The case against musician Kenny Klein, who is accused of having child pornography on his computer, has been dragging on in New Orleans since March, 2014. One snag, which may hold up the wheels of justice, is the fact that Klein is now suing his ex-wife Tzipora Katz, for defamation of character.
The basis of Klein’s complaint is a 1997 consent order in the pair’s custody case, under which Katz “agrees she will not discuss any issues relating to any allegations of sexual abuse by Kenneth Klein with any parties other than her immediate family and mental health professionals who are treating members of her immediate family.” In return, Klein withdrew his “application for custody and visitation” of their child. That order had no listed expiration date.
Katz declined comment, saying that she was unable to speak about the current situation. The case against Katz has been adjourned while her attorney works on additional papers to support her motion to dismiss; her daughter is asking for help with legal fees to pay that attorney. Klein’s case in New Orleans is on the docket again for December 4.
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This week, Cherry Hill Seminary released a statement about its position and practices in response to a petition request to end their ties with certain instructors, who have been publicly accused of transphobia. The Change.org petition, created by Melissa Murry, is called “A Transphobic Elder is No Elder of Mine.” It was born out of and directly addresses recent online debates and tension over specific statements and actions made concerning the acceptance of transgender Pagans.
Cherry Hill Seminary responded the same day with the statement “Cherry Hill Seminary Calls For Academic Freedom, Respect and Civility.” In it, CHS responds directly saying, “Recently, one of our faculty members signed a petition that some people found hurtful and offensive. Cherry Hill Seminary has been pressured to terminate this faculty member.” And then it goes on to remark that the community does not understand its role in high education, but welcomes open dialog on the “issues which might otherwise divide us.”
The response to CHS’ statement has been mixed with some people supporting its stance, and others withdrawing their support. The debate is on going and may continue to punctuate online conversations into the near future.
* * *
In 2014, at the People’s Climate March, a project was born called “The Climate Ribbon” project. It is “an arts ritual to grieve what we each stand to lose to Climate Chaos, and affirm our solidarity as we unite to fight against it.” People selects a ribbon and, on it, write what they most value in life; what propels them to protect our ecosystem and our future livelihood? After doing so, the ribbon is tied on a community board or a frame.
Climate Ribbon Project organizers were at the recent Parliament of the World’s Religions. Since that time, Circle Sanctuary members have partnered with the organization. Rev Selena Fox said, “[We] are among the partners with this global project and are among those contributing ribbons to this EcoArt project that will be part of the international Climate March taking place in Paris on November 29, 2015 at the start of the UN COP21 Climate Conference.”
Unfortunately, after the Paris attacks, the French government cancelled the 2015 Climate March due to safety concerns. The event would have brought an estimated 200,000 people into the city and out into the streets. While the cancellation may be disappointing, climate march organizers have said that there still are over 100 local events around the world scheduled for Nov. 29. And, one of those events is the Paris EcoArt installation by the Climate Ribbon Project. Organizers wrote, “The Climate Ribbon will be there to create ritual space to grieve and mourn what we have lost and are losing to climate change, and commit to courageous action, together.” The installations will be placed all over the city.
Rev. Fox said, “Ribbons we have sent to the project were created by Pagans at events at Circle Sanctuary land, including our Samhain Full Moon Circle, and at Hallowed Homecoming Samhain Retreat in Virginia the first weekend in November.” Anyone is able to participate and partner with the Climate Ribbon Project. You can send in ribbons through the mail or digitally.
In Other News
- Druid Thaum Gordon has won his bid for re-election as Supervisor for Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District in Maine. As we reported earlier this month, Gordon has been serving in the position since 2011, and many people know that he is Pagan. Gordon believes that Conservation District positions are a great first step to getting involved in public office. He added, “Likewise, there are thousands of water utility districts, sewer districts, parks commissions, and other special-purpose units of government that need board members. These can be stepping stones to more competitive county or municipal elections.”
- The Legacy of Tyr, a Virginia based Asatru group for military and veteran Heathens, is pushing a hashtag campaign #IAmAsatru and #IAmHeathen. The group came up with this social media campaign after the recent arrest of three white supremacists claiming to be Asatruar. Founder Carrie L. Pierce explains, “We are encouraging people to include these hashtags when posting about their everyday lives with photos and statuses on social media platforms. We do things like serve in the military, coach little league, and do volunteer work just like regular every day people. If the public sees that we are regular people with careers, families, hobbies, etc.the image that has been painted about us might change in some aspect.“
- For those following the Save Deirdre and Lily battle in New York state, Druid Cindy McGinley recently announced that the court ruled in favor of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The judge dismissed her petition. As we reported in July, the DEC had demanded that McGinley’s two deer be put death. McGinley, a trained wildlife rehabilitator, refused, taking her story to the courts. This week, she lost the legal battle. However, she has since said that the two deer will not die and that she will find a way to save them.
- A new documentary is available titled Heksen in Holland (or Witches in Holland.).The film explores Wicca in the Netherlands through the group Silver Circle, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary. The documentary and corresponding book include interviews with Silver Circle members Morgana Sythgrove, Lady Bara, Joke and Ko Lankester, and Jana. Filmmakers also interviewed Rufus and Melissa Harrington, and Geraldine Beskin from the Atlantis Bookshop in London. There is a memorial chapter to Merlin Sythgove, including .”an old audio fragment from the Charge of the Goddess in Dutch, spoken by Merlin and Jana.” The 90 minute documentary is currently only available in Dutch through Silver Circle’s site, but they soon will be releasing a copy with English subtitles.
- For fans of Mark Ryan, the actor and author is holding an online launch party for the U.S. edition of his biography Hold Fast. Ryan is known for his role as Nasir in the television series Robin of Sherwood, for his work in the Transformers franchise, and most recently for his role as Mr. Gates in the Starz series Black Sails. Ryan also is the creator of the popular Greenwood Tarot and The Wildwood Tarot. The online launch party process, which includes prizes, is explained on the event Facebook page. He will be there live answering questions about the book and its content. The event begins at 3 p.m EST/2 p.m. CST.
- Lastly, a note from The Wild Hunt editor’s desk: The delivery of all fall funding campaign perks is underway. It takes some time to coordinate and reconcile the large amount data. All online changes to links and listings will begin in December. Thank you again to everyone who came out to support our work. If you have any questions, contact us directly.
UPDATE: The original report on Kenny Klein included some speculative information that was found to be problematic with regards to the legal case. The Wild Hunt did not intend any harm, has removed this data, and has apologized to the parties concerned.
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It was an honor to contribute to this project while at Hallowed Homecoming: A Samhain Retreat this year. Thank you, Rev Fox for sharing this with us!
I’ve been wonder what was happening with the whole KK situation. Sickening.
I’m very disappointed that you gave Kenny Klein a platform from which to further harass Tziporah. This suit, like all the others that have preceded it, is just one more effort to wear her down and bleed her dry, to reduce her to the state of defeatedness that allowed her to agree to that outrageous gag order in the first place.
How did the Wild Hunt give Klein a platform? They reported facts and provided a link to help out Ms. Katz. The issue is certainly big enough to be of interest to many Wild Hunt readers and I think anyone with half a brain who reads the report as written here will see that Klein is in the moral, if not legal, wrong here. At least, that is how it looked to me.
I read it as almost entirely telling Kenny’s POV with a sop thrown to Tziporah at the end.
Just the fact that he put a gag order related to discussion of sexual abuse into the divorce decree speaks volumes, doesn’t it?
It wasn’t part of the divorce. For the record, it was part of a custody battle and he literally bartered his son for silence. Please get the facts straight!
I apologize and have corrected the post.
This guy is a PR genius. He doesn’t want anyone associating his name with abuse allegations…so he files a lawsuit to dredge up a nearly 20-year deep history of such allegations, which he has to know would be front-page news at least within the Pagan world. Defamation is only defamation if what was said/published is false. Dragging this drama into court means that ALL of the documented facts surrounding those allegations come out. If his past is not surgically clean and beyond reproach on these matters, he’s going to implode whatever remains of his reputation.
The KK case bears out my belief that gag orders are nearly always contrary to public interest. Except for matters of life and death, all recourse to the courts should be fully open to the public. But nothing to be done about it now. Except spell work, of course. Shine a light!
Some of us have already done some spellwork for Tziporah, but more work from more good folk is always welcome!
Katz can’t find a pro bono attorney for this?
Not if you want to be represented in the best possible way. There is an adage that you get what you pay for….and this issue is too important to leave to chance. Sorry.
Thank you for putting the word out about our #IAmHeathen #IAmAsatru hashtag campaign!
“then it goes on to remark that the community does not understand its role in high education”
Ah, the old “If you disagree with me, then you must not really understand what we’re talking about” condescension. We layfolk are too plebian to understand the ways of academia.
Or maybe we don’t want an institution that claims to be trying to better the pagan community to promote bigotry and hatred, because that’s actively bad for our community.
The dispassionate pursuit of truth, for me as a human being, is ultimately more important than the passionate pursuit of justice. I grant that, at times, the pursuit of truth may even result in injustice. That fact doesn’t make the pursuit of justice more worthy than the pursuit of truth. And any institution of higher education that puts bettering the community it serves to the dispassionate pursuit of truth is not really an institution of eduaction, but of indoctrination. I, personally, have no use for any instutution of indoctrination, even if it aims at a utopian future.
OK, fine, you go right ahead and support injustice, which is also untruthful and so is against the pursuit of truth as well. But we will know you, by your own words, as against justice.
Pursuit of knowledge can only be hindered by bigotry.
Any institute of learning exists to serve the needs of its community, whatever its community may be. Learning is a need of the community. So is justice.
Why the false dichotomy? Or is it just unnecessary ranking?
It’s not a false dichotomy. Take a look at the years of sordid controversy over the prehistoric skeletal remains known as Kennewick Man. Neither the scientists not the locat tribes not the Army Corps of Engineers have anything to be proud of in that entire mess.
So you value truth more than people who might be harmed pursuing it? There is reason we have things like IRBs, and consider things like the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to be heinous. That’s what happens when pursuit of “truth” takes precedence over people.
And this isn’t even about pursuit of truth. The person at CHS wasn’t even pursuing any truth. They were merely stating their (offensive) opinion about others, including people who might be their students.
When I was a whole lot younger, back in the Stalinist and McCarthy days, I saw many fine, ethical scholars both here and in the Soviet Union who were shunned for their political opinions by the culture warriors and political warriors of he day, and became “non-persons.” And yes, the term “politically correct” was used back then, too. The whole process of ostracism was viscerally repellent then, and remains so now. — That said, there are two other points I want to make. First, as a philoophical polytheist, I am convinced that the Deities do not think with one mind on any question of ethics or morality whatever; there is no universal standard of ethics or morality among them. Why, then, should humans be more rigid than the Giods and Giddesses. And second, I have see far too often where cries of “justice” are used simply to justify what is actually the very human tendency to bully and dominate. I do not really believe there is such a thing as pure “justice” to be found amywhere in the universe, and that all quests for a just world are fools’ errands.
Hatred of human beings for being who they are is not the same as membership in a political party. Not all opinions are valid and acceptable. Hatred of human beings for who they are is not a valid opinion. Bigotry does not deserve to be treated with respect.
You are supporting bigotry. No wonder you don’t believe in justice. You can’t afford to.
Indeed, since it is the instructor who is using her position of power to discriminate against those she has power over — and if you don’t think that her opinion is discriminatory, then you need a quick refresher course on oppression — which makes her like McCarthy, and those who object to her like those who wanted McCarthy removed.
Transphobia is still in the majority and on top of the power structure, still has the power behind it. This petition is fighting back against power, not the exercise of institutional power. This instructor would make trans people non-persons.
If you cannot agree that bigotry is wrong, because some nonsense about diversity of opinion on morality, then there is something deeply immoral — and deeply hypocritical given your disgust for McCarthyism — in you.
The dismissal of any legitimate grounds for grievance through the pious embrace of academic freedom would feel a lot more credible if the controversy at hand had involved a class of people who are definitively not “ok to hate” within the Pagan power structure or movement. This seamless and wide shield of academic freedom should, in theory, protect a professor who reviled the very basis of modern feminism or one who held that cis-gendered lesbian women were “disordered” spiritually and psychologically, or a professor who became an evangelical convert determined to call all of Cherry Hill’s students to Christ. My gut tells me none of these folks would be getting the hands-off treatment by claiming sanctuary within the recent policy on academic freedom. I think they would find their offices packed and waiting on the lawn and their names would be stricken from course catalogs before the sun set the following day.
Indeed. And then they’d say that transphobia is an opinion, but homophobia and misogyny are bigotry and wrong and damaging.
And this is how they’re promoting bigotry.
The citation of McCarthyism is valid, and it begs one question: who gets to be the final arbiter of “legitimate”?
If, as I suspect you and MadG require, that arbiter is the court of public opinion, then you have leapt over the slippery slope and are in line to join the Stalinists, Jacobins and others who passionately identified the cause of their woes and swept up countless innocents in the process.
Please note that I don’t draw those invidious comparisons lightly. My own family history is deep in another such example (Tito and Yugoslavia).
What, also, one should ask, is the definition of innocent? For this country, the US, it’s the Constitution. For all its flaws, for the litany of abuses of it, it remains the legal arbiter of all of this, and you are demanding that it be bypassed.
I don’t like the lecturing tone of their statement any more than you do. I also put your lecturing tone in the same category. I have personal experience and witness to how our justice system works successfully and how it cannot avoid generating examples of injustice, all in the name of its principles starting with innocent until proven guilty.
You and MadG are shoving words and thoughts down Robert’s gullet. You deserve zero respect for that. You have valid and critical points to make, and they are fatally marred by your dogmatic imposition of them on others.
I’m arguing for nothing which exceeds the Constitution. Primarily I’m arguing for the proper functioning of the First Amendment, which guarantees the right to hold and express even very unpopular beliefs, free from government restraint (the crucial difference between this and Stalinism). Our Constitution nowhere requires that we embrace unpopular ideas or treat them as equally valid or to speak of them nicely. I’m just swinging at what Robert or others are pitching. It’s not personal and it can’t be, because I don’t know any of them from the 5th guy named “Lee” in the Beijing phone book. I’m engaging some very frank arguments in equally frank terms.
I should also emphasize that I am not, nor have ever called for this professor to be fired. I don’t think it would be beyond the pale to do so if she is truly an at-will contract instructor, but I think the real problem is the seminary’s apparent dismissal of a legitimate concern about discrimination.
Thank you for expanding and clarifying.
I should disclose my own bias. My first career was on the front-line of regulatory compliance. My second and current career often requires me to write code that supports compliance with regulations. I understand them as well as anyone can, I am painfully familiar with the litigation processes and I have firsthand knowledge of both abuses and ethical application. I don’t mean to “pull credentials” — I am decidedly not a lawyer — but I do get my dander up when people seem to believe that justice is a matter of opinion. That I may have implied that about you, I do sincerely regret.
It’s crystal clear. You are, at root, a nihilist. That’s fine (unless you get your ear bitten off by John Goodman in a bowling alley parking lot :), but it’s not, I think, what informs a great many of us called to Pagan paths. We are called to know the gods, or perhaps archetypes of them, or even just ourselves and the mysteries of life and death. But it also, if we let it, draws us into questions of how we ought to live, and the virtues to which we should aspire.
Deities are not of one mind on questions or ethics and morality, but most do hold and express admiration of certain virtues, even if they fall short of them as we do. They also, I find, favor bold action and active engagement with the world around us. They don’t, as a general matter, hold much respect for people who sit back and wait for the world to give them what they want. They call us to be the change we want to see in the world, starting at the microcosmic level of ourselves.
Pagan religion is not dogmatic for the most part, but many in the modern movement have made the unfortunate extrapolation that we cannot form any firm ethical or moral judgments whatsoever. It’s a very appealing idea to the public leadership and elite of the Pagan movement who want to weasel out of taking any firm stands to avoid rustling any feathers of their power coalitions. We are told that if don’t affirm any vile or damn fool idea to be as good and valid as any other, that we are being “intolerant”. We are guilty of no less than “McCarthyism.” We are told that we must not only defend the legal to express hate. We must also embrace it and celebrate it in the name of “diversity.” If we challenge any idea, we are being “bullies.”
If this is true, then modern Paganism is an utterly worthless and narcissistic pursuit, and deserves to die and wither into obscurity within a generation or two as our enemies fancy it will. If we cannot arrive at any moral reasoning from within our religions, than the slander of our orthodox Christian adversaries is true: We are just playing aesthetic games and LARPing in ren fair garb.
I hope and believe that Pagan religion has more to offer than nihilism, and I know for damn sure that the American tradition of free expression and tolerance does not demand utter relativism. Our system of free expression makes only one promise: That there will be a free marketplace of ideas and that the government won’t interfere. McCarthyism violated that promise because it was the government using its police powers to silence opinions. That is not the case with what’s happening at Cherry Hill. It was not the case with what happened at PantheaCon several years ago, and it was not the case with the massive evolution in support of gay marriage or LGBT rights generally within the last 20 years.
In each of these cases, the marketplace has been functioning exactly as it was meant to. Everyone got to set up a stall and put their ideas – their wares, if you will, on public offer. Buyers individually and collectively form their own judgments on what those wares are worth. In recent years, the marketplace price of bigotry, homophobia and more recently transphobia, has plummeted. People are deciding for themselves that some ideas, these ideas, just simply suck and are not something they want to be invested in anymore. The failure of bad ideas to persuade and to find buyers is not oppression, or tyranny or McCarthism of any kind. It is the First Amendment working flawlessly. Ostracism – so long as it is not coerced by the government, is also not oppression. It is freedom of association. I have an obligation to help defend anyone, including racists, homophobes, or proponents of the most extreme ideologies, against prior restraint or censorship from the government. I have absolutely no obligation to suffer their company on my own dime or to support them with my money or presence or name. I have no obligation to affirm their views as valid for the sake of diversity or because they are “speaking their own truth.” I have no obligation to create a “safe space” (free of criticism) for their ideas.
I know I’m being adversarial with you and MadG. I feel strongly about these things, too. However, I also am obligated (and quite glad) to acknowledge insight and eloquence. You make some very important points here.
I phrase it that way because your final statement about obligations is an excellent description of the idea space here. You cover the main “bases” very well. I have just one quibble around accuracy of description.
McCarthy was a single player (with allies) within the government who abused his own power and his access to the greater power of the bureaucracy. I can’t let “…the government using its police powers to silence opinions…” stand without that qualification. Murrow and others stood up to him and eventually prevailed, and that would not have happened if it was “the government” acting. In one series of events, we have one of the most glaring examples of abuse of power and privilege coupled with one of the most shining examples of a system and society providing recourse against it.
The power of McCarthy’s terror still derived from the implied, and not incredible threat of government action. A lot of the people professionally shunned as communists were not shunned by others entirely or even primarily out of free will. The threat was that if they stood by them, they implicated themselves and would be dragged before the committee and put through a nationally visible process which looked very much like a prosecution or indictment for criminal wrongdoing and treason. The fact that some were able to stand up against it and not land in jail does not mean it was not government intimidation. Even after the hearings stopped, being branded a “communist sympathizer” often meant you had an FBI file opened on you and had agents assigned to amass information which could be used to destroy you personally and professionally. The McCarthy era was way more than the PC sensibilities of ordinary Americans run amuck.
It was much more than PC run amuck, no doubt in my mind. This is all much more complicated than can be covered in a few hundred words.
Cherry Hill is really not in a position to be lecturing down to us about the role of a university. Our movement made this institution what it is, and if loses the confidence of this extended community, it will dry up and blow away. When you’re an ancient institution with a bazillion dollar endowment, Wall Street level alumni donors and rivers of grant money, then you afford to fob off your current constituency. They might want to nail down accreditation before copping too much attitude.
The whole concept of “academic freedom” bears examination as we dig into this issue. Freedom of inquiry and freedom from censorship is absolutely necessary in higher education. Seminary leadership seems to suggest that a commitment to academic freedom means that a university is obligated to retain a controversial faculty member in isolation of any other consideration.
That has never been the case anywhere else in the academic world. The sort of bulletproof absolute academic freedom people associate with university professors is associated with tenure. That guarantee of employment is extended to professors who have demonstrated a strong record of published research and academic visibility, an ability to attract grant funding and teaching excellence. That takes six or seven years of excellent full-time work, and even then, tenure is not always granted. I’m not entirely sure about this, but I don’t think Cherry Hill engages its faculty at that level of employment. If the faculty members in question are, as I think they are, adjunct instructors or otherwise contracted on a class by class basis, the seminary has no obligation whatsoever to retain their services at all costs.
They may feel a moral obligation to err on the side of academic freedom, and no institution should reflexively dismiss faculty when controversy arises. At the same time, it is entirely reasonable to re-evaluate relationships with contract instructors. What is the level of this person’s scholarship and instruction and what does her presence on faculty do, in the aggregate, to advance the seminary’s mission versus detracting from it? I think it’s also fair to consider the controversial statements or actions in the context in which they were made. Controversy which arises from real scholarship and research should be given a much wider entitlement of academic freedom than personal agendas. If diversity of ideas is the only consideration in hiring and retention of faculty, or the overriding one, would Cherry Hill take on a white supremecist Odinist professor, or an anti-feminist/misogynist one? If not, why not? If they had adequate credentials and experience, on what possible basis would you turn them away, or terminate their employment? They would be, in the seminary’s own vision of interfaith, be “speaking his or her own truth.”
Finally, but certainly not least, there needs to be a serious consideration of how this faculty member’s words and actions affect the ability of transgender students to enjoy fair treatment and safety within the seminary community. If I were a trans man or woman enrolled at Cherry Hill and my academic career was partly in the hands of a professor who openly held “my kind” in contempt, what assurances and safeguards could I count on from administration?
I’m not a fan of campaigns to fire people based on spur of the moment social media outrage. At the same time, Cherry Hill squandered what could have been a productive way to engage the issue. At the same time they advocated for academic freedom, administrators could also have emphasized that Ruth Barrett’s personal views are not those of the seminary. They could also have made a strong and unambiguous commitment to ideals and policies of non-discrimination and diversity, specifically where transgender community members are concerned. I don’t see any such commitment in the current response to the controversy. What I see is the sort of soft-focus shimmy around the issue which sounds nice but says nothing, rather like “all lives matter.”
In this case, Cherry Hill’s big commitment to non-discrimination and diversity is this: “We all want diversity of sex and race.”…Well, that’s nice, I guess. We all want good things for humanity in the abstract. The meaningful question is what are we (ie you, Cherry Hill), specifically prepared to do to make that reality happen? The squishiness on this issue leads the cynical part of my nature to believe that:
A)Seminary leadership doesn’t have the spine to make a clear stand on a divisive matter, which is sadly the default position of Pagan leadership and politicians generally OR B)The old-guard Dianic trans exclusion philosophy still has widespread currency among the top levels of seminary leadership and supporters.
It should go without saying, President Albaugh and Executive Director Emore, that Cherry Hill is every bit as committed to diversity and full LGBT justice as it is for academic freedom. Say it anyway, and mean it.
You make some good points. I would love to see a commitment to both, as well. Let’s hope they’ll soon be clarifying that they meant to make that clear.
“If diversity of ideas is the only consideration in hiring and retention
of faculty, or the overriding one, would Cherry Hill take on a white
supremecist Odinist professor, or an anti-feminist/misogynist one? If
not, why not? If they had adequate credentials and experience, on what
possible basis would you turn them away, or terminate their employment?
They would be, in the seminary’s own vision of interfaith, be “speaking
his or her own truth.””
Yes. The whole thing, but especially this, and the next paragraph about how it affects trans students.
Indeed, have they even had any trans students? Because they are already actively saying that they will support a transphobe over trans people. If they don’t already have trans students who are vocal and willing to stand up and say that this has not affected the quality of their education, then they may not get any for a long time.
They give the lie to their own commitment to diversity by supporting people who shut out that diversity. Why should any of us who are part of a marginalized group within the pagan community ever feel safe at such a school?
I didn’t see them promoting any such thing. Do you think they did by not punishing someone who did, because they’re in a position to take something away from her? That may be an inappropriate abuse of the relationship. Punitive measures may not be appropriate for the school to dish out for personal political activity.
Refusing to refute bigotry is tacit support of bigotry. Publicly supporting a bigotry is promoting bigotry.
Count me among those who say, “A plague upon both your houses.”
Then we shall count you, too, with those who stand against justice and for bigotry.
A true badge of honor. If to spend life walking on eggshells is the result of this, the justice be damned.
If not speaking bigotry is so hard for you, then of course you are against justice.
Please explain, if you can, how the wording of the petition is not also a perfect example of “if you disagree with this, you must be guilty of the same crimes we are charging” the person targeted by the petition.
Personally, I’m very much not going to tolerate the use of guilt by association. Our Heathen siblings face it daily — and respond to it honorably. I find it just as wrong when our own community uses it against itself.
We need passion to uncover injustice and drag into the light of day. We need to remove passion from the process of justice or watch the very notion of justice disappear. Failure in either case dooms us all to a vicious cycle that will never end.
It’s not guilt by association, it is guilt by negligence. All that is necessary for evil to prevail is for good people to stand silent.
The very real effect of allowing bigotry to go unchallenged is to show that you are ok with it. When a man allows another man to tell a rape joke, doesn’t challenge him, laughs however awkwardly, he tells that man that rape is funny, is normal, is ok with him; they also tell that to rape victims who might overhear. When a white person allows another white person to tell a racist jokes, smiles to be polite, they tell they other that racism is correct and acceptable; they also tell that to any POC who might be listening. When cis people refuse to correct transphobia, refuse to stand up and say “No, that is wrong, that is bigotry, that is not acceptable or correct, you don’t get to say that around me,” they tell the transphobe that transphobia is a totally reasonable position — and they tell any trans people, which right now is quite a few, that they agree with transphobia and think it’s totally fine for transphobes to spread it around and make the world less safe for them.
Since trans people are being murdered, not to mention oppressed in many other ways, at really disturbing rates, anything that says that transphobia is acceptable is adding to the very real danger that trans people are in at all times.
“The very real effect of allowing bigotry to go unchallenged is to show that you are ok with it.”
So now you are a mind reader. Your examples out of sexism are bordering on non sequitur. The primary purpose of Political Correctness is the institutionalization of the very techniques and goals of the worlds of Orwell and Huxley. The ends never justify the means.
Something else Pagans exemplify more than most: we value thought and belief that originates from the heart, not from a surrender to an external pressure. We immerse ourselves in the entire spectrum from Light to Dark, not to exalt or condone any of it, but to acknowledge that Life is about all of it, not just those parts in which we are most comfortable.