Opinion: Give these vets the star treatment

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No thanks to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a National Guardsman killed in Afghanistan last year is now memorialized by a marker symbolizing his religion. Last Saturday in a military cemetery in Fernley, Nev., a plaque bearing the Wiccan symbol of a pentacle was unveiled for Sgt. Patrick Stewart, an adherent of the nature religion sometimes confused with Satanism.

The ceremony was a victory for Stewart’s widow, but it doesn’t reflect a new policy from the VA. Unaccountably, the agency has balked at Wiccan markers in veterans’ cemeteries although it allows crosses, Stars of David, Islamic crescents and even a symbol of atheism. Stewart got his pentacle because of the intervention of Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who invoked the jurisdiction of the state Office of Veterans Services over the cemetery.

This dispensation for one family provides no relief for other Wiccans whose relatives have given their lives for their country. The VA’s sluggish response to requests to authorize the pentacle moved Americans United for Separation of Church and State to sue the agency on behalf of Stewart’s widow and others Wiccans. The Pentagon estimates that 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans.

That litigation can be dropped if the VA comes to its senses. The Wiccans’ best hope may lie not in divine or cosmic intervention but in the post-election power alignment in Washington.

Harry Reid, Stewart’s home-state senator, has promised to “work closely with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to ensure that the issue is addressed at the federal level.”

Next month Reid will be the Senate majority leader. If the Pentagon doesn’t want to offend him, it should start polishing the pentacles.