Yesterday I mentioned a New York Times article that talked about Wicca, and how many Wiccans don’t feel safe revealing their religious identity for one reason or another.

“The Virginia mother has not told her mother or grandmother that she is a Wiccan. “I have a deep-seated fear that they will say, ‘I can’t be a part of this, you’re raising your kids as evil,’ ” she said. She attends classes about Wicca on Friday nights, and she has yet to caution her older child, a preschooler, not to tell anyone about them.”

But it seems that some are skeptical about how real their fears are, such as Christianity Today blogger Rob Moll.

“Wiccans seem to feel discriminated against, despite the fact that in my local bookstore carries as many shelves of books on the subject as it has shelves for mainstream religions. But, The New York Times reports that Wiccans are afraid of even telling their families about their religious beliefs.”

It seems that Moll hasn’t been paying close attention to the news lately, for he would see that harassment and misconceptions still occur despite the “many shelves of books”. Take for instance the case of Patricia Gardner, an “out” Witch in Cohoes, New York. Gardner recently had her house defaced with anti-Wiccan messages.

“Her openness earned her some recent unwanted attention when someone scrawled a lengthy diatribe on the side of her house that invokes the Lord’s Prayer and calls Gardner an ‘evil witch’ and a ’spook’ while asking God to ‘please move evil away.’ … Gardner said she has lived in her Sargeant Street apartment for more than a year and half with no problems, but that she was targeted at the store she formerly managed. ‘We sold a lot of pagan things, like pagan jewelry,’ she said. ‘Someone came in and saw the jewelry and started calling me a demon-loving, Satan-worshipping baby-eater.’”

Meanwhile in Virginia, a hoax about a “Wiccan festival” including references to an orgy, blood rituals, and animal sacrifices spurred a month-long investigation by a local Sheriff and the FBI of an innocent local couple.

“The ritual was supposedly going to involve animal sacrifices and group sex. With the help of the FBI, Floyd County Sheriff’s Investigator Jeff Dalton has spent the last month researching the two land owners. It turned out they were the victims of this charade.”

How much do you want to bet that the victims of this charade don’t attend the local church? Perhaps their bumper-stickers are a bit too left leaning and “spiritual”? If only these hoaxers and harassers had gone to their local (secular) bookstore and seen the shelves full of Pagan/Wiccan books, this might not have happened. Right?

If you are looking for more religious commentary on the passing of Jerry Falwell, I urge you to check out the On Faith blog panelists, where you can hear opinions ranging from fawning to critical (no response from Starhawk yet). Also adding their two cents are the Get Religion blog, and the religious mega-site Beliefnet.

Yesterday marked the release of the DVD for the stunning Academy Award-winning adult fairy-tale Pan’s Labyrinth. You can read my review of the film, here. The DVD comes in two editions, a single-disc version, and a double-disc deluxe version featuring making-of features and other extras. Guess which one is on my birthday wish list!

Finally, the New York Times has a published a story on Wiccans by Neela Banerjee. The article points out that despite growing acceptance and rights for modern Pagans, many still keep their faith hidden at work and from family for fear of their jobs, children, and alienation from family.

“David Steinmetz, professor of the history of Christianity at Duke Divinity School, said, ‘Wiccans have so many things stacked against them, from what the Bible says about the practice of magic to the history in this country of witch trials, that the image of them adds up to something so contrary to the consensus about genuine religion that still shapes American society.’ … Members of other religions, including Jews and Catholics, have sometimes been forced to mask their faith in the past because of religious bias, Professor Steinmetz said. But it is rare, he added, for people to keep their religion from parents and grandparents, as many Wiccans do.”

So while modern Paganism has come a long way, there is still much to be done to combat the misconceptions and attitudes we face.