Things have just gotten intense lately, haven't they?

I'm a regular reader of Wren's Nest on the World Wide Web, which is a habit I strongly encourage others to acquire. Wren posts summaries of articles that are of interest to the Pagan community-- and she's got a pretty liberal view of what qualifies. Anything that affects civil rights, "alternate" religions, social climate, and in some cases the internet in general get listed. Kind of like a Slashdot for Pagans. I make a point of checking it at least twice a day. (Usually more; when you sit at a computer for eight-to-ten working hours, you reload a lot of pages in the hopes that something new will come up to relieve the boredom.) This is probably one of the most valuable services available for Pagans on the internet, and it's always a little surprising to me to see that there are Pagan computer folk who don't read it. (Of course, there are still hardcore computer geeks who don't read Slashdot. Total mystery to me.)

If you read Wren's Nest, you'll get an interesting picture of the world around us. She lists some rather encouraging articles-- a newspaper publishes an article about us that's intelligent, someone interviews a Wiccan who comes across as a normal person, some law gets struck down that never should have been passed in the first place. I like these. I get a warm glow reading them and I tell myself everything's going to be right with the world.

But then there's the opposite effect. A Pagan shopkeeper loses his lease because of pressure on his landlord to oust a Pagan, and the town raises such a fuss that they demand that the mayor either get rid of the shop or resign. A Georgia lawmaker wants to ban Witchcraft in the military. A student gets kicked out of school because classmates say she's putting spells on them. A religious leader goes berserk because he can't make the world believe that homosexuality is evil.

This duality is maddening. And it's not just from Wren's Nest.

I'm out of the broom closet at work; I don't make a big fuss about it, but at the same time I don't hide it either. My manager's attitude is (and I quote) "I don't care if you believe that when you die, your soul goes to a garage in Bufallo." My backup is a very conservative Christian who makes no secret of the fact that he's concerned about my soul, but he firmly believes that it's my choice and has no problem being friends with me. I shouldn't be surprised when you consider that during my IBM new hire orientation they discussed the fact that same-sex partners were insured with the same tone of voice that they discussed at what age dependents were covered.It just wasn't a big deal.

But at the same time-- I know someone who works with juvenile services who saw someone brought in for a 24-hour psych watch because the kid wore a trenchcoat to school. This wasn't in Colorado; this was in North Carolina.

What's going on is very simple. Times are changing, and they're changing fast.

Think about it. For generations, our society has been based on rich white Christian men running the show. Women were in the kitchen and minorities were in the background doing the jobs white people didn't want. The people in power were royalty-- being a senator or a president meant your character was beyond reproach. The Christian Church was not disputed.

This is no longer the case. I'll pick an easy example: Ken Starr just spent millions of dollars proving that President Clinton got his knob shined in the oval office by a willing intern. Nobody cared. The right wing spent so much time and energy harping on it that instead of making the President look like the Antichrist, we ended up feeling sorry for him. And they ended up looking like maniacs. They kept telling us we didn't understand, but it was they who didn't get it. Yes, the people of America were fully aware of the fact that the President had sexual relations with a woman half his age in the oval office. We also know he lied about it, both to the American people in a press conference and also under oath. Most of us knew he was lying before Ms. Lewinsky admitted it. We didn't even buy the "it depends on how you define sexual relations" bit, he lied. We just didn't care.

We weren't even surprised. Not in the 1990's. Maybe if it had happened during the eighties, we'd have all felt (or at least feigned) the moral indignation of our nation's leader violating the standards of decency. But times have changed. We've known for a while that being a leader doesn't make you a saint. We've seen too many people getting busted with their pants down to think that they're any different from us. And we've had enough time of thinking for ourselves to realise that maybe this isn't a bad thing. I kind of like the idea that we have a president in office who wrestles with his weight, who enjoys sex, and who smoked weed in college (suuuuuuuuuure he didn't inhale). It lets me know he's not gonna pull some sterile legislation grounded in a fantasy morality that everyone pretends to follow.

Don't get me wrong... there's a large slice of the population that still adheres to the code that is collapsing. There are still people out there who think that I as a Pagan have no civil rights, that a homosexual is wrong by nature and shouldn't be around children, and that things must never change. They've always been there, and they'll always be there. It's just that the slice of the population that used to follow these people have stopped feeling guilty about not really agreeing.

Should we be afraid of these people who want to run our lives? No. But we should be wary of them. They're still in power, and they want to keep us down. And they sound sooooooo reasonable on the surface, but the fact of the matter is that they're desperately fighting for control.

Think about it. "Average Family Values" calls to a simpler time when families stayed together and our leaders were upright citizens... but it's not real. Our leaders have always been human; the fabled JFK nailed Marilyn Monroe, and even he wasn't the first to break the sanctity of marriage while holding the highest of offices. Henry VIII wasn't exactly a saint either. And to get the family back to the safe and easy life they describe, we've got to put the women back in the kitchen, barefoot, pregnant, and submissive. Even if you subscribed to the morality of that, how many families can afford that?

These people have to give up nothing to get us back to the fictitious days of Leave it To Beaver. In fact, they have everything to lose if we continue as we are. They'll use every weapon at their disposal and stop us at every turn. And if they're even aware of the consequences, they don't care. We can't teach kids about sex in a logical manner-- they have to learn it in the backseats of cars. We can't embrace the odder element; we have to drive them out! We have to push them and push them until they come into the schools with machine guns and blow away the people who did this to them. And then we'll push the rest even harder and tell them they're the same as the Trenchcoat Mafia. Otherwise we're facing a paradigm shift of tectonic proportions.

How far is it going to go? As far as we let them push it. Well, I'm going to fight them. I have no choice.

I'll explain. It has taken me a long time to realise this, but there's nothing wrong with me. I'm even starting to come to the conclusion that I'm "Normal", whatever the hell that means. While it's true that I practice a religion that a good half of the population have never heard of, I consider computers fun, and if you ran my musical preferences by the man-on-the-street he'll probably recognize about half of them. Big deal. I get up, I go to work, I pay my bills, I pay my taxes, I grumble about the price of gasoline, I watch movies, I swear during traffic jams... I'm no different from anyone else. There are things about me that are a little different, yes, but you know what? Everyone can say that.

But that isn't the way it's always been. While my parents were cool, the world always told me that I was wrong, just because of who I was. I was constantly told how it was okay for people to insult or assault me because I was "different." I would never condone the actions of the shooters in Littleton-- their actions were wrong-- but I sort of understand what could drive them to it.

You know what saved me? Art School. Plain and simple-- I managed to get myself into a school full of people who knew how to color outside the lines as well. I didn't feel alone. And that was the beginning of my become a funtional human being instead of a human punching bag. The process wasn't an immediate one, but it began then and there.

The next step in my recovery was the discovery of Wicca; a friend of mine in high school recommended I look into it. After I recovered from the screaming fit of "Look, I don't do Satanism" she corrected me and told me what it was really about. Here I discovered a religion that believed in the same things I did and even answered a few questions that others didn't. And it was something closeby-- there were people I knew who felt this way.

The final step to my recovery from what was done to me came from my web page; I honestly don't know how many people read it or how they get to it, but every once in a while I'll get an e-mail from someone saying they liked what I've said and was glad someone else felt that way.

So I'm okay. I'm on my own two feet and even standing proud. But who else is out there? Who else is sitting at home wondering if they're the only people in the world who feel like they do? Who else is getting up and going to school or work and seeing dozens of people who think and feel just like they do, but still feeling completely alone?

This is why I think it's vital that those of us who can afford it come out of the broom closet and let the world know who they are and what they stand for. Not only can we dispell the myths about us to the rest of the world, but we can let others like us know that they are not alone. Maybe we can't create "Pagan Unity" but at least we can let the world-- and ourselves-- know that Pagan Diversity is there. Different. Distinctive. But not alone.

Times are changing, and we're in for a rocky ride. The only way we're going to come out of this intact is if we face it unashamed and with open eyes.

Afternote: This was written in June of 1999, and it should be noted that I no longer work for IBM, as either a contracted employee as I had been previously or as a regular employee, which I was at this time. However, this is not due to any change in policy by IBM; it was merely a career decision and I still am thankful to IBM for its policy of taking equality and diversity as seriously as possible.

© 1999 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp