on religious bigotry

[drewkitty]

I am Wiccan. Several of my co-workers are either Wiccan or various forms of pagan.

In this light, a rabid columnist named Chuck Colson has written a piece of dreck for Newsweek in which he attacks my faith.



"It is debatable whether paganism is a religion, per say."

No, the Constitution of the United States protects my rights regardless of your prejudices on the subject. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" sound familiar?

"It is generally defined as a pre-Christian state, but it takes a wide variety of forms—all the way from relatively benign New Age-style nature worship, to pantheism, to witchcraft, and even human sacrifice."

Christianity also takes a wide variety of forms, all the way from relatively benign Unitarianism, to espousing anti-gay hatred, to discriminating against and encouraging the abuse of women, and even to molesting children and blowing up health care facilities in the name of God.

Sound fair or balanced? I didn't think so.

>> Those who publicly identify themselves as pagans are at best a marginal number and are basically no different from dozens of other cults.

For four years, I dared not identify myself as Wiccan at work. Finally I put up a pentacle over the Rede ("An ye harm none, do as ye will") because most of my co-workers had huge Christian displays in their offices. Only when I did that, did some of my fellow employees come up to me and quietly applaud my guts, and share their own "pre-Christian" beliefs.

"I see no reason why Wiccans or pagans generally should have the services of taxpayer-paid chaplains."

I can think of several. How about . . . WE FIGHT AND DIE SO THAT STUPID PEOPLE LIKE YOU CAN MOCK OUR FAITH! I have several pagan friends in the Armed Forces and they follow the discrimination against their would-be chaplains quite closely. I'm not opposed to Christian chaplains . . . but for you to decide on some sort of court test for whether a religion is valid or not, flies in the face of our separation of church and state.

>> I would have great difficulty supporting an explicit Wiccan or pagan for high public office. There are tenets of their belief that, I think, are incompatible with the requirements of American democratic governance.

A devout Wiccan believes in the Rede. "An ye harm none, do as ye will." This requires us to evaluate our actions in advance, and places on us a crushing burden if we hold ourselves up as worthy to act on behalf of the will of others. We also believe in the "Threefold Law" which means that anything wrong that we do, will come back to us threefold. This gives high motivation to do what is right and just!

When compared to the "confess again and sin no more" cop-out of Catholicism or the primitive, pagan scapegoat sacrifice of the Christ "who died for your sins" . . .

There is little to gain and much to lose by allowing the government to be arbiters of religion. This is exactly why churches are exempt from taxation.



If you want to use your pulpit to attack my faith using the tools of government, perhaps you should LOSE that IRS tax exemption and pay to play like the rest of us. Perhaps Christianity should be taxed for the public services it uses and the suffering it inflicts by teaching literal hell and damnation to innocent minds.

Comments

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

"Property Eligible for the Religious Exemption

The Religious Exemption is available for real property owned by a church. It is also available for personal property either owned or leased by the church, when the church:
• conducts worship services on the property or
• conducts worship services on the property and operates its own preschool, nursery school, kindergarten, elementary/secondary school, or both schools of collegiate grade and schools of less than collegiate grade"

See this PDF file for details: www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/pdf/pub48.pdf

Also see a good discussion here: http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1030

From the article:

"The major shift of the Supreme Court came in 1983 when, in Regan v. Taxation with Representation, the court held 8-3 that tax exemption was equivalent to a tax subsidy. The question before the court involved tax exemption for nonprofit organizations -- religious, charitable, scientific, public-safety-oriented, literary or educational. Justice William H. Rehnquist spoke for the court:

'Both tax exemptions and tax deductibility are a form of subsidy that is administered through the tax system. A tax exemption has much the same effect as a cash grant to the organization of the amount of tax it would have to pay on its income.'

"The significance of this decision is often overlooked. If tax exemption is a form of subsidy, then church property tax exemption is a clear violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. All that is necessary to make church property tax exemption a thing of the past is for an irate taxpayer who is tired of high taxes to file suit to force churches to pay their "fair share." With the Regan v. Taxation precedent in effect, the court could easily slip from the 5-4 Walz v. Tax Commission position and rule property tax exemption for religious institutions to be unconstitutional."

[aerowolf.livejournal.com]

Is this California only? The church I worked for here in Pahrump has had to pay property taxes through its existence. (If this is not the case, then the church is going to have to file suit to recover it.)