{"id":7100,"date":"2015-04-03T09:47:32","date_gmt":"2015-04-03T15:47:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7100"},"modified":"2015-04-03T09:56:15","modified_gmt":"2015-04-03T15:56:15","slug":"wicca-again-as-the-designated-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7100","title":{"rendered":"Wicca Again as the “Designated Other”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"pasquePasque flowers<\/a> blooming in a thin layer of pine duff atop a boulder. I love them for their precarious and improbably habitat.<\/p>\n

Spring is slowly coming to the forest, and within it the offer of new chances, a feeling that you might get it right this time.<\/p>\n

Travel and editorial crises have killed my blogging for the past couple of weeks. I have this huge backlog of topics and probably won’t get to most of them.<\/p>\n

But let’s start with the topical stuff. Wicca continues to move towards being the Designated Other in the American religious scene. It used to be “What will the Jews say?” or “How will the Jehovah’s Witnesses react?” to name just two groups that had their conflicts with the dominant religious paradigm<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the same time, to many members of the Chattering Classes, Wicca (and other forms of Paganism) is not quite a real religion<\/em>. Therefore, you can have even more fun when writing about it: “Mike Pence’s New Fan Club: Wiccans. <\/a><\/p>\n

Yes, how do Wiccans<\/em> react to Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act??<\/p>\n

The religion is real to the practitioners, of course \u2014 but some of them have a little fun with the question too<\/a>. (Marry a horse?)<\/p>\n

It’s funny how things change. When the original Religious Freedom Restoration Act sailed through Congress and was signed by President Clinton, it was all about protecting the Native American Church \u2014 the Peyote Way. How colorful and traditional!<\/p>\n

Now some columnists and bloggers put “religious freedom” in scare quotes, like it’s something icky than can only be handled with your Gloves of Irony.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a follower of a minority religion, I still think that religious freedom (no scare quotes) is pretty damn important.<\/p>\n

But if you want to get beyond all the idiots screaming for the social-nuking of Indiana in 140 characters or less, go to someone with a sense of the evolution of law, like Washington Post <\/em>columnist and law professor Eugene Volokh.<\/p>\n

Here is the short version: “Religious exemptions, RFRA carveouts, and ‘who decides?’<\/a> ”\u00a0 He contrasts the popularity of religious freedom with the demands for limiting it for the larger good:<\/p>\n

Yet surely religious exemptions can\u2019t always be granted, and there can\u2019t even be a very strong general rule of granting such exemptions (much as there is a strong rule against the government banning speech because of its content, at least outside traditionally recognized exceptions). There can\u2019t be religious exemptions from laws banning murder, rape, theft, trespass, libel, and the like. There probably shouldn\u2019t be such exemptions, at least outside narrow zones, from tax law, copyright law, employment law, and more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For a longer explanation of the how Congress and the courts have wrestled with these topics and how players and teams have shifted, read his piece “Many liberals\u2019 (sensible) retreat from the old Justice Brennan\/ACLU position on religious exemptions<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pasque flowers blooming in a thin layer of pine duff atop a boulder. I love them for their precarious and improbably habitat. Spring is slowly coming to the forest, and within it the offer of new chances, a feeling that you might get it right this time. Travel and editorial crises have killed my blogging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,245,79,244,6],"class_list":["post-7100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-first-amendment","tag-politics","tag-spring","tag-wicca"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Qw","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":776,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=776","url_meta":{"origin":7100,"position":0},"title":"Wicca: trendy, phony, and Constitutionally protected","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 9, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"If I were not teaching rhetoric, I would not have found Michael Medved's column on Sgt. Patrick Stewart's pentacle memorial while looking for a good political column for my students to analyze.After insulting the religion--\"it\u2019s a trendy, phony potpourri of druidical, primitive and New Age elements that\u2019s more a pagan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7257,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7257","url_meta":{"origin":7100,"position":1},"title":"A Wicca Center in Thailand","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a long tradition of metaphysical bookstores and occult-supply shops serving as the public face of Pagan groups. \"Owner Wine Kongsorn said he opened the caf\u00e9 in a bid to unite the community of Wiccans in Bangkok.\" And exactly how is \"Wiccan\" defined in Bangkok? The source is the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Thailand\"","block_context":{"text":"Thailand","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=thailand"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2015\/06\/02\/01\/293E4BE300000578-3105486-Ace_and_Cups_is_the_world_s_premiere_witchcraft_cafe_offering_oc-m-1_1433204398307.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":187,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=187","url_meta":{"origin":7100,"position":2},"title":"More Wiccan History","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Founding Fathers of Wicca,\" a graduate-school paper by Susan Young, currently at the University of Alberta, explores Aleister Crowley's liturgical and other influence on Gardnerian Wicca. It was published in Axis Mundi: A Student Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, whose article index is here. The paper is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":704,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=704","url_meta":{"origin":7100,"position":3},"title":"Morwics and Mormon magic","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 16, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"John Morehead (of Sacred Tribes, mentioned earlier) blogs about his discovery of \"Morwics,\" Mormons who have adopted Wicca. (He lives in Salt Lake City, it should be noted.)It seems that ex-Mormons not only gravitate toward evangelicalism and atheism as their religious choice options, but also toward Paganism. This makes sense\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3644,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3644","url_meta":{"origin":7100,"position":4},"title":"An Atheistic Critique of Wicca","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Blogging atheist Eric Steinhart, writing at Daniel Fincke's Camels with Hammers, turns his rhetorical guns on Wicca. He thinks that a \"woo-free Wicca\" might be tolerable. There are a number of separate posts, and I have not read them all. But I get the impression that he is engaging with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":995,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=995","url_meta":{"origin":7100,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry with Beheaded Statues","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 When monotheists turn violent (which is often): Mormon missionaries vandalize Catholic shrine in southern Colorado. Mormon higher-ups ask forgiveness of Blessed Mother. That was a joke. Actually, they apologized to the San Luis, Colo., town board: one quasi-theocracy to another. They also want to build a huge church in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7100"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7113,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100\/revisions\/7113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}