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The following was distributed by Circle Sanctuary. I didn't write it. --MS

One year ago today, US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)-issued veteran grave markers with Pentacles were dedicated in a public ceremony at Circle Cemetery, a national Pagan cemetery, located in the heart of Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve near Barneveld, Wisconsin.

In observance of Memorial Day this year, we are releasing information about Pentacle veteran grave markers the VA has issued in the past year since the Veteran Pentacle Quest victory.

This news was compiled from Freedom of Information Act documents obtained from the VA by Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary just prior to Beltane, May 1, 2008. The following is excerpted and adapted from her report, which will be published in the next issue of CIRCLE magazine, which goes to press in early June.

VETERAN PENTACLE GRAVE MARKERS ACROSS THE USA

In the year since adding the Pentacle to its list of emblems, the VA hasissued 26 veteran grave markers with Pentacles. Two dozen are fordeceased veterans, and of these, one is for a veteran and his wife. The other two markers are interfaith with the Pentacle signifying the Wiccan faith of wives buried with their veteran husbands in federal cemeteries.

SERVICE: Wiccan and Pagan veterans honored by Pentacle grave markersinclude those who served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps.Their combined range of service has spanned seven decades. The majorityof the markers are for war veterans, including two who served in World WarII, three who served in the Korean War, and seven who served in theVietnam War.

WAR DEATHS: Some of the markers are for those who have died in 21stcentury wars. In addition to Sgt. Stewart, a Desert Storm veteran who waskilled in action in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and whosewidow, Roberta Stewart, spoke out publicly as part of the Veteran Pentacle Quest, there are markers for six troops who were killed in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and another for a soldier who had served both in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and who died of war-related injuries after returning home.

CEMETERIES: The 26 Pentacle markers are in 17 cemeteries across the UnitedStates. 16 of the markers are in national cemeteries, five of which are in Arlington National Cemetery. One is in a state veterans cemetery. Nine are in private cemeteries, four of which are at Circle Cemetery in Wisconsin.

STATES: There are VA-issued Pentacle markers in 14 states: California, Colorado, Florida, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

On this Memorial Day, we honor the lives and service of Wiccan and other Pagan veterans who have died.

We give thanks for the Pentacle markers that have been issued by the VA thus far.

And, we send out the wish that the VA will finally finish revising its protocols and procedures for adding additional emblems of belief to its list of those it will include on the veteran grave markers it issues so that symbols of other branches of Paganism can be included as well as symbols of other religions.

Liberty and Justice for All.

Circle Times: Memorial Day, Monday, May 26, 2008

This is way out of hand -- join me in boycotting the debate. Kucinich deserves to at least be heard. He's the only one supporting impeachment. Let the media know we've had enough of their deciding what we should hear. Go here to tell them you get to make the choice, not them.

* NBC/MSNBC at 212 664-4444 and ask for the Comment Line or
* email NBC/MSNBC at letters@msnbc.com



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Think Progress

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814


True, he was speaking at Liberty University, which was built by the late Jerry Falwell, and he was paying tribute to the old bigot. Never take these people lightly. They're dangerous.

Yes, Gingrich is a hypocrite that cheated on his wife while trying to impeach Bill Clinton over a blow-job, and we on the Left consider him a joke. The danger lies in the fact that too many people who just want to be good Christians end up being "good Germans" because they don't question people who are saying the things they want to hear.

The same people who never think to question the religion they grew up within also rarely question leaders who espouse that religion. They don't dig deeper, they just bask in the glow their own self-righteousness, thinking they are good people and people who think differently are not. People like Gingrich make a lot of money and wield a lot of power by manipulating the uneducated and well-intentioned. He's no more a Christian than Osama bin Laden, no matter what church he attends. His real "god" is money and he'll do anything to make it and to keep it. He'll tell lie after lie, with a straight face and conviction in his voice.

Yes, Newt would LOVE to turn this country into a theocracy. People would be much easier to control. It would be much easier to oppress the voices of dissent, or anyone who doesn't match his W.A.S.P-y ideal of an American citizen. He could make sure you never see anything on TV or read anything in a paper or on the internet that wasn't approved by Karl Rove - we barely do now. The more control these Christo-fascists get, the tighter the control they'll exercise over the media. Look what they did to PBS in the short time they controlled it. They got rid of Bill Moyers, one of the finest journalists in the world, and hired the odious Tucker Carlson. Tucker's another well-paid Republican liar, and spouted his nonsense weekly in spite of all evidence contradicting his lies.

The Bush administration has used their cloak of piety to loot the United States treasury and undermine the Constitution. I have no doubt that much of the 8 Billion (!) dollars that disappeared under the auspices of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq - a group consisting of young, poorly qualified true believers hand-picked for their loyalty to Bush - found its way into Republican pockets. Bush has wasted a Trillion dollars and nearly a million lives on his Christian Crusade, and he has violated not only the Constitution but international law as well.

The people who support him don't look past the facade of faith. They think he's a good Christian. He defends rape, torture and murder of people guilty of nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, including women and children. He has imprisoned thousands, some for nearly 4 years, without due process. He spies illegally on your mail, your phone, your library and the internet, and is taxing the working public rapidly into abject poverty, but his followers still think he's listening to "god" so they let him create a new feudal state by voting against their own interests.

In the new Christian army, the solders might be believers, but the leaders are motivated by greed. Unfortunately, those soldiers will torture or kill anyone who isn't one of them, and feel like a good soldier for doing it. I'm not exaggerating - these people are dangerous.

Keep in mind that Bush expects Armageddon any minute now and he has the nukes to make it happen.

Learn your American history and keep it handy. When you hear the fundamentalists spouting their revisionist bullshit, stop them. They get away with too much. They'll continue to repeat the party line no matter what you do, but it you challenge them you might be able to reach others who are listening. The more you know, the more you have to fight with, and have no doubt that this is a fight - nothing less than your freedom as an American citizen is at stake.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
Author: Thomas Jefferson

They [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
Author: Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

God is an essence that we know nothing of. Until this awful blasphemy is got rid of, there never will be any liberal science in the world.
-- John Adams, "this awful blashpemy" that he refers to is the myth of the Incarnation of Christ, from Ira D Cardiff, What Great Men Think of Religion, quoted from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

"The founders of our nation were nearly all Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected [Washington; Adams; Jefferson; Madison; Monroe; Adams; Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity....
"Among all our presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of religion, at least not of more than Unitarianism."
-- The Reverend Doctor Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in a sermon preached in October, 1831.


"As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries....
"The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation."
-- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), carried unanimously by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams (the original language is by Joel Barlow, US Consul)

According to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, the VA has just approved the pentacle for Wiccan Soldiers. Roberta Stewart, wife of slain Sgt. Patrick Stewart, hopes that his memorial plaque bearing the Wiccan symbol, will be ready in time for Memorial Day. Stewart was the first "out" Wiccan to die in combat.

All Hail, Wiccan Warriors!