“Kelly McBride’s eyes filled with tears. Both her daughter and Heard had been victims of crimes as youngsters and only started healing when they found each other, she said. “They found love – and then the state told them they couldn’t show their love,” Kelly McBride said. “Now they can.” The couple live with Kelly McBride and her son, Kegan, 18, who was also in tow as a witness Monday. Heard, 26, and Michelle McBride met on school bus No. 2 11 years ago. They both sang in the high school chorus. Heard was in foster care. When she aged out of the system, she moved into the McBride home. In 2007, Heard and Michelle McBride were married in the Wiccan religion but wanted to marry in Iowa for legal reasons. The marriage isn’t recognized in Nebraska, however.”

The words “religious freedom” get thrown around a lot. Opponents of same-sex marriage like to scare people into believing that allowing gays to marry will somehow limit theirs, even though no real proof of that has emerged. Meanwhile, religious groups who do bless, honor, and perform same-sex unions are told that their rites aren’t legally valid. Now a lack of legal recognition might not make the rite any less blessed or valid in the eyes of their co-religionists, but it does complicate things if they want our government on the state or national level to also acknowledge that they are a joined couple and deserving of the same legal privileges afforded opposite-sex unions. That couple from Nebraska, married in a neighboring state, will most likely have to go to court if they want their own union recognized. Just think, thousands of dollars in lawyers fees just to ensure hospital visitation or inheritance, and considering Nebraska’s attitudes towards gays in the past there’s no guarantee of success.

The solutions are simple. Either grant same-sex couples the same legal marriage rites as opposite-sex couples, or completely remove “marriage” from the purview of governmental oversight. Create a one-size-fits-all civil union and let the individual churches, synagogues, circles, groves, and fellowships decide who can or can’t marry within their tradition. Either way, opponents of same-sex marriage are on the losing side of history. They can spend decades raging at a changing world, spreading fear and misinformation, or they can accept that imposing their uniform morality on others isn’t just or merciful. In the meantime, Pagan clergy all across this nation will continue to bless same-sex marriages, and hope for a day when the entire nation will give our rites the same consideration that other religions already receive.

The Aquarian Tabernacle Church (a Wiccan tradition/church) has sent out a press release concerning new developments regarding the Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary. The online school is getting a makeover, and gaining a new vice-president and administrator.

“The Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary, given degree granting authority by Washington state in 1999, is having a face lift this spring … In addition, WSTS proudly announces the appointment of Kirk White as interim Vice President and Administrator of the Woolston-Steen Theological Seminary. White, a well known Wiccan author and respected High Priest, is co-founder of the National Association of Pagan Schools and Seminaries, a past co-National First Officer of Covenant of the Goddess, North America’s oldest and largest association of Witches and Wiccans. White also founded and served for 10 years as President of Cherry Hill Seminary. In 2006, Wildhunt.org named him one of the “25 most influential modern living Pagans today”. Since 2007 he has served as a consultant to new and established Pagan seminaries across the United States and we are pleased to have him working with us.”

Bringing Kirk White onboard seems like a move for WSTS to gain some more credibility as a Pagan seminary, though that might be hampered by the fact that the school’s dean is Belladonna “Wife Swap” Thompson. It should also be noted that “degree granting authority” isn’t the same thing as accreditation. So always check to see who exactly your teachers are, and what qualifications they have to be teaching you the subject at hand. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am on the BOD of Cherry Hill Seminary, but I have no particular animus or rivalry with WSTS.

When is “witchcraft” our “Witchcraft”? By that I mean, what do journalists and authors like Bob Morgan mean when they say a young woman was kidnapped and initiated by a “a coven of witches”? A South Alabama paper reports on the e-publication of a book by one of their reporters concerning a young woman who claims to have been held hostage for years by a Californian “coven” called “The Brotherhood”.

“At the age of 15, Nikki Russo checked into a California hospital for treatment of an eating disorder. It was in this hospital that she was eventually abducted by a nurse, initiated into a coven of witches and thrown into a dark world filled with drugs, alcohol, abuse and intimidation. Nikki Russo hopes The Pomegranate Seed will be a warning to readers not to take anything for granted where cherished institutions are concerned. Today, Russo’s story and struggle to recovery is chronicled in the new book The Pomegranate Seed — Nikki Russo’s Sojourn Through Institutional Failure and the World of the Occult.”

Morgan is apparently sensitive to accusations of “Satanic Panic” since he first reported on Nikki Russo, and claims that the book is filled with legal documents and depositions. However, neither the initial 2007 report by Morgan, or the 2009 piece on his subsequent book, goes into any detail as to what exactly this “Brotherhood” was practicing, and how they are linked with California’s occult community. This lack of detail is all explained as a way to honor the victim, but it also denies us any clear notion as to what this group was. I have no doubt that Russo was abused if she says she was, I’m just skeptical concerning how “witchy” these “witches” were.

World of Wonder shares with us some “homo history” in the form of ancient examples of same-sex marriage.

As Africa was the birthplace of civilization it should come as no surprise to find that the earliest known reference to same-sex marriage in history can also be found there. Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were royal manicurists in the court of Pharaoh Niuserre during Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty. The artwork in their tomb leaves no doubt that they were viewed as a couple. The men are depicted in near constant embrace. They are shown with their noses touching (the most intimate embrace permitted in Egyptian art of the time, a form of kissing). Even their names speak to the intensity of their bond. When the names Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are put together, it translates into “joined in life and joined in death.”

Just goes to show you that there is nothing new under the sun, and that different cultures and times had different reactions to same-sex relations. To claim a singular constant for legal and social public bonds is myopic at best and revisionist at worst.

I understand that some people don’t like Barack Obama, but the intense white-hot loony anger he invokes in some people is just plain amusing (when it isn’t frightening). A recent letter published in a Virginia newspaper now compares our “Marxist” president with Pagan hero Julian the Apostate!

“God has given America her very own 21st century ‘Julian the Apostate’, better known as the Marxist, Barack Obama. Now before any of Obama’s supporters hastily come to his defense, consider the fact that his ideologies are blatantly Marxist, yet, he is not alone in his Marxist tendencies … If the reports of Obama’s Marxist passion were not enough to wake up the Christian community to the fearful danger of a ‘Julian Administration’, the issues of abortion and homosexuality should have made it crystal clear that professing Christians should not accept such an individual as the leader of America. The community of Christendom should have rejected such a blasphemer out of hand. Yet, for the sake of party, race, historical precedence or simply a hatred for the prior administration, those Christians professing allegiance to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe have grossly erred in their judgment, and along with hypocrites, heathens and traitors are responsible for destroying the roots of traditional American Christianity … At the outset of the Obama administration, a vicious war was declared against both Christ and all those that call themselves by His Name. Even now many of those Christians who supported him initially are finding themselves the target of his wrath. His goal is, and always was, the eradication of Christianity through government policies aimed at solidifying a Marxist, Totalitarian, immoral Statist order. This is nothing short of fascism.”

Ah! I love the smell of paranoid conspiracy theories in the morning, it smells like victory. Somehow I doubt Obama is going to “eradicate” Christianity, but if paranoid pastors keep invoking Flavius Claudius Julianus, they may not like what his spirit (once called) will do. This is the fellow who wrote “Against the Gallileans” after all.

In a final note, since yesterday was Earth Day plenty of reporters were out looking for a religious angle. These ranged from those who interviewed Pagans about their connection to the Earth, to snarky bloggers mocking right-wing hysteria that Earth Day was a conspiracy to get red-blooded Christian Americans to start worshipping Gaia.

“Earth Day, Green Week, Global Warming, Cap and Trade, Radical Environmentalism, Gaiaism. These and similar beliefs are rapidly becoming a state sponsored religion. This is a worldwide religion, not just an American movement. The end goal of this religion is to halt the industrial and economic advance of man, and to make man subserviant to Gaia, the earth as a living super-organism: Earth as God.”

I can’t believe our super-secret conspiracy to slowly re-paganize the Earth has been discovered! Curses! Foiled again! How will we ever spread our plans for a worldwide religion based on a living super-organism now!

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

The video originated at the Waking Up blog, where you can find other videos as well.

Since it’s Sunday, be sure to check out my weekly music podcast as well.

Behave yourselves in the comments while I’m gone! I’ll most likely be checking in later this evening.

“The desert religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — are male religions. Their perception is that God is a male god and Allah is a male god. If the male is allowed to hold onto the power of God, then I think we are in terrible shape. I think what’s coming out of Colorado Springs right now, with people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, is either the last or continuing gasp of a male hierarchy in religion. That’s what’s at stake. And women have a determining role to play. Are they going to go along with this, or are they going to challenge the order?”

While Rodriquez talks about how the traditional monotheisms feel “threatened by the rise of feminism”, he seems unable to look outside the “desert religions” and see that millions of women are indeed challenging the order by leaving it entirely for a variety of faiths that are more egalitarian in outlook. From Wicca and modern Pagan faiths, to various New Age spiritualities and heretical Christian off-shoots, to the post-creedal and post-Christian Unitarian-Universalists, more and more women are simply opting out of a system that they feel oppresses them. Rodriquez seems almost blind to these shifts, and believes that feminism will continue to produce incremental changes within institutional Catholicism and other male-dominated monotheistic religions.

“The Episcopal Church in America is now under the leadership of a woman. Feminism is going to change a great deal. The most radical people in the Roman Catholic Church are women. They’re challenging everything from the priesthood to the male God to what it means to be married. I don’t expect to see gay marriage enter these conservative institutions in my lifetime. But I do see change.”

The problem with these proposed incremental changes is that they aren’t really working as feminists and other activists intended. The Episcopal Church is slowly splintering, the Catholic leadership is maintaining a hard line against feminist reforms, and anti-gay religious coalitions are becoming more strident. In fact, one could argue that not much progress has been made since some initial breakthroughs in the tumultuous 1970s.

I may be biased, but perhaps the best way to challenge the notion of a solitary male-defined deity is to stop participating in the systems that perpetuate it. The dominant monotheisms know how to handle dissenters and heretics, indeed the very history of monotheism is a history of heretical behavior, but empty pews are another matter altogether. If you want to see change, you have to hit them where it hurts, at the collection plate. Reform comes only when the Vatican can’t afford Benedict’s designer clothes. In the meantime, I advise Richard Rodriguez to investigate the wonderful word of polytheism. We have all the women priests, female deities, and gay-friendly rites you could possibly hope for.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/challenging-order.html/feed 0 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/update-what-about-our-faiths.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/update-what-about-our-faiths.html#comments Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:21:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/update-what-about-our-faiths.html 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.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/update-what-about-our-faiths.html/feed 0 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/what-about-our-faiths.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/what-about-our-faiths.html#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:41:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/what-about-our-faiths.html “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.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/what-about-our-faiths.html/feed 2 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/pagan-news-of-note_25.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/pagan-news-of-note_25.html#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:30:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/pagan-news-of-note-73.html My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

Over at the On Faith site, the panel weighs in on abortion. Pagan panelist Starhawk gives her take on “abortion and The Goddess”.

“Women are moral agents, and in the Goddess and Pagan traditions, we are each our own spiritual authority. We have a right to wrestle with these issues ourselves, not have them predetermined for us by government authorities. We have a right to determine what goes on inside our bodies. To deny that right to women is to invite government intrusion into all kinds of private and personal choices. Overturning Roe vs. Wade would open the door to state control of our most intimate and tender decisions, and be a step closer to a totalitarian regime.”

She also quotes from the excellent book “The Pagan Book of Living and Dying”. In other Starhawk-related news, she has posted a six-minute video clip of Reclaiming’s annual Spiral Dance ritual to her web site.

Over at the Nation, Max Blumenthal writes about infiltrating Sarah Palin’s former church, and gets his hands on video footage of the now-infamous “blessing” done by anti-witchcraft crusader Thomas Muthee on Palin in 2005. Guess what? Muthee didn’t just pray for her to become governor, he also asked for her to be protected from “witchcraft”.

“Muthee’s mounting stardom took him to Wasilla Assembly of God in May, 2005, where he prayed over Palin and called upon Jesus to propel her into the governor’s mansion — and beyond. Muthee also implored Jesus to protect Palin from “the spirit of witchcraft.” The video archive of that startling sermon was scrubbed from Wasilla Assembly of God’s website, but now it has reappeared.”

So much for claims that Palin was ignorant or non-compliant in that church’s ongoing and active participation in Third-Wave “spiritual warfare” tactics. One wonders what “spirits of witchcraft” Palin needed protection from? Are there fortune tellers in Wasilla causing car accidents?

The brutal beating of a woman in Florida by a cult group has produced some of the worst journalistic accounts I have ever read. Fueled by incomplete information, this gang is painted as some sort of Santeria-Voodoo-Pagan-Satanic hybrid. With guns.

“Wood told investigators she was once a member of a Santeria voodoo group in Flagler County. She said Sunday’s abduction and beating were not the first she had suffered in recent days as a result of her leaving the group last year to become a Christian ,,, Wood also told investigators the men and a petite blonde woman named “Sky” took her to an open field near a home where a bonfire was burning. They were “preparing” for the autumnal equinox, she said.” “They needed me to help call the spirits,” Wood told investigators, indicating it was something she had done when she was a member of the group.”

It seems to me there is some vital information missing here. It’s also troubling that the only “expert” quoted in any of the linked articles is a cult “exit counselor”. So far the only part of her story that has been confirmed is that a local church was helping her. Here’s hoping that whoever did beat her goes to prison, and that some less sensationalist light is shed on this cult/group.

In a final note, the Covenant of the Goddess has sent out a press release in support of same-sex marriage in California and Massachusetts.

“Covenant of the Goddess has, since its inception in 1975, had clergy willing to celebrate the religious if not the legal joining of two members of the same gender. While we respect the right of the individual clergy within COG who may choose not to perform such a ceremony, we are in support of marriage between two committed adults of any gender, and a majority of our celebrants are willing to perform such ceremonies.”

The release, which hasn’t been posted to their web site yet, also goes into the history of same-sex marriage in pagan cultures, and the social and legal importance of allowing marriage rights to same-sex couples today.

That is all I have for now, have a great day!
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/pagan-news-of-note_25.html/feed 1 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/john-lyon-burnside-iii-1916-2008.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/john-lyon-burnside-iii-1916-2008.html#comments Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:42:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/john-lyon-burnside-iii-1916-2008.html John Burnside, inventor of the teleidoscope, Gay rights activist, and co-founder of the Radical Faeries, passed away on September 14th due to complications from brain cancer. Burnside was the lifelong companion and partner of Harry Hay (1912 – 2002), another co-founder of the Radical Faeries, and a seminal figure within the Gay rights movement.

John Burnside, photo by Rory Cecil.

“In 1979 John and Harry joined with fellow activists Don Kilhefner and Mitch Walker to call the first Spiritual Gathering of Radical Faeries. Fed up with the Gay movement’s steady drift towards mainstream assimilation, the gathering called to Gay men across the country. Since that time dozens of Faerie gatherings have been called around the world and permanent Radical Faerie sanctuaries have formed across the country. The movement helped to nurture and create a specifically Gay centered spiritual exploration and tradition.”

In Burnside’s 1989 essay “Who Are the Gay People?”, he illuminated the idea of a “Gay consciousness”, and described Gays as people who make a “continual reference to inner vision and insight”.

“Refusing to be products of the man/woman-making machine, Gay people must undertake to create themselves. Having no models to imitate, Gay people are free to adopt what they like from among the many ways there are to be. They search everywhere for promising leads, and, like spiritual magpies they take what they like from any system of religion or philosophy without feeling obliged to take the whole of it. Gay people continue to work on themselves all their lives, moving from stage to stage, growing in spirit, living in change, and rejoicing in being themselves.”

Needless to say, the Radical Faeries have had a huge impact on Gay Pagan spirituality, and the movement has done much to help integrate Gay voices into the wider Pagan community since the early 1980s*. Burnside, along with Hay and other pioneers in the Gay spirituality movement, have left an indelible mark on Gay and Pagan culture. His voice and unique spirit will be missed. May he be reunited with his loved ones in the Otherworld.

Obituary Links: SF Gate, Gay Wisdom, LA Times, Queensland Pride, Bay Area Reporter

* This process was partially documented by Margot Adler in her revised and expanded edition of “Drawing Down the Moon”.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/09/john-lyon-burnside-iii-1916-2008.html/feed 2 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/return-of-nine-million.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/return-of-nine-million.html#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:48:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/return-of-the-nine-million.html Australian Gay and Lesbian website Same Same features an article by Jade Starr on the history of Catholic and Catholic-inspired persecutions that trots out some old “favorites” from within the Pagan community.

“Those who did not follow the Catholic ideals were deemed to be witches or heretics and were then persecuted from the late 1400s to early 1700s. It has been estimated that up to nine million people lost their lives during ‘The Burning Times’ but due to a lack of evidence the exact number is accepted as closer to 50,000 to 1 million. Many of these people, predominantly women, endured unfair trials and were subsequently incarcerated or burned alive at the stake for their so-called crimes against God. Not only were Pagan people segregated, tortured and murdered but they were also robbed of their rituals and practices, which are even now still used in modern Catholicism.”

As much as I like to call out the Catholic Church for their many misdeeds, the reality is that 40,000 – 60,000 victims in the span of 250 years is as high as your going to go, and those numbers are educated estimates. There is only definitive proof for around 12,000 deaths attributed to witch trials. Only one in 25,000 deaths was attributed to execution for witchcraft. While the “nine million” number is dramatic, I agree with Margot Adler when she says that:

“…it serves no end to perpetuate the miscalculation; it’s time to put away the exaggerated numbers forever.”.

Inventing a Pagan or women’s holocaust in no way helps our cause, or adds gravitas to our arguments against Christianity. Further, by the time of the witch trials in Early Modern Europe, there were no “Pagan people” to torture, imprison, or murder. While some may continue to argue for underground survivals from the pre-Christian era (a debate I’ll leave to others), by the 15th century Europe was solidly Christian in religious orientation, and the vast majority of “witches” considered themselves good Christians.

If one wants to criticize the Catholic Church, or Christianity in general, there are several excellent ways and reasons to do so. However, including false information only invalidates the entire argument.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/return-of-nine-million.html/feed 4 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/gay-marriage-pagan-difference.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/gay-marriage-pagan-difference.html#comments Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:50:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/gay-marriage-the-pagan-difference.html 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.
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