Rev. Danny Fisher

In a post from May, I mentioned the plight of former U.S. Army chaplain Don Larsen, who received a discharge ostensibly because he was unable to provide a formal ecclesiastical endorsement when he converted from Pentecostalism to Wicca. Some say, however, that the dismissal has more to do with religious intolerance than the lack of an endorsement. This seems a very reasonable assumption when one considers the fact that our commander-in-chief is on the record saying:

I don’t think witchcraft is a religion, and I wish the military would take another look at this and decide against it.

Well, Mr. Bush further marginalized Wiccan military personnel this past week when he excluded Roberta Stewart from a Nevada meeting he held with the families of soldiers killed in combat. Mrs. Stewart’s husband, Sgt. Patrick Stewart, a Wiccan, was killed in Afghanistan in 2005.

Stewart…was left off the invitation list for the private meeting Tuesday even though other members of her husband’s family were invited.

When she heard about the exclusion from her mother-in-law, Stewart said, she concluded that it was done because of her public fight to force the federal government to engrave the symbol for the Wiccan faith on her husband’s marker on a memorial.

“I was devastated,” Stewart said. “I was crying and upset. I couldn’t believe that my country would continue this discrimination.”

[...]

Stewart, also a Wiccan, fought an 18-month battle to get the Wiccan symbol–a five-pointed star within a circle–engraved on a brass plaque for war heroes at the veterans cemetery in Fernley, Nev. Patrick Stewart, who was in the Nevada Army National Guard, is believed to be the first Wiccan killed in combat. The helicopter he was riding in was shot down.

[...]

The Department of Veterans Affairs turned down Roberta Stewart’s request because the Wiccan symbol was not among the 38 emblems, including ones for atheism and humanism, allowed for inscription on military memorials or grave markers.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State sued the department on behalf of Stewart and other Wiccan spouses, and in April, the VA agreed to add the symbol to its approved list.

The Department of Defense called Mrs. Stewart to tell her that her name was “inadvertently” left off of the invitation list, and Bush himself called her to apologize.

Mr. Bush must do more than simply make a private phone call to put things right here, however. It is time for the federal government to stop cherry-picking which religions to recognize and which not to. Anything less than honoring the full and diverse range of religious pluralism is not only wrong, it’s unconstitutional.