Widow mourns in Pagan community: Wiccan faith made couple stronger, woman says
Stewart’s husband, Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart, died on Sept. 25 when the Chinook helicopter he was in was shot down in Afghanistan. Both were Wiccan before they met…. Stewart is now taking on the Veterans Affairs Department and its National Cemetery Administration because it refuses to use the Wiccan symbol on the memorial plaque at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley. There is an empty space on the wall to the right of Chief Warrant Officer John Flynn, of Spanish Springs, who also died in the crash. It will remain vacant until the VA recognizes Patrick Stewart’s religion, and she can have the five-pointed star enclosed in a circle below his name, she said.
You would think that if this country can send a man off to war, it can and should at the very least recognize his right to believe as he sees fit. Isn’t that the phrase that, after all, what the Right is so fond of using: “fighting for our freedom”? Or does that freedom only apply if you happen to subscribe to the majority religion?
If an American soldier dies in the line of duty and happens to be a Wiccan, you can have all the honors you want, but the Veteran’s Administration will not allow the Wiccan symbol (a five-pointed star inside a circle) to be posted on that soldier’s final resting place. I can think of no greater disrespect for a soldiers’s sacrifice than to deny him the symbol of his faith when he is laid to rest. Whether or not you happen to agree with the faith that soldier has chosen is beside the point. If you are in a position to deny a solider like SGT Patrick Stewart something as simple, basic, and yet meaningful as the symbol of his faith, well, then you must be a Bush political appointee, no?
“John Flynn’s wife asked that they keep that place next to her husband,” she said. “Our boys died together. They should be memorialized together. She’s Christian.”
Several from the Pagan community of Northern Nevada attended the rite of passing ceremony and are extending their support to Stewart.
Laura Fitzpatrick, who also lives in Fernley, said she did not know Stewart before the memorial service but is doing what she can.
“Everybody supports it,” said Fitzpatrick, a witch whose Pagan name is Summer Wolf. “This is a breakthrough for others to have their faith recognized. We signed petitions. We wrote letters to our state representatives, the Senate.”
No one in government should have the right or the ability to deny a fallen solder something as simple as the symbol of their faith. Or is your narrow Christianity such that you do not recognize anything other than your own faith as a valid religion?
Patrick Stewart died fighting for his country, which is more than can be said for the anonymous, pin-headed Chickenhawk bureaucrat that denied his wife the right to have the Wiccan symbol installed on his grave. This, of course, runs counter to EVERYTHING this country stands for. The United States of America is not a country by for, and of Evangelical Christians. This country was founded by people looking for religious freedom, and they were fleeing this very sort of ideological tyranny.
Memo the anonymous, pin-headed Chickenhawk bureaucrat responsible for denying SGT Stewart’s wife her request: How DARE you deny the simple request of the wife of a solider who has given his life for his country? While you sit behind your desk that we taxpayers paid for, SGT Patrick Stewart and over 2,500 other braven Americans have died in the service of their country. You live in comfort and warmth, secure in the knowledge that the biggest risk you face is a paper cut. Yet you feel you have the perfect right to deny a soldier’s wife to have the symbol of their religion on his final resting place? If there is ANY justice in this world, there will be a special place in Hell for you. Let’s hope it looks like Afghanistan.
