Veterans Win Right to Post Wiccan Symbol on Headstones

The Department of Veterans' Affairs has agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to the list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans' headstones. This followed Friday's settlement of a lawsuit filed last November by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State on behalf of several Wiccan military families. A similar lawsuit was also filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the settlement included and resolved this parallel litigation.

Richard Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United, said at a news conference that it generally takes a few months for the department to approve a new religious symbol. In contrast, the legal battle to win approval for the Wiccan emblem took 10 years. According to an article in the New York Times, the group attributed the delay to religious discrimination.

The VA previously had 38 religious emblems available for headstone engraving, including commonly recognized symbols for Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as those for smaller religions such as Sufism Reoriented, Eckiankar and the Japanese faith Seicho-No-Ie. They even offer symbols for atheists and secular humanists. Yet the agency had refused since the mid-1990s to act on requests by Wiccan families and clergy to approve use of the Pentacle.