Have you always wanted to be known as a Southern Confederate American? Do you mourn the fact that somehow you cannot join the Sons of Confederate Veterans or the Daughters of the Confederacy as a full member? Well, folks, I have the answer right here. The Southern Legal Resource Center wants you to assist in its mission of creating a separate census category of “Southern Confederate American.”
As the petition reads:
I consider myself to be a Confederate Southern American. The Confederate Battle flag is a venerated symbol of my ancestry and heritage.
I am a Bible believing Christian who sees the Confederate Battle flag as a venerated symbol of my Christian religious faith in that it is emblazoned with the cross or saltire of the martyr St. Andrew, the first disciple of Jesus Christ. I also see in the white cross on the Confederate Battle flag, the greek letter “chi,” and early symbol for “Christos” or Christ.
Confederate Southern Americans are a remnant people from Southerners as a whole. We are not defined purely by the region we hail from. Many of our ancestors were soldiers, citizens or subjects of a Confederate State or the Confederate States of America.
But wait … there’s more …
According to the terms of the petition, you don’t actually have to be descended from anyone who was part of the Confederacy in any way, shape, or form. You could have simply married someone descended from a Confederate (that, folks, would include me). But you don’t even need that. Simply if you feel like a Confederate or you identify as one, you can join. That’s right! “Though I have no Confederate ancestry, I consider myself a Confederate Southern American by affirmation and adoption.”
This opens the door for Kevin Levin, who may long for Charlottesville after he moves to the Boston area.
Someone’s going to have to ask The Bangles to reunite to modify “Walk Like an Egyptian” to “Feel Like a Confederate.”
There are both opportunities and problems here. For one thing, no Jewish Confederates allowed, I guess, a blow to the notion of a multicultural Confederacy embracing diversity. Yet there were Jewish Confederates too, right? But note that African Americans can apply if their ancestors were “subjects” of the Confederacy. Perhaps the “self-identifying” (or “feelings”) clause takes care of all these problems.
Since Texas governor Rick Perry has already signed a document declaring me an honorary Texan, I have some thinking to do. Excuse me.
Crossroads 
OMG, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
The form still says 2008 and the site’s copyright ends at 2005. Was this DOA and no longer active? If so, I’m obviously not surprised.
I’ve heard much about the Battle Flag carrying the Cross of St. Andrew, which apparently comes from the wording of the resolution creating the 2nd National Flag, thereby giving credence to the idea that the Confederacy was a Christian nation. This is listed clearly in the affidavit. But of course the truth is that the cross was originally not diagonal, and concerns that an upright cross would offend Jews and Protestants caused the designer, William Porcher Miles, to turn it.
I’ve found it interesting as a Southern Jew who takes interest in Judah Benjamin that SCV camps attempt to recruit based on the call to defend the Battle Flag as a Christian symbol for a Christian nation, but then they go on to claim that the doctrine of slavery being ordained in the Christian Bible was in fact wrong. I do, however, understand the logic of making this appeal in regards to the symbol as a religious one, especially in the South, and I’m not offended by it, except in its inaccuracy (which depends on perspective, given the difference between Miles’s views and the 2nd National Flag resolution). It does make me wonder, though, what the place of a Jew might be in an SCV camp, or for that matter, anyone who is not adherent to the same religious views, given that such a person already definitively desires to be an SCV member. In the case of the SLRC, it seems, they have no place indeed.
My prayers have been answered.
Again, Pagans and Orisha practitioners are left out, even though the south is full of them 🙂
Where do I sign ?
Do confederate reenactors qualify?