You go girl

From: (name withheld)
Subject: You go girl
Date: December 14, 2021 at 4:05:39 PM MST
To: [email protected]

Fuck you and your bullshit.
You don’t speak for me! You speak for a vocal minority!  I’m an agnostic, and would rather have a wreath laid at my headstone or that of my deceased Vietnam Vet father, Vietnam Vet Uncle, WW2 Grandfather, than give you any credit.
Find something else to do like help a soldier in need.
Many wreaths to you!

(name withheld)

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Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member James Currie

Dear (name withheld):

I have been asked by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to respond to your recent email. I will not stoop to the level of vulgarity you exhibit, as I have never found that such words enhance discussion and understanding. If you wish to express yourself in that fashion, it only suggests to me that you don’t have very good arguments to make.

If you want to have wreaths laid at your own tombstone when that becomes appropriate and to have wreaths laid at the tombstones of deceased relatives, that is certainly your right and privilege. But it is a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the U.S. Government to allow an outside group to lay religious symbols at the tombstones of veterans who are buried in government-run cemeteries. Make no mistake about it, Christmas wreaths have been long-associated with the Advent season, when Christians celebrate the birth of their Savior, Jesus Christ. The fact that an outside group has paired with a wreath manufacturer to place these wreaths willy-nilly on veterans’ graves does not make such wreath-laying less of a violation of the First Amendment. Perhaps you don’t remember the exact words of the relevant part of the First Amendment. Here’s what they are:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So, what does this mean. I could tell you, and as someone with a doctorate in history, I am probably qualified to interpret these words for you. But let’s do better than that. Let’s go to the words of President Thomas Jefferson, who actually knew the men who drafted this amendment and guided it through the Congress. Here’s what Jefferson wrote to the Danbury, Conn., Baptists in January 1802:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people [that is, the First Amendment] which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Please note Jefferson’s use of the phrase “wall of separation between church and state.” That’s the crux of the issue here. The First Amendment makes it clear that government and religion should not mingle, and that’s what this wreath-laying is all about: breaching that First Amendment wall of separation. Soldiers and sailors and airmen and coast guardsmen and marines come to MRFF because they are in need of assistance in defending their right to believe as they wish about religion, a right that is guaranteed them by our Constitution. MRFF defends that right, and it is notably successful in doing so.  If you would like wreaths on the graves of your deceased relatives, that is clearly your privilege. Just don’t ask the U.S. Government to make you part of a mass exercise in First Amendment violation.

Col. James T. Currie, USA (ret.)

Board of Advisors, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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