Religious discrimination or bureaucracy as usual

Jon sent a couple of links on this story: a US soldier was killed on active service, but the Veteran's Administration refuses to allow his grave marker to carry his religious affiliation. The Washington Post sums it up here:

At the Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the small town of Fernley, Nev., there is a wall of brass plaques for local heroes. But one space is blank. There is no memorial for Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart.

That's because Stewart was a Wiccan, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has refused to allow a symbol of the Wicca religion — a five-pointed star within a circle, called a pentacle — to be inscribed on U.S. military memorials or grave markers.

The department has approved the symbols of 38 other faiths; about half of are versions of the Christian cross. It also allows the Jewish Star of David, the Muslim crescent, the Buddhist wheel, the Mormon angel, the nine-pointed star of Bahai and something that looks like an atomic symbol for atheists.

While it's quite likely that there would be some resistance to putting a Wiccan symbol on a grave marker or official memorial, I think the real reason for this is sheer bureaucratic inertia and/or incompetence. If the US Army can list the name of the faith on the soldier's dogtags, they can accept the use of the religious symbol on the grave or monument. I think the VA is just doing what massive bureaucracies do all the time . . . delaying making a decision until there is no risk of them being blamed.