Imagine you're in a coven that you're completely comfortable with. Everyone gets along well, and everyone is comfortable and satisfied by the practices in your coven. Then all of a sudden, someone shows up and demands that they be allowed to join your coven. They raise a ruckus that you're being exclusionary and unfair, and you cave in to avoid the disruption.

After about four seconds, they start making demands. This is how they practice-- and since you don't practice it that way, you're excluding them. They're entitled to their opinions and practices, and you must accommodate them, or you're oppressing them. In the end of course, it means that you find yourself doing things their way, even if you're not comfortable with it.

The example is, of course, patently absurd. No coven is going to tolerate that kind of behavior. At any large Pagan gathering, you'll always find one or two people who are disgruntled because they couldn't demand their way into a coven, but as a general rule, people recognize the coven's right to make its own decisions.

However, we see this kind of thing in our political and social organizations regularly, and they're the second answer to the question I posed in my last piece-- "Why can't the Pagan Community get organized?"

I call these people the Entitlists. They scream loudly and horribly about what they think is right, which seems admirable enough, but the bottom line is that these people think they're Entitled to get their way-- even if it means no one else does.

I was already working on a piece about the Entitlists when a perfect example surfaced in a message board I was working on.

A Pagan Non-Profit here in Virginia decided to host a conference for Pagan Leaders. The purpose of the conference isn't managerial, it's strictly to establish communication. Due to space considerations, they had to limit the number of invitees, and so they asked the people whom they did invite not to advertise the invitation.

Even so, they managed to invite a wide variety of people, including... an Entitlist.

This Entitlist belonged to a group "who neither actively nor tacitly support [sic] hierarchal [sic] 'leadership' structures in public or private organizations"... and therefore felt "morally & ethically compelled to decline".

Now let me state clearly-- while I do not agree with the anarchist mindset, I do respect it. And I can certainly respect and ADMIRE someone declining the invitation on such grounds. These are the actions of someone who stands by their convictions.

Unfortunately, this person went too far. They felt they were Entitled to enforce their philosophy upon those that did not share it. I quote: "We have respected your request not to distribute this invitation ~ although We are not quite sure why that request was made of Us. ...After thoughtful deliberation, however, We feel morally & ethically Rede~Bound to make Our refusal to attend ... in as public a way as is humanly possible, & to fully articulate the varied reasons for Our refusal."

In other words, while claiming to respect the request, they replied to this message in every public forum they could, including the full text of the invitation. The organizers of the conference were forced to respond in a public manner, and their attempts at discretion were sabotaged. That's not "political expression." It's "political enforcement" bordering on "tantrum." For all intents and purposes, this person stomped their foot and said "Since I don't want it, you can't have it" and started screaming at the top of their lungs.

I am not suggesting that the organizers of Pagan events-- be they "leadership" or of another nature-- ignore the opinions of the Community. In addition to the moral imperative, trying to do so as little as possible is a practical necessity... but one cannot meet everyone's demands. The sad, simple fact is that, in organizing within the Pagan Community, someone is going to have to make decisions that not everybody likes. Even something as simple as food arrangements has a risk of running afoul of someone's sensibilities. Unfortunately, some people can't handle not getting their way. They'll scream about how their way must be followed, and anyone who disagrees with them will get attacked. They'll twist it around so that they're the victims, but the bottom line is that they're the last people we need making decisions that affect the entire community.

© 2001 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp