{"id":18173,"date":"2012-06-27T02:15:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-27T05:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=18173"},"modified":"2012-06-27T02:17:31","modified_gmt":"2012-06-27T05:17:31","slug":"congress-to-codify-religious-rights-in-funerals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/27\/congress-to-codify-religious-rights-in-funerals\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress to Codify Religious Rights in Funerals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year a Houston Veterans’ Cemetery director was accused of banning all religious references<\/a> from funerals occurring at her facility (as well as using the chapel as a storage shed, among other things).\u00a0 A lawsuit was filed, and settled<\/a>.\u00a0 The consent decree prohibited the cemetery, then run by Arleen Ocasio, and the VA from interfering with or prohibiting religious references in the ceremonies.<\/p>\n

This year, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) has sponsored a bill that would codify in law<\/a> the ruling in that consent decree.<\/p>\n

Problems arose in Houston when the cemetery director misinterpreted [the] law to prohibit all religious speech.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Though the Houston dispute was rectified, Culberson and the conservative Christian law firm Liberty Institute want an ironclad legal protection for grieving families.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was all about the government not being neutral, but being anti-religious, hostile,\u201d Liberty Institute president Kelly Shackelford said.<\/p>\n

Shackelford argued that VA policy, even with changes after the Houston lawsuit, is not sufficient to guarantee free religious expression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA) seemed to think this would allow outsiders to “force prayers” on grieving families. Rep. Timothy J. Walz (D-Minn) made a statement that sounds reasonable at first:<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be very careful that we strike that perfect balance\u201d between the First Amendment\u2019s ban on established religion and its protection of free exercise of religion, Walz cautioned.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acting appropriately under the Constitution is good.\u00a0 Thinking that anything related to this bill is remotely related to the “ban on established religion” is ridiculous.\u00a0 However, Rep Walz also said<\/p>\n

the most important issue is ensuring that families can determine the religious content of a service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that — which is what was always in place before the Houston kerfuffle — is fair.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year a Houston Veterans’ Cemetery director was accused of banning all religious references from funerals occurring at her facility (as well as using the chapel as a storage shed, among other things).\u00a0 A lawsuit was filed, and settled.\u00a0 The consent decree prohibited the cemetery, then run by Arleen Ocasio, and the VA from interfering with or prohibiting religious references […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1877,96,4,78,82,722,2340,3369,3368,3309,3307,2,11,17,10,171,3370,1813],"class_list":["post-18173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-arleen-ocasio","tag-christian","tag-churchandstate","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-houston","tag-houston-national-cemetery","tag-jerry-mcnerney","tag-john-culberson","tag-kelly-shackelford","tag-liberty-institute","tag-military","tag-prayer","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-timothy-walz","tag-veterans-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}