Your organization is wrong

From: (name withheld)
Subject: Your organization is wrong
Date: December 12, 2021 at 9:35:25 AM MST
To: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>

By complaining about wreaths being placed upon gravesites you clearly are dishonoring the families of the dead veterans. And your statement that the uniform of the US Military represents the religion of the nation smacks of what Hitler said and did in Nazi Germany. Sad to see that your organization represents this. BTW are you being paid by RED CHINA for this?
very disappointed,

(name withheld)

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Response from MRFF Board Member John Compere

On Dec 12, 2021, at 1:33 PM, John Compere wrote:
Your clueless condemnation & contemptible comments reflect only on yourself & reveal only your insolence & ignorance. 
For your information, some families of deceased military veterans do not want a religious organization to which they do not belong or adhere profiting, promoting its religion version & marketing itself by presumptuously putting its religious wreaths on the graves of their deceased loved ones without permission. Those families consider it uninvited & unwanted intrusions on the personal burial sites of their deceased family members.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (composed of 85% Christians) represents, when requested, the religious freedom rights of those families to object & prevent thoughtless trespasses on their family graves. We do so because we respect their wishes & their wishes are not taken into consideration. To become better informed, see militaryreligiousfreedom.org.

Brigadier General John Compere, US Army (Retired)Disabled American Veteran (Vietnam Era)Board Member, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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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. Perhaps you do not fully understand, but for the past two hundred years or so, Christmas wreaths have been associated with Christ and the Christian religion. You can go online and check this if you wish, but I assure you that this is a fact. It is also a fact that under the Constitution of the United States, Amendment One, the U.S. Government is not supposed to recognize any particular religion and favor it above all others. You can check out the words of the First Amendment if you wish, but I assure you that this is also a fact. According to President Thomas Jefferson, who was in a position to know what the men who wrote the fFrst Amendment meant by its words, that change in the Constitution—that is, the First Amendment–erected a “wall of separation between church and state.” This means that the U.S. Government cannot allow some private group to go into a U.S. Government cemetery and decorate with a Christian symbol the graves of deceased veterans.

I ask you, Mr. Gibbons, how you would feel if I were to organize a Jewish group or a Hindu group or a Muslim group that went into a VA cemetery and decorated veterans’ grave with the symbols of their religion. I suspect that you would be really upset and would see this as an insult to these veterans and whatever religion they embraced.  The group that places Christian wreaths on veterans’ graves may not fully understand the significance of what they are doing, but they are violating the First Amendment as surely as if they were changing the religious markers on the veterans’ tombstones. You may know that the VA currently allows a choice of seventy-four different religious symbols to be officially engraved on tombstones in VA cemeteries, and only one of them is the standard Christian, or Latin, cross.

We know that the folks who place these wreaths sometimes do not always differentiate between the tombstones of veterans who have indicated a Christian belief and those who preferred some other form of spirituality when they were alive. This is not like Memorial Day in May when American flags are often placed near veterans’ tombstones. We are approaching a sacred time of year for those who adhere to the Christian faith, and the fact that a group of individuals has taken it upon themselves to place Christian symbols on veterans’ graves on U.S. government land is a total violation of our Constitution.

Comparing the actions of the MRFF with Hitler and Nazi Germany only demonstrates your own lack of understanding of the heinous nature of that regime. If you actually want to understand the Nazis and their actions, there are many terrific books that would enlighten you. As a historian, I recommend Robert Conot’s Justice at Nuremberg. It’s available on Amazon. Once you have read this book I think you will see why your allusion to Nazi Germany is not well taken.  I hope you will reconsider your objection and your comments.

Col. James T. Currie, USA (Ret.), Ph.D.
Board of Advisors, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell

On Dec 13, 2021, at 12:01 AM, Mike wrote:
(name withheld), you miss the point entirely and castigate us inappropriately. Your Hitler and China comments are out of line and they say more about you and the narrowness of your mind than they do about us.
Whether you choose to ignore the fact or not, a Christmas wreath, like Christmas itself, represents and honors Jesus Christ and is a symbol of Christianity,
In this case, the wreaths are a warm and fuzzy attempt to slip in a little Christian proselytizing. Our organizations’ staff, supporters, representatives and clients happen to be over 95% Christian, so I think you might understand that we are not opposed to Christianity. Nor are we opposed to any other belief system. What we are is dedicated to guarding everyone’s right to the religious or non-religious belief of their choice by protecting the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.
US Government owned and operated cemeteries cannot and should not be promoting, or appear to be promoting, one faith or belief system over others. In this particular case, we have no problem with the wreaths being placed on the graves of veterans whose families want them there, but we believe this organization’s casual assumption that every veteran’s family welcomes a Christian symbol on their loved one’s grave is not only wrong-headed  but intentional. If not intentional it is presumptuous and lazy.  It is and should be their responsibility to see to it that the wreaths are placed only on the graves of those vets whose family welcomes them, and it should be their job to do the research necessary to make that determination.
I hope that helps you better understand the reality and see the error in your comprehension of the situation.
Mike Farrell(MRFF Board of Advisors)

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