“I am not a citizen of the world. I am a citizen of the United States because only in the United States does citizenship start with our creator. [...] I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history. We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.”

Mike Huckabee, who was also speaking at the event, then assured the Christian audience that God, not voters and massive fiscal contributions from the Mormons, defeated gay marriage in California.

“Huckabee told the audience he was disturbed to hear President Barack Obama say during his speech in Cairo, Egypt, on Thursday that one nation shouldn’t be exalted over another. “The notion that we are just one of many among equals is nonsense,” Huckabee said. The United States is a “blessed” nation, he said, calling American revolutionaries’ defeat of the British empire “a miracle from God’s hand.” The same kind of miracle, he said, led California voters to approve Proposition 8, which overturned a state law legalizing same-sex marriages.”

We stand exposed! And the God of the Christians is fixing elections! Luckily, the atheists appear to be unconcerned and are still with us in our Gingrich/nation-surrounding efforts.

“There are worse things to be surrounded by. People who support Gingrich and Huckabee, for example.”

As for God’s hand in California? Simply a setback. We were too busy surrounding Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire at the time (there are a lot of Pagans in New England, obviously). But our forces are currently surrounding California and the Pacific Northwest, so look keep a close watch on the next couple of election cycles (it’s one of the reasons I’m moving to Oregon in July). So though Gingrich is on to us, don’t worry, most people think he’s nuts anyway. Now back to my secure Pagan bunker to prepare for tonight’s Tony Awards (a celebration of all things gay and pagan).

“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 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.

“It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica.  This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally.  It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon’s main product search.”

A process of re-ranking books is now underway, not only are popular titles like “Brokeback Mountain” and “Heather Has Two Mommies” back to normal, but the Pagan-themed books I linked to yesterday have all had their rankings restored. According to the L.A. Times Amazon.com will be releasing more information about this “glitch” soon. Meanwhile, the Internet is buzzing over various theories concerning whether Amazon.com was hacked and the company is trying to cover it up (a school of thought that has mostly been debunked at this point). Over at the Making Light blog, Tor book editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden has no problem whatsoever believing this was indeed a massive cataloging error.

“If you don’t think this kind of clusterfark is entirely possible, you probably haven’t worked in a large organization. I don’t mean any of this as special pleading on Amazon’s behalf (although, full disclosure, obviously they’re one of Tor’s largest customers, so you may dismiss my views if you so desire). I just find it implausible that Amazon would want to alienate GLBT readers and their friends, who form an enormous and valuable segment of both their customer base and (surely) their own organization. Indeed, I suspect that dozens of Amazon executives and PR professionals will be having hurried meetings in Seattle this Monday morning, and that consumption of antacids at those meetings will be at an all-time high.”

None of this means that Amazon.com shouldn’t be sorry about the chaos and hurt they’ve caused (on the contrary), only that Amazon.com probably didn’t have any  nefarious anti-gay (or anti-Pagan) scenarios in mind when this massive de-ranking occured. There are plenty of reasons to not like Amazon.com (or any giant faceless corporation for that matter), but actively hating on minority groups is probably not one of them.

“A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove adult titles from its sales ranking. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy.”

While Amazon’s PR flacks are now saying it was all a “glitch”, previous contacts with customer services reps portrayed it as a new policy toward “adult” material on the site. Meanwhile, some claim that this process of de-ranking “adult” (read: gay) books has been going on quietly since earlier this year. Whether new policy or “glitch”, popular mainstream titles like Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain”, and resoundingly non-adult children’s fare like Leslea Newman’s “Heather Has Two Mommies” are still de-ranked on the site. Currently, when you search the site for “homosexuality” the top result is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality” (something I certainly wouldn’t let a child read without adult supervision).

It’s obvious that Amazon will be backtracking under the glare of bad press and Internet groundswell, but while the “glitch” remains I wanted to see if it affected any books aimed at Pagans. Sure enough, “Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe” by Christopher Penczak, Jennifer Hunter’s “Rites of Pleasure: Sexuality in Wicca and Neo-Paganism”, LaSara Firefox’s “Sexy Witch”, Vicki Noble’s “The Double Goddess: Women Sharing Power”, and “Lesbian Rites: Symbolic Acts and the Power of Community”, edited by Ramona Faith Oswald (and featuring contributions from Ruth Barrett and other Goddess-worshiping women) are all, at the time of this writing, without an Amazon sales ranking. No doubt there are even more that are escaping my notice (you can find a running list of de-ranked titles here).

What does it mean to be without a sales ranking? Or to not have your book show up in certain keyword searches? In basic terms it makes it harder for customers to find your books on the site, and thereby reduces potential sales and visibility of your title(s). You could be selling thousands of copies, but if you aren’t ranked, you won’t show up in the bestseller lists. Your book is swept under the metaphorical rug. Funny how a “glitch” managed to do that without targeting heterosexual “adult” material. I’d have to agree with author Lilith Saintcrow who exclaims “this is not a glitch” (or, as Twitter puts it, “#GlitchMyAss”). While this “glitch” may be “fixed” in the near future, I can’t imagine those affected will be satisfied until a real answer for how this happened emerges, along with safeguards put in place to ensure such “glitches” are avoided in the future.

“I hope this is not the last book on Pagan-Christian dialogue. For the best inter-religious dialogue is based on deep respect, which means exploring the deepest differences in an atmosphere of civility. While this book does get at some of those deep differences such as monotheism, fallenness, transcendence and the uniqueness of Jesus it gives short shrift to others. For example, God’s relationship to gender is touched on but largely skirted. While diZerega says the divine is feminine, and Johnson replies that the Christian God includes the feminine, there is no concerted attention given to why the Bible presents God in largely male terms. Or why Pagans deny the normativity of heterosexuality and Christians affirm it. The underlying assumption in diZerega and even in (Christian) Petersen’s response is that sexual differences are either arbitrary or irrelevant yet Christianity has a long tradition saying quite the opposite. In an era when sexuality’s relationship to the divine is so pressing, this discussion between Pagans and Christians needs to begin.“

McDermott’s critique gets right to the heart of an issue I’ve been bringing up quite a bit in the last year, the religious dimensions of the gay civil rights struggle, specifically gay marriage. Too often the debate around gay marriage is portrayed as a conservative monotheist vs secularist/liberal monotheist battle (what I affectionately call “Lefty Jesus vs Righty Jesus”), when in fact the issue is far more complex. There are faiths that have a completely different theology concerning the matter, and their voices are being drowned out amidst the shouting. Perhaps if Mr. McDermott can see that this is a conversation worth having, other Christians too will realize that their are moralities and worldviews on this issue outside of their own. Such a discussion could change how we approach the issue of marriage.

As for McDermott’s contention that Pagans “reject” heteronormativity, I must respectfully disagree. A Pagan outlook isn’t built on the binary of “either-or”, it instead embraces an ethic of “and-and”. Just as we accept the existence (and more importantly the co-existence) of numerous possible divine powers/entities, so too do we accept that there is a valid heterosexual “normalcy” and a homosexual “normalcy” (and a variety of other possible “normals”). An individual Pagan may personally dislike or disagree with homosexual marriage, but unlike the dominant monotheisms that attitude isn’t one that is founded on a core scriptural truth that all Pagans must believe in, he or she has no mandate to enforce a ban (legal or spiritual) on someone else’s marriage or belief system.

The often unsaid adjective in arguments concerning the “breakdown of the family” is “Christian” (or “Mormon”, or “Muslim”, or sometimes “Jewish”). It isn’t so much a fear that heteronormativity will be destroyed (and the “family” along with it), but the idea of a “Christonormativity” losing prominence as other faiths, ideas, and philosophies grow in stature. Clinging to their appeals to tradition or “natural law” (which, of course, ignores nature when convenient) these groups fight to reinforce their own consensus reality by denying us ours. Such an action seems madness to the polytheist, who knows that wildly different religious and cultural ideas can and should co-exist (and even borrow and blend amongst themselves over time). We can only hope that the dialogue started by “Beyond the Burning Times” (and advocated by McDermott in Sacred Tribes) spreads beyond its small group of Christian and Pagan supporters and takes on the challenge of peaceful co-existence and mutual respect.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/12/outside-perspectives-and-gay-marriage.html/feed 1 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/12/vodou-roundup.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/12/vodou-roundup.html#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:25:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/12/vodou-roundup.html It’s time to turn to the troubled nation of Haiti, to examine a few stories concerning that country and the African diasporic religion that emanates from there: Haitian Vodou (one of modern Paganism’s religious “cousins”). First, Jennifer Kay of the Associated Press files a report of how Haitian practitioners of Vodou living abroad are balancing their spiritual obligations with sending financial help to their familes in a year that has seen continuing economic hardship and a series of tropical storms that have rocked the tiny island nation. November, usually a month for lavish celebrations, is decidedly more somber this year, and drastically scaled back as a result of these recent events.

“Hours before the “sacred carnival,” Josue and a handful of vodouisants gathered before a small altar to pay special homage to the nearly 800 storm victims and those killed in the Nov. 7 school collapse. He had expected at least 20 people for the daytime service. But many have reserved their extra cash to help relatives in impoverished Haiti. They told Josue they couldn’t afford the gas for driving to the outskirts of Miami twice in the same day. And when they came for the night service, they would wear the same black and purple clothes they had on last year, not being afford new things. “And there’s only one goat,” Josue said and sighed. In the past, many guests laid offerings on the altars adorned with decorative skulls in black top hats. This year, they spent what they could to honor the dead, while still trying to support the living, Josue said. ‘I don’t think the Gede [the spirits of the dead] will be offended,’ Josue said. ‘They will be concerned about the condition of the world, because they have a lot of work to do now.’”

Meanwhile in Haiti, a remarkable thing happened this weekend. Several gay and HIV+ Haitians outed themselves and marched in honor of World AIDS Day. Haiti, which is very socially conservative, is a dangerous place to be openly gay, and many gay men in Haiti avoid social programs for fear of harassment.

“Haiti has long fought stigmatization and discrimination after its migrants were some of the first AIDS cases identified in the United States. Unfounded beliefs that Haitians caused the epidemic helped decimate the country’s tourism industry. The country has since been a success story, with its HIV infection rate falling from 5.9 percent in 1996 to 2.2 percent today — due in part to programs like the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which has given Haiti more than $320 million since 2004. The deaths of people with HIV also contributed to the decline. But gay men remain at risk because they hide from social programs due to prejudice and harassment, despite making up one-tenth of reported HIV cases in the Caribbean, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS reported.”

The gay men participating in the event proudly labeled themselves “masisi”, reclaiming a traditional Haitian slur for homosexuals. Pink News, who also reported on the story, noted that one of the few places that gays find acceptance in Haitian society is within Vodou.

“Haiti has one of the highest infection rates in the world and gay men and lesbians face stigma and homophobic attitudes, though the voodoo community is accepting of homosexuality.”

For more on Haitian Vodou and homosexuality, check out this this essay, and this Wikipedia page.

In a final note, a press release announces that Claudine Michel, chair and professor of black studies at UC Santa Barbara and director of the campus’s Center for Black Studies Research, has received the Haitian Studies Association Service Award.

“The award recognizes Michel’s commitment to the advancement of Haitian studies, particularly as editor of the association’s official publication, The Journal of Haitian Studies. The award was presented earlier this month at the organization’s annual meeting in Port Au Prince. The Haitian Studies Association is an international education organization that promotes research on Haiti. More specifically, the association is dedicated to encouraging new scholarship and modes of pedagogy about Haiti’s history and culture. The association also disseminates knowledge about Haiti in general and celebrates the scholarly achievements and contributions of those whose research interests focus on Haiti and its people.”

Michel is co-editor of “Haitian Vodou: Spirit, Myth, And Reality”
and “Vodou in Haitian Life and Culture: Invisible Powers”, and author of the forthcoming book “Offerings: Contintuity and Transformation in Haitian Vodou”. Congratulations to Claudine Michel!
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/12/vodou-roundup.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/2008/07/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.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/07/gay-marriage-pagan-difference.html/feed 5