Veterans rally for right to show their faith

[icymist]

Wiccans and pagans gathered in St. Paul to get the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department to use the pentacle on military gravestones.

By Pamela Miller, Star Tribune
Last update: February 25, 2007 – 1:23 AM

Oblivious to an icy, spitting wind, Vietnam veteran Al Hensel held high an American flag as he and three fellow vets marched Saturday into a circle of birdseed laid out in front of the State Capitol in St. Paul.

Hensel, 53, of Minneapolis, who served in the Marine Corps from 1971 to 1973, was among about 150 pagans and Wiccans who rallied Saturday to urge the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to add the Wiccan pentacle to the list of 38 religious symbols approved for use on military-cemetery gravestones and other markers. Participants -- women and men, old and young -- came from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa.

"We have served our country, too, and everyone should have the right to have their religious symbol on their gravestone," said Hensel, who follows the Wiccan faith, a set of traditions that is in turn part of the diverse and eclectic Earth-based spiritual tradition called paganism. "This is my church, and I love it."

Read the article