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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 16887
[Schools/Ed]
Date Posted:
12/18/2006
6:52:56 am EST
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,460
RSS: 21,522
Comments: 2
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Season Over For We The People
Author: Tom Meyer Source: Nevada Appeal (NV)
Title: SEASON OVER FOR WE THE PEOPLE
Incline High School's five-year reign as We the People state champions came to an end last Saturday after faltering in the Nevada Second Congressional District-level competition, held in Truckee.
The competition wasn't a total bust for IHS, since one of its six unit-teams beat out the other schools in the Bill of Rights competition.
Layne, who was one of the unit-team's five members along with Sundance Bauman, Monique Castillo, Monica Ceragioli and Glenn Porter, said his team was well- prepared for the judges' cross examination of their testimony.
"They asked us 'what do you think of the soldier who was denied (permission to display) a wiccan symbol on his gravestone in a military cemetery,'" he said. "We explained that ... (the military was) denying him his free exercise rights and got lots of positive feedback from the judge."
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Community Thoughts: There are 2 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Technically, Not True | Dec 18th. at 6:16:05 pm EST
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me
Technically, since rights only attach to living persons, the small snippet of this article quoted in WV excerpts was a wrong answer. There are no Free Exercise (or any other) rights which attach to a corpse or box of ashes, any more than to an insect most people would freely crush or poison.
There are also no Free Exercise rights to have taxes fund your own religious practices, but rather only to be left free of government obstructions to doing so. As such, these students' argument wouldn't apply to living troops either, among those who might attempt to complete VA headstone emblem requests in vivo.
If this article had more depth rather than tossing out that issue as an aside about competition content, it'd be easier to review whether the judges handled it well, or themselves mishandled the close but wrong answer.
There are Establishment clause issues of religious neutrality, equal protections issues of selective application of neither law nor regulation in this case (both of which allow for approving Pentacle use) , but VA administrative policy, and due process issues for only those troops who specify a headstone emblem prior to death, but their estate administrators or survivors only thereafter. The Establishment and equal protections issues rightfully apply to all troops and all taxpayers, whereas the due process issues only attach to those directly adversely affected.
Most of those rights would disappear if the VA didn't supply any headstones to anyone, or specified it supplied flags or service branch emblems as the only approved symbols, and not personal religious insignias.
This whole issue is about a privilege which doesn't need to be extended by government in the first place, but which if extended, must be done on equal terms to all relative to protected criteria.
For a veteran's estate, it's a contract enforcement issue if an emblem was requested during life, and only a veteran's or soldier's rights issue to the extent certain religions are denied equal treatment when such requests are made and denied, procedurally or otherwise, to that living person.
Whether any rights attach to surviving relatives is a messy question, beyond those which might extend to any and all taxpayers. The purpose of grave emblems is left ambiguous, as the nature of death rituals varies among religions and cultures, while the military is itself promoting actions which violate the core principles of many religions, and trying to motivate troops to act contrary to human nature in many cases.
If the purpose of grave markers were specified as a marketing ploy to promote future enlistments and rally faux-patriotism among those easily indoctrinated to obey illegal orders and act as gung-ho mercenary thugs on cue, it would be easy to link that to the same standards used for recruiting paid advertising on TV, and pretend catering to religious prejudices of some while hiding how biased that is against equal treatment of pacifist Buddhists, Quakers, and many pagans, would be very easy. If the US military were held to serious equal protections and neutrality standards, most of how it's operated and been used in the last 50 years would have to be found illegal.
It's no wonder pagan emblems are a touchy subject, when such massive biases which if reconciled with fundamental obligations of US government would take down much of both mititary and political power structures exist.
The Free Exercise issues from this article at least are simple. There aren't any of the type asserted.
This is an important point to far larger understanding of rights issues, and of how the 14th Amendment was interpreted in the O.W. Holmes era court. Rights attach to any one or more living persons in the USA, but not based on theoretical situations which could exist, to practices or persons outside the US or from history.
An estate is not a living person. It's a temporary custodian of property to resolve assets, liabilities, and open contractual issues.
As to other technical issues of law, the VA is not "military" per se, though closely linked. "Permission to display" a Pentacle was not denied, as VA headstones are produced and shipped by VA or its contractors, not privately produced but subject to VA approval. The approval process for subsequent use on any VA headstone by anyone qualifying for one is biased, but it's no wonder students are confused, given the amount of research required to be precise over those technical issues, and the disinformation and obfuscation campaign by the VA to pretend their obvious violations of legal obligations somehow had a legitimate legal purpose. But, those technical issues appear only peripheral to the larger and more general principles defining US civil rights, whether religion or due process or equal protections, and the differences among a living person, an estate, and other third parties with or without standing.
cue Al Yankovic, "I Lost on Jeopardy".
If judges in a ConLaw scholastic competition gave positive feedback over a wrong answer, what was the quality of their judgement over other answers across this competition?
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