We can find religious symbols on every medium imaginable, from jewelry and t-shirts to that most solemn ornament which marks our passing from this life. 

This Memorial Day, however, there is one family that the government has not allowed to place its own religious symbol on their memorial for a fallen soldier.  His widow has also been prohibited from speaking at a local Memorial Day ceremony. 

The reason?  The soldier in question--killed in Afghanistan--was a believer in the Wiccan faith.  The U.S. government does not allow a pentacle (pictured left) to be placed on a veterans' memorial, a prohibition that would also appear to extend to public memorial ceremonies for the honored dead. 

The government has yet to explain its longstanding failure to add the pentacle to the list of approved religious symbols.  The most likely reason:  a concern that Christians would view this an implicit approval of what many folks unfamiliar with pagan traditions believe to be devil worship.