Always interesting what a couple lawsuits will do. The Veterans Administration has been stonewalling approval for Pagan symbols on military headstones for close to a decade now. But now that Roberta Stewart (along with Circle Sanctuary and Americans United) and Pete Pathfinder of The Aquarian Tabernacle Church (along with the ACLU) are bringing litigation we finally get a public statement from the VA on the situation.

“VA spokeswoman Jo Schuda was unable to fully explain the delays, which she said may have been caused by VA regulation changes and the Wiccan religion’s lack of a national headquarters. ‘There are a lot of mysteries within bureaucracies, and maybe this is one of them,’ she said. ‘The as-yet unanswerable might come out in the course of litigation.’”

This most recent comment seems to hint that there is some internal strife over the matter. Maybe some Bush appointees who don’t want to approve Pagan symbols on their watch are gumming up the works? Most of the reasons for delay sound very much like bureaucratic hair-splitting, matters that most likely would have been smoothed over if the applicant was a Christian denomination. I look forward to hearing the sworn testimony of VA officials as they explain why The Christian and Missionary Alliance, Presbyterian Church USA, and Sikh emblems were approved in 2005 while Circle Sanctuary had to apply twice.

Tags: Paganism