Yesterday I wrote a diary about my experiences at the local Barrow County, GA YMCA. Let me state up front that I knew it was a Christian organization and that they have the right under the first amendment to put up as many Biblical quotations as they like and that I should probably have known better since this rural, fundamentalist Christian Georgia. I never denied that. I also expected some people here to heave sighs and tell me I should have expected this and to stop whining. What I got but didn’t expect was the level of personal attack from a fair number of Kossacks, who basically told me I was paranoid, that I liked being different and enjoyed flaunting my differences and looked for ways to be a victim so I could feel sorry for myself, and that I didn’t know what real discrimination is (for the record, I never said I was discriminated against, but that I felt unwelcome, uncomfortable and excluded, and suspected that I’d face very cold shoulders if members learned I was Wiccan)..
I like the small town where I live. And it is really, really small. The downtown consists of a strip mall which houses the police and fire department and town hall, and a small restaurant. There are two other strip malls, one of which hold the exceedingly nice, friendly grocery store which has a damned fine deli and bakery and wine selection. The other strip mall holds the Chinese restaurant, the Subway, the convenience store and a gas station. There’s a handful of subdivisions and a couple of trailer parks. That’s the town. When the McDonald’s opened six months ago, it was a pretty big deal—before, you had to drive 25 minutes to get to fast food.
My subdivision is integrated, with Asian, African-American and white families whose children play together with no racial issues. I’d like to say there is no racism, but my African-American neighbor who was accompanying his girls on their Girl Scout cookie trek told us he’d had one white neighbor slam the door in his face as soon as she saw a Black man—even though he was accompanied by two kids in Scout attire. Still, it’s a pretty friendly place, with only one annoying person, the one who keeps his motorcycle on his front porch, holds garage band rehearsals at 10 pm, hosts loud parties and has been known to shoot his guns in the air just for the hell of it. My immediate neighbors on either side and directly across the street are young families or couples who know we’re Wiccan and couldn’t care less—funny, nice people we can drink a beer with or hang out with. They are , simply, good people and have become friends. It was very easy to feel safe and to believeethat being a Wiccan really didn’t matter.
One thing I was accused of was shoving my difference in people’s faces. I do not "flaunt" my differences, whatever that means. I simply wear a dime-sized pentacle, usually tucked into my shirt, the same way some Jews wear a Mogen David and Christians wear a cross. I don’t wear Tee shirts with overtly religious designs or sayings. I’ve learned the hard way that blending in saves you hassles, though, to be honest, I’ve never worn religious Tees; my wardrobe tends to be Disney oriented with an emphasis on Tinkerbell and Pirates of the Caribbean and Nightmare Before Christmas. I do tend to stand out as a redhead in a see of blondes, but I am not gonna dye my hair an unflattering color just to fit in, nor am I willing to get the Southern Matron perm and trade in my broomstick skirts and black for flowered dresses with little lace collars just to be like everyone else. But I am not "in-your-face" either; my wardrobe is well within acceptable mainstream standards. I don’t announce my religion upon meeting people because I consider it a private matter. Like most people from the Northeast, I don’t ask people what church they attend because I was taught that was rude. As a friend from Boston said, you can know people for a couple of years without knowing whether they are religious at all, let alone what flavor. In the South, I’ve been asked fairly frequently what church I attend (MiL says it gives a lot of info to the questioner since it tells them a lot about socio-economic status—churches here tend to be divided along those lines—as well as likely political leanings), and learned early on to be evasive and mutter that I was raised Catholic (Catholic isn’t really considered Christian down here, because of the Pope and veneration of Mary but it’s something they can understand and doesn’t get me grief).
I also know how many people regard being Wiccan down here in an area where almost everyone is fundamentalist evangelical Christian and I’ve read enough material to know what their stance is. There is a widespread association of Wicca with Satanism, and explaining that we can’t worship Satan because we don’t even believe in him doesn’t help very much. If it isn’t a Christian faith, it’s demon worship in the eyes of many. So widespread is the attitude that many churches and school systems don’t have Halloween any more. They hold Fall Festivals with costumes and the same games traditionally played at Halloween parties. My mother-in-law, who owns a Pre-K, began doing that about 20 years ago to avoid hassle. She is a fairly brave and tolerant woman who in the early 70s when she opened her first Pre-K and daycare center, recognized that she had several Jewish children in her school, and taught her classes about Hanukah as well as Christmas customs around the world. Some parents actually pulled their children. But even she knows she’d face steep resistance from a lot of the fundamentalist families if she held Halloween parties, and she is a businesswoman.
What hurt the most, though, were the people who called me intolerant and prejudiced because I was making assumptions about rural Georgians based on nothing but my own narrow-mindedness, or claimed I was against all Christians. Most of those who said that hadn’t lived here. I have, for 6 years. I lived in North Florida for an additional six, a number of years ago. In fact, I have lived up and down the East Cast from Miami to ME, including upstate NY (very rural and quite conservative); Jacksonville, FL; Brooklyn, NY; Connecticut (one town was so tiny that you had to drive ten miles to go to the grocery store); D.C; Northern Virginia; Baltimore MD and its suburbs (the burb was so small that again I had to drive to the next town to find a grocery store); ME, and Tokyo. I handle diversity pretty well, since I was in 7 different schools before I graduated from high school and have moved 30 times or so in my 60 years. This is the only place I’ve ever felt really uncomfortable because of my religion or for being different.
When we moved down here, I was very optimistic because I’d enjoyed visits here, and Atlanta’s a large city. My husband, born and raised in the South, tried to warn me, but I was naïve. I was quickly disabused of my hopes. Our car was keyed with "Jesus Hates Witches" because I hadn’t taken off a silly bumper sticker that read "My other car is a broom" while parked at a local mall. When I went to a Hobby Lobby (which is Dominionist-owned), the manager spotted my pentacle, asked me if I worshiped Satan (to which I politely replied, "No" and explained briefly what it stood for). Apparently unhappy with my reply, she closed down a checkout lane on a busy afternoon and assigned someone to follow me around at the distance of a few feet. I guess non-Christians are shoplifters. My ex-brother-in-law used our religion as part of his excuse for requesting a TRO against my husband (which would have banned him from going with his baby sister to pick up and deliver the child for visits wither father; since the ex had verbally threatened her with abuse, my husband often accompanied her). Yes, people often do crazy shit in custody suits, but I cannot imagine anyone in, say, Boston, thinking that a judge would take seriously the declaration that he needed protection because my husband is a "self-proclaimed witch (devil worshiper)". The judge was enlightened and tossed the request out of court (didn’t help that the ex kept mouthing off), but another judge might not have done so. And there was my MiL who is pretty tolerant—when we lived with her while my husband was going to school, she banned us from practicing our religion anywhere at any time while we lived under her roof.
My reaction to the Y’s overt Christianity was based on solid ground and experience, not prejudice.
And, to make it clear, the scriptural quotations were not small plaques I could easily ignore. I expected those, and would have no problem with them. They were inscribed on every wall that didn’t hold equipment or mirrors, and they were in letters 12 to 18 inches high. If I used the weight room (which is one of my preferred methods of working out; as a post-menopausal woman, strength training is a necessity to avoid osteoporosis), I couldn’t avoid seeing them. Someone suggested I get an IPod –but music doesn’t make me blind (and I can’t afford an IPod). Those signs would still be right in front o my nose. Just in case I’d somehow missed the inscriptions, the tour guide informed us that they were there because it was a Christian organization (and he emphasized it heavily). I felt I had to ask if they accepted non-Christians as members and he said a tight-lipped "Yes," but it was pretty clear that he couldn’t actually imagine a non-Christian (which down here could as easily mean Jewish or Catholic as Buddhist or Muslim or Wiccan) joining because, well, it was Christian.
It is not prejudice to note that places have a local culture or zeitgeist, and that some area better fit than others. It is not prejudice to be aware that some areas are less tolerant of difference than others. It is not prejudice to have learned the hard way that the atmosphere down here is extremely conservative and conforming and traditionally fundamentalist Christian (all the churches, and there are many, are either some flavor of Baptist, usually unaffiliated, or non-denominational, which puts them at the extreme end of conservative Christianity). I have learned to be wary and to get to know people before I let down my guard. But I don’t assume that people are going to be prejudiced about my religion—even though, most of the time, they will be (please remember this is a place where Laura Mallory, the anti-Harry Potter Mom, gained a noisy following, and she lives in a less rural county, not far from here).
As for those who said my diary had no place on DKos—I strongly disagree. This is a case where the personal is political, or where politics and religion intersect. There’s a lot of talk among the punditry that the Religious Right is dead and no longer has much clout, and that even white evangelical Christians are becoming more moderate and welcoming of diversity. I used my experience at the Y to show that that may be how it looks from NYC or D.C., not exactly conservative areas, but to those of us who actually live in areas dominated by the Religious Right, very little change is apparent. Keeping this awareness when we discuss policies or election strategies is very important. My county hadn’t had anyone run as a Dem since Jimmy Carter—and the 2 who ran last year, lost heavily. I doubt someone who was a non-Christian would fare any better. We cannot forget that the Religious Right still matters in a whole lot of places—places like the one where I live. The Culture Wars are still being fought here with a great deal of enthusiasm, and liberals have mostly lost.
And, for those of us who told us to just move, I can only say that it must be lovely to have that option—but my husband is a nursing student ad we’re stuck here till he graduates and we can afford to get the hell outta here. One of the few progressive things about the state is that there’s free in-state tuition for students who maintain a B average. So we are stuck here, however inhospitable it may be at times.
Id like to leave you with one last thought. When the Religious Right preaches hate and intolerance of gays, of non-Christians, of those whoa re different in some way, that hate and distrust doesn’t stay in church. It manifests itself in the real world, in the actions of those church members against people they find offensive (and whose dislike of different people ahs just been reinforced during Sunday’s sermon). Last night’s local news featured a story about an 11 year old who was bullied at school for being gay, and who, when he went to the teachers to ask for help, was told to "man up." I tend to be in agreement with Rev. Mel Harris, the gay pastor of the metropolitan Church that kids learn what they live, and when their church and their parents tell them that homosexuality is wrong and gays will but in hell, they figure it’s okay to bully someone—in this case, to death. The lines that broke my heart were these:
"She said, ‘Ma, did you know they called Jaheem gay again today in school,’" said Bermudez.
Bermudez said bullies at school had called Jaheem "gay" and had taunted him about his accent. She said when he came home Thursday and she asked him about it, he denied it. She sent him to his room to calm down. That was the last time she saw him alive.
I wrote about an unwelcoming atmosphere at a Y because I am not Christian. That’s a small annoyance, but it is a symptom of a very real problem a lot of people, including Kossacks, would prefer to ignore: the role of religion in creating prejudice and exclusion of The Other, whether that Other is gay or another race or a non-Christian. In my case, it just means I won’t be joining that Y any time soon and will have to find an alternative exercise plan because I can’t afford a gym. It was still an unpleasant reminder that the Religious Right is alive and well and creates distrust of people who aren’t Christian or even of those who are the wrong kind of Christian.. In the case of that boy, it means being castigated for not being masculine enough by a teacher while the bullies got away without facing any consequences. It means being taunted for having an accent. And it means killing yourself because you can’t bear the pain any longer. I am willing to bet that every one of those bullies has church-going parents, too.
For those of you who don’t believe a Wiccan child wouldn’t face similar hostility from teachers and students, allow me to enlighten you. Back in the late 90s, there was an open circle at Ft. Hood on base land. They’d jumped through the hoops, filled out all the forms, gotten a chaplain to sponsor them, and obtained permission to use base land for their rituals. They simply wanted the same rights as people belonging to other faiths had to practice their religion openly. They faced harassment for two years from the locals, to the point where base security had to be called in to protect the Wiccans from the local Baptists. Their permanent markers (stone for the four directions, a large stone altar) were vandalized. Good old Bob Barr, then a congressman from Georgia tried to get Wiccans barred from the military. He got a lot of local support for that too. If you wish to read further, go here. Or And there’s the sad story of Tempest Smitha young Goth Wiccan who aced the same kind of bullying for being Wiccan that the boy I described above did for possibly being gay . In her case, the tormentors used religion overtly to torture her, forming groups to surround her and singing Christian hymns, while teachers ignored it. While I might just feel unwelcome at the Y and can shrug it off---that same kind of prejudice, fueled by religious beliefs, can cost sensitive young people their lives. The attitude down here matters. And writing about it is the right thing to do, because it shakes us out of our complacency. We have to fight prejudice, even the religiously based sort, at the local level. Even though school board elections and town councils don’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things, the small scale is where most of us actually live, and where children die for religious-based prejudice.