Letters from the Editor

If you know where this is from, please let me know.

ETA: This comes from Gator Gay-Straight Alliance. Please check them out and leave the feedback with them.

(find credit goes to Herb. Thanks.)

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get
   legally married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears’s 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn’t changed at all: women are property, Blacks can’t marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That’s why we only have one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.
10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “separate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages
    will for gays & lesbians.

Okay, I’m writing this rant, not because anyone pissed me off, but because it needs to be said.

Why in the heck do I have to be concerned with the feelings of those around me?

I’ve been on several rooms and lists where something is said, someone answers, and others get all huffy. The one example I’m thinking of is correction of spelling and grammar. One person was very unclear on a list, others called them on it because several people could not understand what they meant by their spelling, and a thrid party who was not even involved in the discussion got offended at the “Gramar nazi-ing” that the rest of the list was doing.

Why should her reaction matter to me? She wasn’t involved in the conversation at all. She was not the one who was being corrected and I have no need to keep her good opinion of me. But she posted this flounce letter that basically said we were all meanies and FMPPHs and just plain mean.

That got me thinking (insert the groans of dread here). Why should I care that she got offended? In a few words, I don’t care. Someone was being very unclear on a list full of very intelligent members, those who tend to think and really advance witchcraft and Wicca by asking uncomfortable questions and then discussing answers, kind of a “Pagan Think-Tank” if you will. All the core members of this group have my extreme respect simply because they have stripped away most of the things that get in the way of intellect (ego, self delusion and so on). That allows them to discuss issues without a lot of negative emotions getting in the way. I’m honored to be counted in that company.

Which is why this was such a yellow koi in the pond of red catfish. A flounce like this is odd because the group makes no bones about being intellecutal snobs and everyone gets called on unclarity.

But I still don’t have to care that she got offended. I stated my piece, others said their parts. Taken as they read the comments are along the lines of “what did you mean when you said (fill in the blank)?” or “I didn’t understand this word, perhaps you meant this other similar word over here?” and “You said (fill in the blank), but what I think you are trying to say is (this), am I correct?” They are requests for further information, nothing more. They are an attempt to get rid of the extraneous junk and find what was meant in a sea of useless words.

There should have been no reason to get offended. I note that the person who was unclear was not upset, he simply corrected his statement, misspelled more words which were clarified and the discussion continued. The lady who flounced out decided to get offended and upset at the “tone” of the posts calling for clarity. Which means that she took those words, read into them what she wanted to see there, got offended at it, and yelled.

In short, she decided that someone else was saying what she would have said in a similar position.

Which makes me say “HUH?” How can you get offended if you project onto a post or a letter or an email something that you put there? Why are you so upset by seeing what you want to see? What combination of factors occurred to make you so much better than everyone else that you can call other people out for YOUR flaws?

Know what I call that? Hypocracy. And that is the one thing that pisses me off faster than anything else.

So, you looked at things others wrote and you got offended because you saw contained between the lines things you didn’t like. Forgetting for a minute that you projected this all onto the discussion in the first place, why don’t you remove the beam from your own eye first? you knew coming into the discussion that this was going to happen, even a casual perusal of the archives would have uncovered many incidents identical to this one where long time members were called out for being unclear. All you had to do is step aside from your own ego and allow that others mean actually what they say, instead of what you think they are saying.

In other words, you caused your own problems. You read things into the discussion that were not there, you allowed your own ego to get in the way (because you are obviously fully qualified to determine what others are feeling when they write something), and you professed to believe something you obviously don’t hold to in actions you take. this entire incident was your problem, caused by you, instigated by you in an attempt to create drama.

My response? “There’s the door, don’t let it hit you in the ass on the way out.”

I have no responsibility whatsoever for how you take things, what you feel. You will feel what you feel and all I can do is be as clear as I can be in stating what I state. If you choose to find offense in words I state where there were none intended, that’s your problem. You need to stop that. But to tell me that I have to be polite and kind to you because if I am not then you will get upset is asking me to be untrue to myself.

Ultimately Cain was right, we are only responsible for ourselves and how we react to things. All else is crap. I can smooth the way as best as I can by using words that I mean, but political nonsense is just that, political nonsense. It is not me having a care for your feelings, it is me kowtowing to your ego and your sense of self importance, and ultimately all it does is make me less of a person. If I have been as clear as I can be, if I have said what I meant to say, then I have done my job.

How you take that is entirely up to you. Don’t expect me to be upset becasue you are offended. I’m not and I won’t be.

I was thinking about a snark I did yesterday on Persecution, then a friend posted about persecution on her LJ and it got me thinking:

Pagans really don’t have a candle to hold to anyone on the persecution scale.

I heard this piece coming into work this morning on NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6349532

One of the things that struck me is that the fighting between the Suni and Sheite groups is causing diversified communities to be one or the other. Steve Inskeep, the comentator on that piece said “in some communities, the clensing….is complete.” Meaning that one sect KILLED OFF the entirety of the other sect, or forced them out.

Part of the process is to grab people off the street, call their homes and ask relatives to confirm that their loved one is Suni or Sheite. It’s a crap shoot as to whether or not they get home at that point.

Consider this for a moment. You as a pagan are sitting in your house. You get a call. On the other end of the phone you hear a voice you don’t recognize who tells you they are with the “Freedom Feris” and they have your loved one. They then demand that you confirm that your loved one is Black Forest Tradition. You know that if you say the wrong thing, then you are never going to see that loved one again, until you identify the body. What do you say?

You say something and the phone goes dead in your hand. Now comes the worry time. Does your loved one get home, or did you sentance them to being shot in the street like a dog?

And this is not an isolated incident, this HAPPENS EVERY DAY in Iraq. Multiple times a day. AND if they don’t kill the Suni they picked up, they may ransom him back, so now these people are pauperizing themselves to buy the freedom of those they love.

And little playgans are bitching about having “Happy Samhain” erased from the campus whiteboard?

Listening to the stories that came out of WWII and the Jewish Holocaust, listening to these horror stories coming out of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan (where the Taliban executed people in the street because they weren’t dressed right) is eye opening.

I read in National Geographic about the Taliban when December rolled around in 2001. I knew nothing about them. This was a philosophical movement among college students to return to some of the roots of Islam. It got so hemmed in with rules that men’s beards were measured for length and they could be jailed if the beard wasn’t long enough. That’s like Fred Phelps having the authority to execute anyone that didn’t have the right brand of hat on.

Stories about a school being on fire, and THE STUDENTS NOT BEING ALLOWED TO ESCAPE BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T HAVE THEIR VEILS ON. So those women and girls DIED in screaming, flaming agony while the firefighters forced them back in to either get their veils or die.

But little Wicletts think they are persecuted.

Repost this. As soon as I can I’m going to open this up to the Public, but I want these idiots who think that being Pagan is as hard as it gets to go spend some time as a white person in the Congo, or to have to dress in a burqua and walk the streets of Saudi Arabia to learn what persecution REALLY is.

I mean, REALLY need to read this.

http://liz-marcs.livejournal.com/206303.html

Okay… Not sure how to respond to this other than to simply delete it.

Carmen Frost 7:43 pm(9 minutes ago)

i-would-like-to-say-to-daven: WAG is Wiccans Against Gays. We are a large European and American group and we are here to petition covens and publishing companies alike to cease and disist the encouragement of homosexual practices in our religion!

Gay Wiccans are violating the Wiccan Rede because they are harming the propagation of the human species, as are all Wiccans who use contraception and condone abortion.

Wicca is a religion of life and love, not selfish lust!

Blessed be,
Carmen Frost
WAG Chairperson
Third Degree High Priestess

suggestions-problems: Kill yourself! You are destroying our religion!

useemail: Yes

I do know that Googling “Carmen Frost” and gay, WAG, Priestess and Wicca yields NO results on any combination of the terms. A non entity who is trying to scare me. Probably Mark in drag. Interesting that he is pretending to be a girl and dressing in skirts when he’s so homophobic.

Okay, that’s it…

I’m am so sick of this whole “Do what feels right” thing. Applied to metaphysics, it’s suicidal. Applied to many areas of life, it’s insane to say the least.

Let me tell you about the “Do what feels right” mindset, it’s lazy. Yes, lazy. It is for those who don’t want to challenge their beliefs in any way shape or form.

I have watched this trend build over time, and the more I see it the more sickening it becomes.

Let’s look at some things: Eating sugar feels good. It tastes sweet, it is good for us, right? Wrong. Refined white sugar is one of the most prolific things out there and is a very subtle poison to the human body. It kills slowly and insidiously, and causes all kinds of problems before it does. Things like diabetes and hypoglocemia, obesity and heart problems. Have you looked at how many things you eat have sugar in them?

There are multiple examples of this principle. Sex, eating, doing drugs, LSD, drinking alcohol and others all feel good. But each and every one of them can kill you. Some you don’t even have to do to excess.

In metaphysics, Wicca, paganism in general, this trend is just as deadly.

“Doing what feels good” is DIFFERENT from “doing what works”. The way it is supposed to work is that you are trying to meditate, for example. You can’t get into the proper mood to meditate with the chanting and the sitting in the lotus position. “Do what feels good” is going to say “give up”, but “doing what works” is going to have you changing position or finding a different technique to accomplish the same goal.

And this is where I see red.

Doing what feels good leads to lazyness, achieving a comfort zone in your spirituality where nothing has to be examined again, nothing is ever questioned, nothing is evaluated. Which ultimately means that no growth is achieved or made, and as we all know, no growth = stasis = stagnation = death.

People by nature don’t want to have to work for what they want. They want to be lazy and not have to constantly look at what they are and who they are. They want to have the answers handed to them and to have no thought in the process. It’s much easier to have someone say “POOF, you will not suffer in your life or after you are dead. You have a blank karmatic balance sheet and you are one of the CHOSEN.” That’s easy.

But most religions that are worth a damn actually make you look at your beliefs. WHY do you believe thus and so is a sin? Why do you think that this set of subjective facts is more true than this set over here? By continually pushing those boundraries, growth occurs. In some cases it ossifies and scabs over so that no more growth can occur in that direction, but in others it will allow for a difference of oppinion and an acceptance of that which is strange.

In many cases, the “do what feels good” can be applied to the philosophical side of yourself. If you are uncomfortable with a personal philosophy which says that you have to accept homosexuals as equals, then that is fine, no one can or should force you to change. All change should be up to you and in this case, you need to find a faith path that puts you at ease. You should examine WHY you feel that way, but if there is no chance to change because it is too deep rooted, then others will have to accept that you feel that way.

But when applying it to learning, it’s worse. The “do what feels good” is crap. It feels good to sleep in instead of going to Forensics 101, and thus it will mean that if I do what feels good, I will fail in my goal. It feels good to not do the exercises I have been assigned, and it feels good to watch TV instead of reading the books I need to. It feels good to stay at home instead of driving to the HPS’s house for Circle.

But what feels good is not always right.

When you start on a course of study, you have made a contract with the person teaching you. You have agreed to do the assignments given and to work to the best of your ability at the exercises needed, and the teacher has agreed to teach you the material selected. How would you feel if the class instructor did what “feels good” and every time you showed up for class, they didn’t. If they said “Oh, I was sleeping and it felt better to stay asleep so I didn’t show up. Sorry.” How would you feel if you worked for hours or days on a paper, and the teacher never read it or graded it? Would you feel like you achieved something if you got a B on a paper the teacher never looked at or graded? Or if the teacher showed up for class since they had to be there and spent the whole rest of the class talking on their cell phone to their spouse and didn’t ever start teaching? Would you have a lot of respect for that person?

Why, as a student, would you do the same thing in reverse?

If you have problems with the material, by all means, seak alternative means of gaining the information needed. Look at other ways to do the same thing. But DO NOT do what feels good and give up. DO NOT do what feels good and look at sources that don’t challenge your mind. Do NOT go haring off on your own and completely ignore the class criteria because it’s easier and feels better to get some crappy source.

If you have a problem with Wallace Budge’s interpertation of Egyptology, look for “the simplified Wallace Budge” or something similar. Don’t go out and grab “The beginners guide to Egypt” which makes no reference to Budge at all because the point of this section of the class was the writings of Wallace Budge. You have just defeated the purpose of the class entirey.

Don’t read “Wicca for Dummies” by Mark Ventmiglia (for example) when the class course you are taking says that you should read and practice what is contained in “The Complete Guide to the Runes” by Sigfried. Light fluffy crap is no substitute for solid information.

And for GOD’S SAKES, if you must read light fluffy crap instead of the texts that will actually teach, don’t do it with skills that are difficult in the first place. “Grey’s Anatomy” will teach you SO MUCH MORE about anatomy if you are becomming a doctor than Llewellyn’s “The Body” will. There is a reason that it is the standard text in the area of Anatomy.

There are reasons others tell you to read books (blank), (blank) and (blank), and it’s usually because they have read those books and know what they are talking about. Especially if you are learning from them.

As you may surmise, this was brought on by a real life situation.
Suffice to say that I had my personal skills called upon to give a critique to a young gentleman who was asking questions about something I know a lot about. I gave my professional opinion, and told him to avoid the books on the subject he was reading like the plague since they contained very little information of use. Someone else (who has absolutely NO knowledge of the subject at hand that I was able to determine) posted RIGHT AFTER me and told the original poster to “do what feels good.” Add to that the author of said book having absolutely no knowledge of the esoteric subject at all.

Well, I flipped. I wanted to jump this idiot, but instead I simply walked away and now I wash my hands of it.

You see, when I give the information I have to others, after having demonstrated my knowledge of the subject, I expect that I will actually be listened to. That I will be the expert on that subject. But someone with no knowledge who comes along and countermands my information pisses me off. It is analogous to a passenger on the Titanic who countermads the captain’s orders to abandon ship. The Captain knows what he’s talking about, the passenger doesn’t. I am the Captain.

Doing what feels good is holdover hippie bullshit which doesn’t work any more. It can work, but it still takes discipline to make it work since you have to WORK at being happy. Want to eat sugar? Want to avoid diabetes? YOu have to work to find alternatives to sugar, like the artifical sweeteners out there. They still are sweet, but they don’t have the problems that refined white sugar has.

The point here, other than to be a rant, is that if you don’t have direct experience and knowledge, STAY SILENT. You know the old witches creed: To know, To dare, To will, To stay silent.

Doing what feels good in 99% of the time the wrong thing to do. The worthwhile things normally bring sweat and effort with them, so doing what is only comfortable will not get them accomplished.

And in the end, we all work, we all have to struggle. If we didn’t have mussles forcing us to do things, our lungs wouldn’t expand and our heart wouldn’t beat. That takes work. So is it any surpirse that our spiritual life would take work too?