Imagine for a moment you're in a graveyard paying respects to someone, and you notice a grave marker with a Pentagram, the symbol of the Wiccain, Pagan faith on it. What would your feelings be about that? Would you defile the grave marker? Get ready to be honest, cause now that the VA has conceded the argument with the Pagan Veterans fighting for their right to display their symbol of faith, you will be forced to deal with it.
2007-04-23 15:07:13 · 31 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
I'm perfectly all right with it. I don't know why it is offensive. Is it not a symbol about nature?
Even if it wasn't a symbol about nature, why should I be offended? If I can put a Star of David on my grave, people should be able to put whatever they want on their graves. For many generations my people have lived (in the past) in places where Jewish cemeteries were defiled for being Jewish--we'd never replicate those crimes.
2007-04-23 15:24:05 · answer #1 · answered by LadySuri 7 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Defile the grave marker? No of course not. I would never defile any ones anything, let alone grave. They can display symbols all they like i don't find it in the least offensive. I see crosses everywhere and don't take offense, I don't see there being any difference. One persons religious symbol is just that a symbol if i am supposed to get all heat up about a symbol its a sad day in humanity.
Scottish Muslim Woman.
2007-04-23 15:20:08 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
I think it would be very narrowminded indeed to even consider defiling a gravemarker because of a pentagram, the same as it would be to attack the gravemarker of any person. I don't think the concept of "being forced to deal with it" should be an issue. It is not my loved ones gravemarker, and I should respect the rights of the loved ones of everyone buried in that cemetery. If I were that concerned, I would be sure to have made funeral arrangements in a cemetery that was of one faith only.
2007-04-23 15:17:51 · answer #3 · answered by guppy137 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
No I wouldn't. I don't care how the ground is decorated. The person who died is not there anyway; he/she is moved on and all that is left is a shell that the soul resided in during life here. So let the family or friends do whatever they need to do to help them feel better. The point of graves and markers is help the ones that remain; they have nothing to do with the ones that passed on.
2007-04-23 15:13:27 · answer #4 · answered by karanat77 2 · 2⤊ 0⤋
This relates to government owned cemeteries. Read the First Amendment of the Constitution. The government has no right to favor one religion over another, or to declare that the symbols of one religion are more valid than those of another. This includes atheism also.
Anyone in the military who has a problem being buried in a government-owned military cemetery with religious symbols they don't like can be buried in a religiously-appropriate private cemetery of their choosing. No one is ever forced to be buried there.
If you have a problem going to a cemetery like that, you are free not to go. If you defile grave markers not only are you being disrespectful to the dead (and to veterans who fought for our country), you would be committing a hate crime and could be put in jail for a long time. You should be capable of following your own personal religious beliefs without being disrespectful of others who have different beliefs. It is intolerant people like you that have persecuted and caused the deaths of tens of millions of people in the name of religion.
2007-04-23 18:16:33 · answer #5 · answered by Alan S 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Personally I would find it interesting, I can be strange that way =P
Also I was quite happy when I found out the VA finally allowed Pagans/Wiccans to display the pentagram on their tomb stone.
I heard about the injustice about a year ago and I knew it would be allowed eventually. It just shows how slow bureaucracy can be sometimes.
2007-04-23 16:18:37 · answer #6 · answered by Gamla Joe 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I would not defile a grave site. I would be sad for the person. I would stop and pray for the family.
I think the cross is a symbol for sacrifice ad that is what soldiers do. They sacrifice their own life for the freedom of others. That is what Christ did.
A pentagram does not symbolize that so it would be saying a different thing to me personally.
2007-04-23 15:14:50 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
As a human with a certain bent, I would be angered by it.
As a Christian, I would feel deep sorow for that person, regardless of the life he lived, because I know of the place he now is (unless an unknown change took place and his is, sadly, comemorated by his old standard) and because I know of the price that my Lord, Jesus Christ paid on the cross to offer him eternal life--an offer which he is assumed to have ignored for too long. I would never defile it.
Above all I am a Christian, so the right feeling is clear, and I pray that I would feel that.
God Bless,
J
2007-04-23 15:22:13 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
If the graveyard were a nonsectarian cemetery,what religious symbols people ut on tombstones is non of my business. Wiccan symbols would not bother me in the least on a grave of someone who believed in Wiccan Nature Religion.
I am more bothered by beer cans,gambling cards and dice and other symbols that trivialize the painful reality of mortality.
2007-04-23 15:14:30 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
One time my husband and I went to put flowers on my grandmother’s grave. We happened to be there right after a pretty nasty storm and most flags and flowers on gravesites were blown over, some in the mud. We walked around and righted as many things as we could. Do you think the person’s religion or ethnicity mattered to us? We were doing what needed to be done for the families.
I think it is a shame that some people make such unkind assumptions about others.
2007-04-23 15:16:55 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 3⤊ 0⤋