{"id":25275,"date":"2011-06-29T05:55:16","date_gmt":"2011-06-29T09:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=25275"},"modified":"2011-06-29T06:20:54","modified_gmt":"2011-06-29T10:20:54","slug":"va-censors-religious-speech-in-houston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=25275","title":{"rendered":"VA censors religious speech in Houston"},"content":{"rendered":"

COB6 sends this link from his undisclosed location<\/a> about the Houston Department of Veteran Affairs trying to enforce a sort of religious neutrality at the Houston National Cemetery; <\/p>\n

In one example cited in documents filed this week in federal court, cemetery director Arleen Ocasio reportedly told volunteers with the National Memorial Ladies that they had to stop telling families “God bless you” at funerals and that they had to remove the words “God bless” from condolence cards.<\/p>\n

“It’s just unfair that somebody would ask us to take God out of our vocabulary,” said Cheryl Whitfield, founder of Houston National Memorial Ladies.<\/p>\n

“I could’ve kept my mouth shut and let things happen, but when it comes to standing up for your belief in God and giving comfort to the families, I don’t want to regret not saying anything,” Whitfield said. “We all had to stand up for what we believe in.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, I think that’s an overreaction. Folks need God and answers most when they’ve lost a family member. I don’t see how a simple “God bless you” can offend anyone.<\/p>\n

The Houston VA got in trouble earlier this year when they tried to stop a pastor from mentioning God in a prayer at the cemetery (a link to the Liberty Institute<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Federal District Judge Lynn N. Hughes granted a temporary restraining order preventing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its Director of the Houston National Cemetery, Arleen Ocasio, from preventing Pastor Scott Rainey from praying in Jesus’ name during his invocation at a Memorial Day ceremony sponsored by the National Cemetery Council for Greater Houston (a private, non-profit association). At a conference with the judge moments ago, the government conceded and informed Pastor Rainey that it will not oppose his prayer on Memorial Day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COB6 sends this link from his undisclosed location about the Houston Department of Veteran Affairs trying … VA censors religious speech in Houston<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}