The "enemy"

In my post last night I did not follow through with an explanation of what I meant when I said that the Christian community is "the enemy" to us Pagans. I know that sounds alarmist, and a bit paranoid. The average man-in-the-street Christian is not the enemy; they have no idea that I'm not Christian and, for the most part, they are reasonable people who would probably just shrug it off and figure I had a right to believe whatever I want to. However, there are those few, those militants, those activists, evangelists, reactionaries - who see anyone of any differing religion (or lack of religion) as a threat to them and their so-called "family values." Here is an organization in Idaho that gets my goat on a regular basis: http://www.idahovaluesalliance.com/. The head mucky-muck, Bryan Fischer, is at the forefront of shoving his religion into every arena of public life in Idaho. He wants to protect religious freedom - as long as it's HIS religion. One of his cohorts is Brandy Swindell, another local Idaho product, who goes all over the country whining about Christian persecution and demanding that the ten commandments be on display on public property. She ran for city council in Boise a couple of years ago. That was not long after I moved here, and we went to hear a debate of the city council candidates. She supposedly has lived here all her life, and I knew more about local issues than she did. Everything she said came from a prepared statement and she was unable to answer any questions spontaneously. I have to confess that whilst this sham "debate" was in progress, I was drawing and otherwise defacing one of her campaign brochures, which I left behind shuffled into a stack of them when we left. Her website soon decried the "hate" that was directed toward her in the campaign. I'm proud to say that I likely had something to do with that deluded belief.

My husband is constantly trolling the news pages online to find the latest on how the Christians are working to get their agenda in place to better control the country. It is a concerted effort, well organized and extremely well-funded. He says we have to keep ourselves informed about what they are up to, lest we lose our freedom to practice our religion. There are still those who quote the "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and actually believe it. Oh, I work with people and know others who would simply freak out if I told them I was a witch. Most would just not believe me at all, but a few of them would start praying for me on the spot. And of course never speak to me again. You know, I work for the Catholics, so I have to mind my p's and q's, so to speak.

In fact, later this morning I am going to meet a very good Catholic friend of mine for coffee and bagels. She has no idea that I'm a heathen pagan, and I'm not going to tell her. You know, there are people that I would like to tell, but to explain it would just be so tiresome and most of them still wouldn't get it. The reactions either seem to be that you are just silly and pretending it's Halloween all the time, or you get the horrified fear; they think you're a devil worshipper. It's just not worth the hassle.