Posted on 09/02/2007 1:34:34 PM PDT by DogByte6RER
Bush apologizes to Wiccan widow
Published: Sept 2, 2007 at 10:16 AM
WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush apologized to a Nevada Wiccan who was left out of a presidential meeting with relatives of soldiers killed in combat.
Rebecca Stewart, who sued to have the Wiccan symbol placed on her husband’s grave marker in a military cemetery, told The Washington Post the president called her to apologize. She said she explained to Bush the faith she and her husband shared.
Sgt. Patrick Stewart was killed in Afghanistan in 2005.
Stewart said she heard about the private meeting from her mother-in-law, who was invited. The president visited Nevada to speak at the American Legion convention.
Stewart told the Post she believed she had been excluded from the invitation list because of the lawsuit she filed to have the Defense Department place the Wiccan symbol -- a five-pointed star inside a circle -- on her husband's grave. She won the suit and the government added the Wiccan symbol to 38 others that were previously recognized, including a symbol for atheism.
While other Wiccans are known to be serving in the military, Stewart is believed to be the first to die in combat.
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
Isn’t the inverted cross also the sign of St Peter?
I think it is nice the President called her.God bless Him.
That, and a few other faiths. Unfortunately I can’t remember any right now but I am relatively sure that Christianity and Islam are not the only religions with idiots who persecute others “in the name of God”.
I guess we could include the various maniacal meso-American heart ripping/human sacrificing cultures so aptly portrayed in “Apocalypto”. They were pretty brutal. And of course there were the pre-Islamic pagan Arabs who killed anyone who didn’t follow their heathen idols.
If anyone wonders why the Koran has plenty of violence in it, it’s because that the original pagans tried to kill Muslims before they even had a chance to establish the faith (insert stupid snarky comments of approval here). If Christianity were to develop in such an excessively hostile period, one can expect the same type of attributes too.
I think it's covered under this one (see post 35):
8. Flaming chalice: Unitarian Universalist.
I had not heard about any of this before now, but my initial reaction was pretty much the same as your's as quoted above. Any man who died to preserve his fellow Americans' liberties should be permitted to choose his own epitaph.
I wish that he had been a Christian so that I would know that he is now enjoying eternal life that no one could ever take from him, as I will after my mortal life is over. But evidently that wasn't the path he chose to take. Very sad.
Christians are not to blame for your lack of respect. If you prefer Satan's followers over Christ's followers, why are you posting here? Did you fail to read the Statement by the founder of Free Republic?
You should be ashamed of yourself for the nasty way you've treated the Christians on this thread. None of them has shown any disrespect for anyone, as you have.
If it's a First Amendment issue then I don't see why the symbol that goes on the headstone needs to be religious in nature. If the fallen soldier wished to have a swastika put on his grave, or if he considered naziism his religion for that matter, I guess we would need to honor his request.
I'd wager that the manager of the military cemetery would be more careful not to place the swastika grave next to a Jewish grave than he would in placing a wiccan grave next to a Christian grave. Unfortunate for the descendants of the fallen Christian hero who pay a visit to his grave site and have to encounter the abomination.
I don’t like the woman’s religion, but the President wasn’t apologizing for anything other than her being left out of a meeting of those whose loved ones gave their lives for their country. It was an awkward situation at best.
I agree. I am torn on this issue. I agree that this man should be honored for his service, but the symbol has to be in good taste. According to that website posted earlier there IS a wiccan symbol that is "approved". But where do you draw the line? Can a hindu use the swastika, which is a sacred symbol to them?
Her husband's pagan RELIGION isn't worthy of anyone's respect or honor, but IMHO the MAN HIMSELF is worthy of his nation's respect and honor because he gave his life for his country and for his fellow Americans' freedom to worship the one true God in the manner we believe to be correct.
I'm very sorry that he apparently died as a lost nonbeliever in the Lord Jesus Christ, but that was by his own free choice.
“U.S. President George Bush apologized to a Nevada Wiccan who was left out of a presidential meeting with relatives of soldiers killed in combat”.God don’t ask me deep questions,i can answer as a Catholic and we do have rules for headstones and as you know just about everything else:)
Help me out here. Where is Christ or Christianity mentioned in that Statement? I read, re-read, and re-read it again and I can't find it anywhere that Jim Robinson states Free Republic is a Christian site. Maybe it's late and I'm tired.
The problem with that logic is, of course, admitted Nazis (neo-Nazis, white supremists, etc.) aren't allowed to serve openly in the US Armed Forces.
lol...I’m tired too. Think I’ll call it a night.
No matter what religious denomination you follow, a majority of the other religious people in the World and a majority of all Americans think that your particular religious denomination is either a false religion or a heresy.
Sorry if you consider the First Amendment guarantees of the Free Exercise of religion to be "moronic".
The Founding Fathers drafted the First Amendment to protect the minority religious beliefs of people like you from the religious intolerance of people like you.
Until you succeed in repealing the First Amendment, you are just going to have to put up with the fact that other Americans have a Constitutional right to their religious beliefs whether you like it or not.
Really? Who expressed hatred toward him? A refusal to endorse his “religion” which was recently invented as an excuse to express hatred of Judeo-Christian values is not an expression of hatred toward him.
Who threatened you with banishment? You need a reality check.
That's interesting, I didn't know that. Are all supremacists banned or just white ones?
If some kook considers Hitler a god and nazzism a religion can therefore be banned from serving in the military then I guess there is a committee somewhere that makes legitimacy judgments on religions.
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