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Why Pagans Need to Come Out of the Broom-Closet
by Sophia X. Pharou
In the last few years, and since November in particular, the Religious Right has gained a great deal of influence over our lives in America. In their wake come new laws - ones restricting access to birth control and HIV information, anti-welfare resolutions that seem to target women specifically, and restrictions on electronic communication. These laws were all passed on the basis of needing to protect `morality' and the American family. Emboldened by their success in Washington, fundamentalists now are pushing for amendments to allow prayer in the schools and `vouchers' that will funnel tax money into parochial schools. On May 17, Newt Gingrich stood next to Ralph Reed on national television in the Capitol - yes, the Capitol - and promised that the Republican Party would push the Christian Coalition's ``Contract With the American Family'' through Congress. Claiming that America is a ``Christian Nation'', Pat Robertson has said on more than one occasion that his goal is an America guided by Christian values - values he himself has defined.
These extremists do not represent the opinion of mainstream Christianity - but they have been allowed to wield a great deal of power, mostly because of the apathy and ignorance on the part of voters. Unlike most American citizens, unlike many Pagans, fundamentalist candidates can rest assured that `their' people will go to the polls to vote for them. The result, if allowed to go unchecked, will be a nation where fundamentalist Christianity is a state-sanctioned religion, and opposing lifestyles will be penalized, if not outright illegal!
The Case of Iron Oak
I will make this summary brief, since the case is well-publicized in the Pagan community. The High Priest and Priestess of Iron Oak, a legal church with a separate building for public actvities in Melbourne, Florida, had their celebrations at home interrupted repeatedly by the officials in Palm Bay, the city where the high Priestess lived. They were accused of violating zoning laws, running a church in an area not zoned for church activity. All for celebrations held six times a year on their own property! The zoning officials tried to hold the regulations over their heads, even when local Christian ministers defended them, saying that they had held weekly services at their homes unmolested for years. The zoning board, once it heard all the evidence, decided in Iron Oak's favor unanimously. The offficials involved, however, threatened to appeal the decision, but subsequently backed down. Iron Oak, afraid that such tactics will be used on it again, is now in the process of taking the city to Federal Court for what it rightly views as harassment on religious grounds. Even if they win in federal court, the Priest and Priestess have suffered financial losses. They have had to mortage their home, and are over $20,000 in debt due to legal costs. How many of us could suffer such a blow?
Laws were selectively, and not even deservedly, enforced on a group that the officials involved disapproved of. In many cities, especially those in conservative areas or the Bible Belt, the law is dished out with a biased hand where minority religions are concerned. `Freedom of religion' will only exist for Christians in a fundamentalist-dominated America.
Custody Battles
Pagan parents have often been threatened with the loss of their children. At the time of the initial decision of the city zoning board in Florida in Iron Oak's favor, there were four pending custody cases reported in Florida involving Pagan parents. In Ohio and Rhode Island, two women had their foster children removed shortly after it was learned that they were Pagan.
The `public stigma' argument the Virginia Supreme Court recently used to relieve lesbian Sharon Bottoms of her son lends an even more chilling tone to to such cases: will other courts, following Virginia's lead, soon use the same argument to justify the removal of children from Pagan parents?
Attacks on Sexual Freedoms
Since the fall of the `Evil Empire' (i.e. the USSR) in the late `80s, fundamentalist leaders have had to find a new way to generate fear in their followers to ensure a continued flow of cash and devotion. Their new scapegoat? Homosexuals! With the release of the now-infamous film The Homosexual Agenda, it became good business to paint gays as the greatest threat to the American family - and ``God's people''. Robertson even blamed the earthquakes in San Francisco on the tolerance offered homosexuals there! Portrayed as child molesters, diseased, and mentally disturbed, hate crimes have risen dramatically against gays in the last six years.
The threat goes deeper, however. Initiatives have been filed in states like Washington and Colorado to recriminalize sodomy and deny Lesbigays any sort of protection against discrimination! These actions have succeeded in some places - striking down legislations already in place. Lesbigays have lost protections they once had!
Other targets involve a push on the Coalition's part to penalize adultery and premarital sex. Pagan handfastings would not count in their reasoning, and polyamory would definitely be an offense. Public information and funding for birth control and HIV protection would be cut off, to enforce that sex they did not approve of had `consequences'. Finally, in their `Contract With the American Family', buried inside the `Privatizing the Arts' section, they call for the Legal Services Corporation (legal assistance for the poor) to be funded by private donations rather than tax money, because it assists poor couples in divorces. Thus, private organizations (such as church charities) could deny funding for legal assistance when they disapproved of its goal, and the poor would have no recourse. This would sentence battered women to abused lives, enforce loveless relationships, and deny the people involved the right to direct their personal lives.
There is no danger to civil harmony in these activities - they are merely `sinful' by Judeo-Christian standards. But our religion does not share these standards. The majority of Pagans view all forms of love, sexual or otherwise, as a gift from the Goddess and the God, sacred and to be respected. They also view personal relationships as a private matter, with adults capable of deciding for themselves what is right for their lives. Making one religious group's moral standards into American law is a violation of the separation of church and state. And there is no other excuse for these proposed laws and penalties but the fact that these activities are considered wrong by Judeo-Christian standards.
The Power of Pagans
Many mainstream and eclectic Christians also support equal rights and fair treatment for Pagans and Lesbigays, but the Christian Coalition and similar groups have ignored voices within their own faith in their quest to impose their punitive views on everyone. As Pagans, however, we can make a difference: by challenging these impositions on the grounds that these laws reflect the governmental sponsorship of one religion's standards, and that our religion does not have the same values! Furthermore, the persecution of Pagans, or other non-Christians for that matter, constitutes religious discrimination! By calling attention to cases of harassment and asserting our rights as Pagans and followers of a valid religion, we can benefit not only ourselves, but non-Pagans as well.
What's the Problem, Then?
Unlike the members of the Christian Coalition, however, we Pagans have few national ties. In fact, the energies of many Pagan groups are wasted on internal squabbles, rather than being used to protect our way of life from people wanting to reintroduce Christian prayer into the schools under the pretense of ``student-initiated'' group prayers, cities like Palm Bay breaking up Pagan celebrations, and groups trying to strip us of any protection against discrimination by claiming it is `freedom of religion' that justifies individual employers and landlords, not just churches, in their denial of jobs and housing to Pagans and Gays. We have stood apart from political action, believing that politics is a `game' to be avoided. This belief must be discarded for our very survival. The players of these `games' are using our lives as bargaining chips.
Unfortunately, our people are often viewed by society at large as a group of `kooks', because, as a group, we are so rarely visible. We do not back our spokespeople when they address the public, and we do not publicly come out in support of other Pagans when they are threatened. Most of us hide what we are, and thus the public continues to consider Pagans as people who worship the devil and sacrifice babies. Anti-abortionists have even claimed that witches view abortion as a form of child sacrifice! When no one publicly challenges such assertions, should we be surprised that the public at large mistrusts us?
`Coming out of the broom-closet' may sound scary, but it is the only way to ensure our survival in a country teetering on the brink of theocracy. Unless we act now, we will have no voice at all when the Congress debates the measures Ralph Reed and the Coaltion have proposed, nor in the 1996 presidential election, with a large percentage of the candidates involved seeking the CC's endorsement. They recognize the CC as the political powerhouse it is, with a guaranteed group of voters that will vote for whomever Reed and Pat Robertson tell them to. Our pleas will be ignored, regarded as invalid and unimportant at best, and with with hatred and opposition at worst.
The result? A society where our children can be taken from us with little recourse on our part, where we will be forced to listen to Christian prayers in silence at public events, where our tax money will go to schools run by the very people who oppress us, where, unless we are reasonably well-heeled, we will be unable to obtain birth control or legal aid in leaving abusive spouses. Instead, we will have to turn to Christian-run charities for the latter, who will have the power to decide if they approve of our actions. It will also be one in which sexual practices viewed as `immoral' by a small but influential group will be made illegal for everyone. And, as the case of Iron Oak demonstrates, charges of religious discrimination will be upheld for Christians only in many places.
Things you can do:
- Write your local legislators and state senators, expressing your disapproval of measures promoting public or school prayer, and vouchers of tax money for parochial schools. Most politicians want to please their voters, and many think that the public wants these things. How will they know any better if you don't tell them?
- Write letters to the editor of your local paper, criticizing legislations and policies that favor one specific religion. If you are in an area where such expression might prove personally dangerous, find the paper of the nearest large city and send your letters there. If you still feel unsafe mentioning Paganism, use examples involving religions that are better known, like Buddhism.
- Start educating the people around you about Paganism and Wicca. This doesn't mean standing in front of the local fundie church decrying Christianity, although I do know one courageous woman locally who went to the Ichthus festival held this May at Asbury Seminary in Wilmore, KY and handed out pamphlets about paganism to the celebrants! Begin your education program with individuals who know and like you, ones who trust you not to be involved in harmful acts. When my father, now a Christian missionary, found out I was a Pagan, he said that while he didn't know much about Paganism, he knew that I personally would never do anything evil. I was able to give him material about our religion (Scott Cunningham's The Truth About Witchcraft is a good book for such purposes), which he read. Rather than driving us apart, it enlivened our future conversations!
- Recommend that your city and university library order books on Paganism so they can become available for others. Books and periodicals on the Religious Right are doubly helpful, since many Christians are equally alarmed at their actions and would find the information helpful in their own efforts against the Right. The Freedom Writer and Church and State are excellent periodicals, while books like Why the Religious Right is Wrong About Separation of Church and State by Robert Boston are also good, especially for people wanting to make a constitutional argument against people like Robertson who claim that the United States was founded as a ``Christian Nation''.
- Unite with fellow Pagans in your area to discuss action against the Right and educating the public about Paganism and Wicca. Set aside infighting where these important matters are concerned and coordinate your letter-writing efforts and information gathering. If some of the people in your group are talented (and many Pagans are), you may want to start a newsletter or write pamphlets to ensure that this information gets out, even if the local press is sympathetic to the Right or fundie-controlled. Form coalitions with other concerned organizatons, such as femnist groups and gay rights advocates. You will make new friends, and will probably get along better with your fellow Pagans when you all learn to work together.
I hope that these suggestions will give you some good starting-places to fight against the Right. The most potent action you can take, however, is standing up publicly as a Pagan. Many people have never attached a human face to their ideas of witches and Pagans, relying instead on the media, the `traditional' images Christianity has fostered in our culture, and the efforts of the Right to portray us as devil-worshippers. Once they know someone who is a Pagan, they oftentimes change their notions. Studies have shown that people who know that a friend or relative is gay tend to be more supportive of gay rights than people who claim to know no one personally. The same hold true for us. Good luck, and blessed be!
(From the July '95 issue of Rainbow Wind Magazine)
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Last modified: 11-18-95.