Bernard F. Sullivan: They don't like Wiccans, either

[icymist]

While the weaponry of our armed forces has become more lethal and technologically advanced with breathtaking rapidity, it has always managed to hang onto its trusty double-edged sword.

The military, with a self-righteous and haughty harrumph, professes to be founded and maintained to preserve liberty, yet it is traditionally stingy when it comes to doling out liberty to its own people and even private citizens.

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The Defense Department discharged 726 service members last year for the high crime of being homosexual while gays serve gallantly without persecution in the armed forces of many of our closest allies -- among them the United Kingdom, Australia and Israel.

Now we have at issue further evidence of bias in a blank space in a wall of brass plaques for local heroes in the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Fernley, Nev. The memorial for Sgt. Patrick Steward is missing because he was a Wiccan. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to let the pentacle, a five-pointed star within a circle, be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

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