Inside the First Amendment: The nature of discrimination

This article in today's Louisville Courier Journal was brought to my attention by a member of my Spells for Democracy group. The author is Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar for the First Amendment Center. He writes:

People accused of witchcraft in America aren't executed anymore (we are 300 years and a First Amendment away from Puritan Massachusetts). These days they just lose their jobs.

He goes on to discuss the army chaplain who converted to Wicca and was dismissed from his post, the teacher who lost her job after the school board accused her of being a witch (she is Jewish), and the ongoing struggle to get the VA to approve the pentacle for the headstones of Wiccans who have died in service to this country.

These stories are hardly news for those of us participating in the Pagan blogosphere. What is heartening for me, though, about an article like this one is the fact that rational people outside our Pagan community are taking public stands in defense of our right to practice our religion in this country without persecution. Is Charles Haynes Wiccan? I don't know, but I doubt it. Is Louisville, Kentucky a bastion of liberal thought and a community filled with out witches? I don't know, but I doubt it.

Then again, Kentucky is where my Scottish ancestors chose to settle and if there is anything I know about them, it's that they never let anyone tell them what to do. They were Old Regular Southern Baptists (I know, scary) and a bit old fashioned in their approach to gender roles (don't get me started) but the people I knew in my childhood were good people full of common sense. It's not so terribly difficult for me to believe that Kentuckians are a folk who would defend freedom, if not openly support witchcraft. (Although I'm convinced some of my old Baptist grannies up in the hills were practicing the old ways. If only they were still around to ask.)

But back to Mr. Haynes. I'd like to see more writers like Haynes making his voice heard. There are others who have and Jason Pitzi-Waters at The Wild Hunt does a great job of bringing them to our attention. A rule of thumb in the PR and marketing world is that "third party endorsement" does more for your business/product/cause than any ad or program you could pay for. I see these types of articles in mainstream media outlets - read by communities who may never see a witch except for the four-year-old in a pointy hat at Halloween variety - as remarkably positive press. The staunch purists among us can choose to be offended by the various ways that Wiccans are portrayed in the media, but lets face it - we are struggling to secure rights for ourselves that other religious groups in this country never have to give a second thought to and articles like this one have a lot of power to move rational people to support our cause even if they are not a part of our community.

Haynes concludes his article with this:

As Wicca grows -- and it's one of the fastest-growing religions in America -- so will conflicts over witches. That's because most of what people think they know about witches and Wicca is wrong. Contrary to popular myth, Wiccans have nothing to do with the "evil arts" or Satanism. Nor do Wiccans conform to the stereotypes rooted in fantasies from "The Wizard of Oz" to "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch."

If it isn't what many people think it is, then what is Wicca? Although no religion is easily summed up in a sentence, most Wiccans would probably agree that Wicca is a nature-based religion rooted in a conviction that the Divine permeates all life. For a fuller explanation, Wicca Demystified by Bryan Lankford is a good place to start.

For First Amendment purposes, however, it doesn't matter what military officers or school principals or other government officials think about Wicca: It is their constitutional duty to protect the religious freedom of all Americans, including witches.

Thank you, Mr. Haynes.

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:39 AM