Welcome back to Watery Wednesday, where we celebrate themes of community and cooperation around the globe. Join us this week as we talk about the community role of soul food, news about the Pagan Spirit Gathering, and the fight for justice within the Pagan community. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
PaganSquare
PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
Love wins! This week for Fiery Tuesday we've gathered a number of links relating to the recent Supreme Court decisions about gay marriage and how religious groups are reacting to it. Additionally, we've got another story about the Charleston shooting (and why it matters how we define it in our public consciousness). All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
My apologies to Anne and the crew at Witches and Pagans for being absent for awhile. I started several pieces--one of which is polished and ready to publish, but it still sits in my draft-box. Every time I would start to write something seemingly poignant and important, the world would change with either horror or triumph and would render the piece no longer relevant--at least for now.
Several years ago....
...I’m going to step away from my usual topics to discuss marriage and civil union. I had a brief discussion about this on twitter. Let me start off by saying, I have no problems with male/female, female/female or male/male relationships. The whole stickiness starts with the idea of what marriage is and who should be allowed to do it. I think it ought to be a level playing field. Heck, I don’t even have an issue with people jointly marrying more than one person at a time as long as they are all consenting adults.
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Unfortunately, I don't believe this would help. It would simply move the current debate to "Who should be allowed to have a civil
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I think its a MARVELOUS idea,,,how smart you are,,the point of most people of MARRIAGE is to join as a family with all the rights
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I've always said what we call marriage should be more of a contract between people. So civil union works. I also said that it shou
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Five years ago, I would have agreed with you 100%, but my perspective has now changed. LGBT people want the word "marriage" to be
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Are they interested in a word or equal rights? I think they are interested in equal rights. The word should be irrelevant.
I am dangerously close to thanking Indiana.
Someone had to test the waters. While there are at least 20 states plus the federal government who have passed so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Acts,” Indiana’s was singled out because, as Pagan lawyer and blogger John Halstead explains, it expands the definition of “persons” who can be protected and it allows the use of the law as a defense in civil suits. In other words, it gives people and private business owners with religious objections a potential shield to discriminate against the gay community.
...The news came at work, in a text from my fiance: Oregon's ban on gay marriage has been overturned, and the state is issuing marriage licenses to gay couples effective immediately.
It's big news for us, because it means when we say our vows next September we'll be able to do it on Oregon soil--or, in our case, sand, because we want to be married on the beach. I immediately have to go lock myself in a bathroom and cry a little bit, because up until this moment I wasn't convinced it was really going to happen.
...As 2013 draws to a close, there’s a good deal to reflect upon. Many members of our Community have passed on, relationships have changed and babies have been born. Within the military, quite a few changes have occurred as well. In February, the retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta extended gay benefits to service members and their families as best he could due to DOMA still being on the books at the time. And when DOMA was repealed in June, the Pentagon was able to use the words marriage and spouse with the inclusion of gay and lesbian couples. Sadly, it took until last month overseas military installations were open for things such as ration privileges due to where they were stationed, such as in South Korea. And too, while many more states, even Utah, are now marriage equality states, it is still not enough to make marriage equality federally recognized as the law of the land (read: Constitutional amendment).
Also, I would be amiss if I failed to mention other forms of equality within the military, especially pertaining to women. Not only are women open to train for full-fledged combat positions (though we won’t see women in direct Infantry until probably 2016), but also, rape and assaults within the military are finally being taken seriously. Men and women who have been attacked are reporting at an all-time high, which may actually be a good thing for a couple of reasons: For one thing, victims feel justice will actually be served instead wrapped in red tape, so they are reporting them. And for another, the reports that do occur are actually making it onto official ledgers to be counted.
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