(Pagan) News of Note
My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports on the wide array of weddings of Eureka Springs, “Wedding Capital of the South”. This includes weddings with Pagan elements.
“Eureka Springs supports both a hippie community and a strong conservative Christian population. The town simultaneously boasts weekly gay and lesbian events and a museum dedicated to creationism…Lewis tells of a half-Christian, half-pagan wedding performed by a nondenominational minister that ended with a pagan broom-jumping. Other couples forgo throwing rice, instead tossing fish food into the transparent lagoon, while some couples release butterflies.”
The Rocky Mountain News reports that two people died at the recent Pagan festival Dragonfest in Colorado.
“Two people died during a “neo-pagan” festival near Wellington Lake in rural Jefferson County during the weekend, apparently of natural causes, authorities said Monday…One woman in her 50s died of a heart attack on Saturday, according to the Jefferson County Coroner’s Office. A man was discovered dead on Monday morning, also of apparent natural causes, authorities said.”
How can you tell that same-sex marriage proponents are full of “resentment” towards traditional couples and shouldn’t be supported? Well one reason for American Spectator writer Mark Tooley is the Pagans.
“In fact, they [conservatives] suspect, the ultimate goal is to set aside marriage altogether as a repressive and patriarchal anachronism. In its absence, all consensual sexual arrangements will be legitimate. The suspicions will find confirmation in a new statement from a coalition of sexual pioneers…the several hundred signatories include a predictable list of homosexual rights advocates, sexologists, self-professed pagans, and practitioners of polyamory…”
Wired News looks at piezoelectrics (electrical energy from applied pressure to crystals) and pokes fun at some of the “New Age” elements that have become advocates for it.
“It’s a subject that attracts its fair share of New Age cranks. The message board on acid-fried neo-pagan rock star Julian Cope’s site, for instance, speculates, with parapsychologist Paul Deveraux, that Megalithic monuments may have been located near fault lines because seismic activity causes piezoelectric crystals to flash and glow. Some even think the mysterious lights at Marfa, Texas, may be due to piezo activity.”
In a final note, for those interested in following the ongoing conversation about the future of Reclaiming check out recent posts (and comments) at M. Macha NightMare’s blog and Deborah Oak’s blog.
Have a good day!
3 responses so far
Re: Marriage
The funny thing is, if self-professed conservatives were really into the “sanctity” of marriage, they’d be pushing for the state to get out of the marriage business, and make it something tied to people’s individual belief structures. Even now, the connection of marriage with religion as opposed to the state lives on in language used in state court systems relative to divorce and child support: in NJ, it is handled by the “Chancery Division” of the courts, “chancery” traditionally a word to describe the principal administrative offices of a Catholic Diocese.
I believe it’s more about how to do taxes than anything else; and I think a lot of the problems people have, such as the so-called “marriage tax”, would evaporate with the “Fair Tax” system. As for employee benefit matters, I think that issues about that will melt away once the real problems – state control over marriage and marriage-based taxation – have been eliminated.
Thank you for this set of links. Coming from a British perspective, I found Mark Tooley’s article to be curious; I simply could not understand how he manages to froth up what appears to be a rant without any visible coherence whatsoever.
When we saw the UK law changed last year to allow same-sex and non-marital partnerships to have equal legal recognition, and at the same time legalised adoption rights for gay couples, the world did not end. People did not collapse, the economy did not crumble and Jesus did not ride in to take away his own.
What the legal changes have afforded are greater opportunities for happiness, personal fulfilment and children finding good homes. It has also meant more of us can sleep easy knowing should anything happen to us, our partners will be safe in our homes and have the right to make any and all arrangements for us in the event of our incapacitation or death.
I really find it sad that so many clearly think such things are immoral and not the right of everyone. I am also astonished at the illogical leaps made by fundie commentators, and the hackneyed, discredited (anti)social ideas they keep recycling. x
It would be a mistake to underestimate the intensity of feeling which some people, especially older Christian women, have about conventional monogamous marriage. If you have the opportunity to talk to such peole about their feelings, you’ll find that many of them quite seriously feel that getting married, staying a married and having had sex with only one person in their lives is the one major accomplishment of their lives, the one fact about them that makes them special. And to such folks, a law which gives people who engage in “sinful” acts equal dignity is an attack on their core identity. It’s easy to criticize, pity or even ridicule such attitudes, but it’s a mistake to think that the there aren’t a lot of people who find the idea of giving equal social status to alternative lifestyles as genuinely frightening and painful.