Apparently, if the experience of a friend is true, only Christians should benefit from the Constitutionally protected right to freely practice their religion.
Below is an email I recieved from this friend desribing the problems he had in regards to self-described police officers who disrupted a Wicca ceremony in 2004.
This investigation is still ongoing so I have changed info to protect the annonymity of the author. The police officers in question are from a police station for a town I refer to as ZZ, California. This jurisdiction is also under the sherrifs dept of a broader jurisdiction of a larger heavily populated county which I have called XX and the author works for the YY police department. I have renamed the main protagonist John Q Christian.
Here is my friend's email:
Last Eostre I told you all about how I got involved in the John Q Christian incident in California from nearly three years ago. John Q was the XX Sheriffs Dept chaplain in ZZ, California, who showed up in a SUV with another deputy at a Wicca celebration and drowned it out with loud Christian music. When the Wiccans approached him, asking him to desist, he flashed tin. John Q subsequently did a "training session" for the local school board that included the usual hate literature directed at Pagans. One of the things that I did in response to this was to write to the chief of the ZZ station of XXSD as head of the Wicca organization, pointing out my concerns. In this lengthy letter I mentioned being a member of YYPD.
The XXSD chief then wrote to my police chief. He asked my chief if I was really a Wiccan. This XXSD Captain defended his guy John Q. The XXSD chief said that John Q was a swell guy because he "works with street kids". One wonders what John Q is teaching these kids? Anyway, my inspector at that time brought this to my attention and we discussed it in October 2004. I figured that it had been dealt with, but in March 2005 the inspector suddenly informed me that they were going to do a labor relations investigation. This was interesting: Usually they do disciplinary stuff under the Police Act, but I figured at the time that they didn't dare do that because it involved me blowing the whistle on another cop's discreditable (not to mention illegal) conduct. What I didn't realize at the time is that this labor process, unlike the Police Act process, makes it impossible for the investigators to make recommendations as to disciplinary action. The sole person who decides the punishment is the deputy chief in this process.
So I got myself a union agent and met with them last March. It turned out that it was the old "we don't want YYPD and Wicca mentioned in the same breath" crap that they've thrown at me from time to time over the years. The old "we support ethnic/cultural diversity (in public) as long as it is us saying it and not you" stuff.
This dragged on until last Monday. YYPD dug through all of the articles that I wrote in my Witch Hunts column. As you all know, many of these articles deal with extremist Christian cops using their position of authority to proselytize and disseminate misinformation and hate literature in order to draw other cops (in many cases unwittingly) into persecution of non Christian religions. You know, the idiots who describe us Pagans as criminals, drug addicts and dangerous satanic cult members.
Last Monday the inspector who took over for the inspector who started all this (who has retired), called my union agent and I in for a meeting.
The Deputy Chief is handing me a two day suspension. YYPD management describes my letter to the XXSD as "highly critical of a member of that organization... tone of the criticism often sarcastic, abrasive and hostile." As if John Q quoting scripture and telling people that they should not suffer a witch to live is not hostile. As if disrupting a legal Wicca ceremony while representing himself as a member of the XXSD is not abrasive and hostile. They describe my articles regarding Christian cops on my blog as "occasionally abrasive" and take objection to the fact that the bio on the Witch Hunts site used to mention that I was an YYPD member. They tell me that my actions brought the YYPD "into disrepute." They warned me that if I ever do this again, I face termination. My union told YYPD management that they consider this outcome "excessive."
According to the account above, John Q Christian was abusing his position as a member of the police dept.
It upsets me when I hear complaints from some ardent Christians who claim that they are under attack from non-religious liberals or that their rights are being violated. Pagans are consistantly and persistantly persecuted by Christians as satanists and devil worshipers. Paganism is, according to the US census, one of the fastest growing religions in the country. Pagans are not satanists, far from it, they are earth based worshipers who perceive the divine as existing in all things.
I have heard numerous stories in which Christians have agressively denounced Pagans as a threat to their community. They align school districts, libraries, police and other public officials against them. Judges have attempted to take children away from Pagan parents because they claim they are abusing their children with their choice of religion. These stories are more numerous than people are willing to admit. It is no surprise that many Pagans and Wiccans conceal their religious affiliation. Thus, when I consider Christians complaints about legal disputes regarding the use of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegience, I ask only one question, please tell me whose rights are being abused?
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