11.18.2008
Update: What About Our Faiths?
The Maryland Business Gazette, covering the nationwide anti-Prop. 8 protests in their own backyard, gives us an example of how marriage inequality translates into religious inequality.
"Debby Morris, a gay woman who has married her partner three times, once in a Wiccan religious ceremony in 1999, in the marriage demonstration at the Millennium March in 2000 and in Massachusetts in 2004, said they plan next to head to Connecticut which recently legalized same sex marriage ... Morris ... said Proposition 8 makes her a "second class citizen," and her demonstration in front of the LDS Temple was in reaction to the role of the church in financing Proposition 8 advertising. "I don't force my religion on other people, don't force yours on me," Morris said."
Thanks to the current situation of marriage being a religious/civil hybrid, Christians, Mormons, and other supporters of "traditional marriage" are, in essence, defining marriage for Pagans, Unitarian-Universalists, certain progressive Christian denominations, and other faith groups willing to provide the blessing of marriage to gay couples. And yes, LGBT Pagans are taking it personally that Mormons and Christians are telling them their religious rites can't be legally valid.
"Yesterday morning, as my spouse (and using that word is a spell) was sobbing, she kept repeating 'why do they hate us so much?'. I told her...amidst my own tears.... that it wasn't so much hate as fear. Fear of difference, fear of change, fear of sexuality, and fear of all of us being fully in our power. Love is the antidote and it will prevail. Harvey Milk was right when he said we must 'come out, come out, wherever you are'."
As the dust settles on the initial electoral defeat, religious groups who bless, honor, and perform same-sex marriages are getting involved in the judicial struggle to overturn Proposition 8.
"The religious institutions that file this petition ... count on article XVIII to ensure that the California Constitution's guarantee of equal protection for religious minorities cannot be taken away without a deliberative process of the utmost care possible in a representative democracy. If Proposition 8 is upheld, however, the assurance will disappear-- for, just as surely as gay men and lesbians could be deprived of equal protection by a simple majority vote, so too could religious minorities be deprived of equal protection-- a terrible irony in a nation founded by people who emigrated to escape religious persecution."
The above quote, from a legal petition to void Proposition 8, comes from a coalition that includes the United Church of Christ, the California Council of Churches, and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (among others). They realize that the precedent created here not only stops future same-sex marriages in California, but also creates an unequal religious hierarchy with the "winners" getting legal blessings for their marriages.
In a land of real religious equality Debby Morris's first wedding, her Wiccan handfasting, would have been the only one she needed. The fact that she has to find loopholes and travel the country to find some sort of legal recognition is not only an insult to all loving same-sex couples, but an insult to the Wiccans who performed that ceremony. As the battle rages on, it is becoming increasingly clear that it isn't only about what gays are legally allowed to do, but about what religious minorities are legally allowed to do. A shift in thinking that may change the entire battle.
Labels: California, Christianity, GLBT, homosexuality, marriage, Paganism, Religious Freedom, UUA
11.15.2008
What About Our Faiths?
"In Paganism, there is no sense of a norm in terms of a handfasted relationship. While the Church, and others keen to hold to a status quo, have been fearing for the future of marriage and the family with gay weddings and extended legal rights for couples cohabiting, the Pagan perspective is quite different. Tribe and family are of paramount importance, yet far more worrying than the increase in 'different' household arrangements is the ongoing decline in people's ability to craft intimate relationships at all." - Emma Restall Orr, "Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics"
As a recently re-galvanized LGBT community and their allies take to the streets protesting the passage of California's discriminatory Proposition 8 (which bans same-sex marriage), editor Japhy Grant at the prominent gay blog Queerty asks an important question.
"I personally understand that for many Prop. 8 supporters, their beliefs are the most important thing in the world to them, that the idea of living without those beliefs would be too much to bear. Well, that's how we feel about our equal rights. We are not asking you to abandon your faith, just stop making the rest of the country bow before your altar. What of the faiths which bless same-sex unions? Are you not denying them their freedom? Freedom from religion means freedom for all religions (even the absence of it), not just freedom for your religion. Keep your beliefs, but leave our rights alone."
This very point is one I, and other prominent Pagans, have brought up at length. Proclaimed caretakers of "traditional" marriage are quick to raise the flag of "religious freedom", while completely ignoring the fact that numerous faiths are denied the right to legal recognition of their own holy unions. Nor are "separate but equal" civil unions sufficient, as former Icelandic Asatruar high chieftain Jörmundur Ingi Hansen recently pointed out.
"Various people have claimed they give the same rights as marriage, but that is unfortunately not true. They do not include a reversionary right and do not provide the kind of safety that marriage is supposed to provide"
We are quickly approaching a tipping point. It is only a matter of time before a perfect storm of litigation, activism, and generational shifts in attitudes result in a nationwide reversal of draconian laws that seek to ban holy unions performed for same-sex couples, and the disgustingly discriminatory laws that build on them. The more "traditional" marriage proponents try to cling to their exclusive claim on what can be a legally valid marriage, the harder the subsequent fall will be when same-sex couples and their religious allies finally win this struggle.
Labels: California, Christianity, GLBT, homosexuality, marriage, Paganism, Religious Freedom
7.02.2008
Gay Marriage: The Pagan Difference
As I have pointed out before, laws against legally recognized gay marriage unfairly benefit those religious traditions who have a vested interest in GLBT folks remaining second-class citizens. The melding of a civil contract and (mainly Christian) religious ceremony in America has created the erroneous idea that the State should have some role in defining and blessing (with legal benefits) which two consenting adults should be able to be joined before their god(s). In a theocracy that might be understandable, but in a theoretically secular nation (one that harbors a vast diversity of religious viewpoints) such "traditions" of mixing religious law with secular law are absurd at best, and harmful at worst.
The Pagan attitude towards gay marriage is a very different one than the so-called 'Judeo-Christian' attitude that rigidly defines a sacred bonding, a marriage, as only possible between mating couples of the opposite sex. An example of this difference recently popped up in an Icelandic newspaper, where a former Asatru high chieftain blasted his government for its double standards concerning the legal status of gay and straight marriage in his country.
"Jörmundur Ingi Hansen, former high chieftain of Ásatrúarfélagid (a religious organization for those who believe in the pagan Icelandic/Nordic gods), has criticized the new laws on religious associations being able to confirm cohabitation between individuals of the same sex for being too vague and not really including marital rights. “The laws on confirmed cohabitation are mostly an optical illusion,” Hansen told Fréttabladid. “They neither give gay people nor straight people any rights to my best knowledge.” “Various people have claimed they give the same rights as marriage, but that is unfortunately not true. They do not include a reversionary right and do not provide the kind of safety that marriage is supposed to provide,” Hansen explained."
While Iceland has long had civil unions for gay couples (called "registered partnership"), they have steered clear of allowing "marriage" for gay couples. The situation Hansen describes, is in regards to a new law that allows religious institutions to solemnize a "confirmed cohabitation". While some are calling it "marriage", others, like Hansen, point out that it doesn't grant the same rights and status as a straight marriage.
"Separate laws are valid for the confirmation on cohabitation for straight and gay couples and the traditional definition of marriage, as a union between a man and a woman, remains unchanged. In October 2007, the State Church decided not to change the traditional definition of marriage. “I think it is poor behavior to make people believe that this is marriage when it isn’t,” Hansen said, adding, “If confirmed cohabitation is supposed to be such a good thing then why can’t priests confirm the cohabitation of straight couples?” “Until now I have not had the right to confirm the cohabitation of a man and a woman. There is no law that states that the cohabitation of two individuals of the opposite sex can be confirmed,” Hansen claimed. “I just don’t understand what the legislator is trying to achieve with this. It is like a band-aid for an undefined wound,” Hansen concluded."
What these Icelandic issues illustrate is that "separate but equal" civil union compromises usually only emphasize the "separate", and hardly ever confer true "equality". Civil unions for GLBT folk in America might be seen as a step forward for awhile, but eventually those "not-marriage" contract compromises will start to chafe.
"We are all the same people, all of us. You're no different than I am. Our love is the same. To me -- to me, what it feels like -- just, you know, I will speak for myself -- it feels -- when someone says, 'You can have a contract, and you'll still have insurance, and you'll get all that,' it sounds to me like saying, 'Well, you can sit there; you just can't sit there.' That's what it sounds like to me. It feels like -- it doesn't feel inclusive...It feels -- it feels isolated. It feels like we are not -- you know, we aren't owed the same things and the same wording." - Ellen DeGeneres
The solution is either for the government to allow true marriage equality and allow the solemnizations done by Pagan priests for gay couples to be just as legal as a Christian wedding of a straight couple, or for the government to get out of the marriage game altogether and establish only civil unions for everyone. Anything else creates a moral hierarchy with the traditional Christian definition of marriage at the top, and anything deviating from that below it. Thia marriage debate isn't just about legal rights for gay couples, it is about respect, and true religious equality. So long as Pagan marriages and handfastings of gay couples aren't legally recognized, the American government is participating in the sort of religious favorites-playing the separation of Church and State is supposed to prevent.
Labels: Christianity, GLBT, homosexuality, marriage, Paganism, Religious Freedom
6.01.2008
(Pagan) News of Note
I'm back! Did you miss me? I had a lovely vacation at my undisclosed location, and I would like to give a huge thank you to my amazing guest bloggers, who went above and beyond the call of duty to write some wonderfully challenging, moving, and insightful things. I urge my readers to add their blogs (found in the blogroll to your right) to your daily Internet travels, in addition to checking out the many published works they have produced.
Now, let's catch up on the news...
The Libertarian Party has picked its nominee for President of the United States of America. Former congressional Republican Bob Barr. A puzzling choice considering that Barr's record isn't one that lends itself easily to Libertarian values of a small and un-intrusive government.
"Barr not only wrote and sponsored the Defense of Marriage act, but also voted for the Patriot Act; proposed the Pentagon ban a religious group from practice in the military: Wicca; and advocated complete federal prohibition of medical marijuana—succeeding in this last with his "Barr Amendment" - which also forbid any future law that would decrease penalties for marijuana use."
Barr is widely famous as an anti-Pagan bigot who tried to ban the military from allowing equal access and freedoms to Pagan soldiers, which he claimed set a "dangerous precedent" and that toleration of Paganism led to youth violence. This no doubt leaves many libertarian-leaning Pagans in a quandary, since a vote for Barr is a vote for someone who has actively worked against equality for Pagans.
Another religious freedom battle involving Santeria is brewing. Santeria priest Ernesto Pichardo is threatening litigation if the police dept. in Coral Gables, Florida doesn't release their records of an incident that occurred last summer.
"Ernesto Pichardo, president of the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, has been trying for almost a year to obtain records relating to the interruption of a Santeria ceremony by police last summer. An attorney he recently hired, David Aelion, has filed a public records request for any documents relating to the incident, which took place June 8. Aelion has requested all the incident reports, any internal investigations reports and communications between officers the day of the incident, as well as photographs taken at the scene, inventory reports and all city communications referring to the scene. 'We want to find out why they were there for quite a few hours holding them [the practitioners] against their will,' Aelion told The Miami Herald Friday. 'It is pretty clear that the U.S. Supreme Court allows them to practice their religion freely. Why did it take many officers and that long to find out that they had no right to be there and no right to bother them?' He said he was preparing for a possible civil rights violation case."
According to reports, around two dozen officers with guns drawn interrupted an initiation ceremony after a neighbor reported that he could hear animals suffering. Why dozens of cops with guns drawn were necessary to investigate an animal cruelty complaint remains unknown.
Is the Crowley-inspired horror film "Chemical Wedding" so bad its good?
"Fans of terrible movies shouldn't miss Chemical Wedding, which contains so many wooden performances it should really have been thinned before release by the forestry commission. Director Julian Doyle shoots the whole thing as though it is a Hammer horror film, and most of the actresses have the Hammer hallmark of being extraordinarily unfit for acting. Most of the cast underact. The one, big - and I do mean big - exception is Simon Callow, who appears to have been taking acting lessons from Brian Blessed and, possibly as a result, gone stark staring bonkers."
Other reviews seem to be sounding similar notes. All we need is some audience participation, and a regular midnight showing, and we're good to go! But while "Chemical Wedding" turns Aleister Crowley into a serial-killing horn-dog, works in other mediums are seeking to redeem the great beast, and paint him as a vilified patriot.
"Using documents gleaned from American, British, French, and Italian archives, Secret Agent 666 reveals that Crowley's clandestine service linked him to the sinking of the Lusitania, a plot to overthrow the government of Spain, the thwarting of Irish and Indian nationalist conspiracies, the Communist International, and the 1941 flight of Rudolf Hess. Author Richard Spence, a professor of History at the University of Idaho, argues that Crowley--in his own unconventional way--was a patriotic Englishman who endured years of public vilification in part to mask his role as a secret agent."
Did Crowley court public infamy to cover up his dealings with the government? If so it would certainly cast a new light on some of his actions, and make some detractors re-think his motivations.
Archie Bland of the Independent explores the ramifications of the new laws governing psychic practitioners in Britain. Bland wonders in the article if we aren't asking the wrong questions as to who is a "bad psychic".
"...perhaps the question should be recast to consider responsibility. Like the doctor, the sensible psychic's first rule is probably to do no harm, and while there may be no such thing as a good medium to the ardent materialist, the contrast between those who have a code and those who don't - between the tactful and the terrifying, the reasonable and the rip-off - is obvious to anyone."
An interesting and sympathetic look at psychic practitioners and the people who frequent them from an unbiased journalist.
The New York Times has a very nice piece on the dedication of a new Hindu temple on Staten Island in New York (the first for that community).
"For Staten Island's growing Hindu population, a couple of hours more was not long to wait to finally have its own major temple. After 10 years of worship in private homes and community meeting halls and the not-quite-finished structure of the temple itself on Victory Boulevard, the Staten Island Hindu Temple was formally consecrated in a clangorous three-day ceremony that ended on Sunday. For the 500 Hindu families from all over India who live scattered across the island, the days of having to travel to Queens or Edison, N.J., to worship are over."
Perhaps we will someday be reading similar stories about the dedication of Pagan temples.
In a final note, the recently renewed gay marriage debate has caused some to connect it with the slow move into a truly post-Christian society. For example, conservative Christian commentator Rod Dreher claims we are living in a "pagan" sensate culture that will inevitably allow for gay marriage and that the best conservative Christians can do is move to a "defensible position" and wait it out.
"Well, it's cold comfort, but this can't go on forever. [Pitirim] Sorokin argues that once sensate culture plays itself out, people will have to yield to an ideational model of some sort. It is doubtful that any culture can long survive without strong, traditional families and durable moral norms based in a transcendental source. Our civilization's prosperity has masked its social weaknesses."
Of course there is no promise that any future dominant "ideational" culture will be a Christian one. There are myriad ways to approach perceived "social weakness", and for thousands of years before Christ was born, those ways were "pagan" ways. Meanwhile, Nick Street at Religion Dispatches argues that the battle over gay marriage has little to do with a moral marriage crisis and a lot to do with the erosion of Biblical authority over American culture.
"...the impulse behind the movement’s anti-gay activism doesn’t really have much to do with marriage and sexuality ... The real issues are the authority of the Bible and the nature of revelation ... a lot is at stake in a political initiative with deep roots in the foundations of canonical Christianity. If religious conservatives can't persuade a majority of Californians to heed one element in an otherwise obscure list of purity codes in Deuteronomy - and that Jesus' preaching in the gospels isn't really complete without Paul's finger-wagging in Romans - the stitching that holds together the disparate parts of the Good Book will have subtly but irrevocably loosened, along with the Bible's centuries-old grip on American public life."
Christian conservatives are using their remaining weapons of fear-mongering and moral revulsion to hold back the post-Christian tide (of which gay marriage is a potent symbol), but it seems that just about everyone agrees that while Christian activists may win the constitutional battle in California, the larger war is all but lost.
That is all I have for now, have a great day!
Labels: Aleister Crowley, Bob Barr, Chemical Wedding, Christianity, Hinduism, homosexuality, law, Libertarian, litigation, marriage, Pagan News of Note, Paganism, Presidential election, psychics, Santeria, UK
5.21.2008
Pagans and Gay Marriage
"Let my worship be with the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. And therefore let there be beauty and strength, power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you." - Doreen Valiente, "The Charge of The Goddess"
"I celebrate the California Supreme Court decision. It's just, and it affirms an even deeper principle: that civil rights belong to everyone, not just those groups whose behavior meets popular approval. That principle protects us all." - Starhawk, "A Sacred Choice and a Civil Right"
In the wake of California's decision to allow gay marriage (at least until a proposed Constitutional amendment gets voted on), many from the theological right have been wondering about their "rights" and their "voice" in a world where gay marriage is allowed. A position given much sympathy by the Get Religion blog, who has devoted several posts empathizing with the poor, marginalized, anti-gay marriage religious traditions.
"What are the rights, in terms of free speech and religious liberty, of the people and voluntary associations who continue to hold traditional Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc., doctrines on the moral status of sex outside the state of marriage, as traditionally defined?"
"Traditionally" here means "between one man and one woman". This situation is a perfect example of how religious conservatives define "religious liberty" differently than just about everyone else. For while Catholics, Muslims, and other religious groups opposed to gay marriage are raising forth the specter of being "forced" to marry gays (a virtual impossibility), or having to treat homosexuals equally in their social services (a somewhat more likely scenario), these same groups have never cared a whit for the "religious liberties" of Pagans and other religious groups who have collectively supported gay marriage for decades.
"We respect the Roman Catholic Church's desire to speak in a public forum about this, but it has come to a point where their advocacy about same-sex marriage has come to impinge on our own religious practices, because not everyone believes same-sex marriage is wrong or sinful or against religious beliefs..." - Rev. Tiffany Steinwert, a United Methodist minister, and pastor of Cambridge Welcoming Ministries
The fact is that many Pagan clergy, from an assortment of traditions, have been solemnizing gay marriages for years now. Yet their definition of a real and sacred set of vows hasn't been acknowledged as valid by the law. We have been told, in essence, that our marriage ceremonies "don't count" in a civil, legal, sense. Instead, a Biblically-justified standard of civil marriage has been maintained (often to the detriment of religious minorities), a standard that many Pagans don't see as a valid. Yet, the "defenders of marriage" and religious liberty have never come to our defense.
"In Paganism, there is no sense of a norm in terms of a handfasted relationship. While the Church, and others keen to hold to a status quo, have been fearing for the future of marriage and the family with gay weddings and extended legal rights for couples cohabiting, the Pagan perspective is quite different. Tribe and family are of paramount importance, yet far more worrying that the increase in 'different' household arrangements is the ongoing decline in people's ability to craft intimate relationships at all." - Emma Restall Orr, "Living With Honour: A Pagan Ethics"
So I must admit to feeling unmoved by the cries of religious conservatives afraid that a world of gay marriage and gay social equality will be thrust upon them. Their rigidity in refusing to dismantle the last entanglements of church and state in America (in this case, marriage laws) have created an edifice worn with cracks, slowly crumbling around the edges. In its place will be a land where a single religious tradition doesn't get to define the social contracts and moral choices of those outside its natural purview. A place where Pagans will be treated with real religious liberty, not liberty as defined by the dominant monotheisms.
Labels: Christianity, homosexuality, marriage, Paganism, Religious Freedom
5.27.2007
Is Homophobia a Sacrament?
Marc Horne from Scotland on Sunday looks at a growing controversy taking place at the University of Edinburgh. It seems that a local Christian group is up in arms after a campus Pagan group was given approval to hold a conference there.
"Two ancient religions have locked horns in a bizarre "freedom of speech" row that is echoing around the corridors of one of Scotland's oldest academic institutions. The University of Edinburgh has granted permission to the Pagan Society to hold its annual conference - involving talks on witchcraft, pagan weddings and tribal dancing - on campus next month. Druids, heathens, shamans and witches are expected to attend what is a major event in the pagan calendar. But the move has enraged the Christian Union, which accuses the university of double standards after banning one of its events on the "dangers" of homosexuality."
The school felt that the Christian Union's anti-gay chat violated its anti-discrimination policy, and in the end offered a compromise where posters offering different views would be displayed at their class if it was to be held. That no such measure has been applied to the Pagans has infuriated local Christians.
"The Union has won strong backing from the Catholic Church in Scotland, whose spokesman, Simon Dames, felt that allowing the pagan festival to go ahead while barring the Union meeting was an example of "Christianphobia". "This appears to be a clear case of double standards," he said."
But is this a double standard? I suppose you could make that argument if the school had interfered with a general conference on the religion of Christianity and then not done the same for the Pagans. But the Christian course was specifically on the moral "dangers" of homosexuality and was not a general conference on the faith itself. Last time I checked, while many Christians morally oppose homosexual behavior due to their reading of the Bible, the moral opposition to homosexuality isn't in itself a requirement for admission into the ranks of Christendom. Of course this didn't stop a Catholic Church spokesman from making wildly hyperbolic statements.
"The principles of a pluralistic democracy revolve around an acceptance of competing ideas and universities should be enshrining this principle. Anti-racism groups would never be asked to put up posters saying there are alternative views."
Because anti-racism meetings and talks against gays are basically the same! Perhaps homophobia is becoming a sacrament after all.
Labels: Christianity, discrimination, free speech, homosexuality, Paganism, Scotland
