For those Pagans who have just returned from some retreat with no access to television, newspaper, telephone, e-mail, or web pages, I'll give a quick summary of the situation I'm addressing: Representative Bob Barr of Georgia District Seven saw an article about the practice of Witchcraft at Fort Hood, Texas, and went into a fit of apoplexy. He immediately fired off a letter to Lt. General Leon S. Leponte (the commanding officer of the base) saying "Please stop this nonsense now." (As near as I have been able to tell, this is a direct quote.) He attempted to amend a defense bill to include a prohibition of Witchcraft; the amendment got scratched because it wasn't relevant to the bill itself. But he's vowed that he will continue to try until he has witchcraft expunged from the military. We've got a real Witch Hunt on our hands.

I'd like to take this time to publically thank Representative Barr for making a spectacle out of himself.

Barr may be pounding on our door with the flaming torch and trying to burn us out of our homes (or at least out of the military), but the villagers are just standing there wondering exactly who the nutball with the Tikki-Torch is. Then people look closer and they see that he's shouting about a castle with monsters but he's knocking on the door of a two bedroom house in Suburbia that doesn't even have a moat. Barr has done more to raise consciousness of us than The Craft and Practical Magic.

The funny part is we couldn't have planned this better. Barr has done for us what he and his cohorts did for Clinton-- he's given us legitimacy by opposition. The media has been incredibly kind to us on this issue-- most of the articles I've seen have been neutral, giving Barr's views as well as a brief blurb stating that we are a federally reconized religion and a giving a few brief and accurate facts about us. The columnists have been even kinder... my favorite is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Tom Teepen, who said "Hope, though, that the good witches will keep trying. Who knows? One might get close enough to Barr one day to kiss him and turn him into a prince."

And admirably, our people have purported themselves well on this. I haven't seen any threats to turn him into a frog, and even at the town meeting, nobody showed dressed like something out of the Wizard of Oz (or at least I didn't see any in the pictures on the Magickal Cauldron site, and there were no mentions of such in the news). I've followed some of the discussion boards on news sites on this subject, and while I think a few people were overreacting, the discussions went well. I was very surprised by some of the detractors-- I saw a few that were just inane and hateful, but even some of the folks who were trying to "save" the witches were on their best behavior. I was especially proud to see the Pagan who apologised to the Christian for bashing his religion. We're starting to act like a community... and a civilized one at that.

And it's perfect timing. There's a mob of villagers at the door... and they just want to meet the neighbors.

© 1999 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp