When surviving families ask for a religious ceremony? Or when they simply don't ask for a secular one?
The NYTimes profiles the Houston Cemetery dispute, a lawsuit in which plaintiffs claim the Department of Veterans Administration is improperly restricting religious speech at burial ceremonies.
[C]ontroversy exploded when the new cemetery director began enforcing a little-noticed 2007 policy that prohibits volunteer honor guards from reading recitations — including religious ones — in their funeral rituals, unless families specifically request them.
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Department of Veterans Affairs officials say that the original policy, enacted under President George W. Bush, resulted from complaints about religious words or icons being inserted unrequested into veterans’ funerals. They noted that active-duty military honor guards, including the teams that do funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, say almost nothing during their ceremonies.“We do what the families wish,” said Steve L. Muro, the under secretary for memorial affairs. “I always tell my employees we have just one chance to get it right.”
Is this as straightforward as an opt-in, opt-out dispute? It sounds like the policy is currently being interpreted to require an opt-in of religious language by the deceased's survivors, which makes sense, as opposed to an assumption of religious ceremony. If so, isn't that as it should be?
