree with his or her own. We owe it to these veterans to give them this honor, just as we have given this same honor to other comrades of theirs.