January 26, 2020
DOD should not allow promotion of religion on branded dog tags
The headline immediately caught my eye: “Anti-religion group seeks to deny troops inspirational dog tags.” It’s a shocking claim and seemed unbelievable — open religiosity was one of the components of military life I found most surprising when I joined, and it’s hard to imagine any organization trying to deny troops something as innocuous as dog tags with inspirational sayings on them.
A careful read validated my suspicion: It is not the case that a nonprofit has been denied the ability to donate innocuous dog tags with inspirational sayings to individual service members by a supportive nonprofit.
Rather, the Marine Corps — which is notoriously protective of its brand — denied a license for the private business Shields of Strength to produce and sell dog tags with both verses from the Bible and Marine Corps trademarks on them.
Read the full article in The Hill.
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