In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution. – Alexander Hamilton
I’d like to thank all the readers who called the story about the raid on the Phoenix Goddess Temple to my attention; I first heard about the temple back in February when the Phoenix New Times published an article on it. When I read that article, I have to admit I was a bit confused, bemused and appalled. Some of their professed beliefs sounded a bit hokey to me, I thought it was odd and irregular to have males claiming to represent the female principle, and I was rather offended by the practitioners calling themselves “goddesses” (which is either hubris or garden-variety megalomania). But I could make similar statements about a lot of religious beliefs, just as I’m sure others find fault with mine; I have no right to tell others what they can or can’t believe, nor do I have the power to look into their hearts to divine whether those beliefs are sincere or merely some kind of dodge.
Police and prosecutors, however, have no such principles; like the healers of the Goddess Temple they profess themselves to be gods (of the little tin variety) and imagine that they have the ability to read minds and thereby determine guilt or insincerity. And since they have heavily-armed goon squads enforcing their pronouncements, no matter how divorced from reality those pronouncements might be, I was utterly mystified at the Temple’s allowing a reporter to describe exactly what went on in their rituals, even to calling their practice “new age prostitution”; it was as though they somehow failed to realize that they were inviting a pogrom. Of course, the cops are doing their usual strutting, crowing and slandering; the ones interviewed by Phoenix New Times for this September 8th follow-up story made the typical claims of having the witch-doctor-like magical ability to see guilt (“This was no more a church than Cuba was fantasy island”), projected their own criminality onto their victims (“They hid behind religious freedom to protect their crimes”) and lied (in the passive voice, of course) about their persecution tactics (“there are policies we follow, guidelines we use so we don’t entrap people…you can presume in this case that acts of prostitution were arranged.”)
As usual, the comments on online reports of the story are largely of the “why aren’t you losers fighting real crime?” variety; it’s clear that the computer-literate segment of the public is overwhelmingly in favor of either decriminalization or legalization, and equally clear that the self-proclaimed overlords aren’t listening. But this time there’s another type of comment, ones based in the religious freedom angle; though comments on a pagan site (called to my attention by regular reader Tonja) seemed divided between “we need to support their right to religious freedom” and “those dirty criminals give pagans a bad name”, the comments on mainstream sites were actually more uniformly supportive of the Temple and critical of the cops. And though some of the pagan commenters agreed with some atheist commenters (such as Furry Girl) that the law doesn’t allow exemption for religions, that really isn’t true; there are a number of cases of religions being granted exemptions for victimless crimes. For example, during Prohibition the Catholic Church was officially allowed to use sacramental wine, and American Indians are allowed to use peyote in religious ceremonies, despite the fact that it’s a felony for anybody else.
The truth is, religions get special legal treatment all the time, as long as they’re big enough (the “Native American Church” isn’t that large, but has a large political support base because Indians are practically the definition of an oppressed minority). There are lots of different pagan groups in the United States, but because they aren’t unified they can’t lobby for special treatment like the big boys can. The same goes for sex workers; if we were better organized (like certain other sexual minorities who have in recent years almost completely reversed their historical mistreatment) it would be much more difficult for the prohibitionists to shout us down. Because at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter whether a minority group is persecuted for the race, beliefs, ancestry, politics or sexual practices of its members; all that matters is that it is large enough and loud enough to be heard over the greatly-amplified voices of cops and politicians pontificating through their bullhorns about why it’s right and moral to oppress them.
One Year Ago Today
“Flavor of the Month” is essentially an autobiography of my bisexuality.
im appalled by this beyond words.they should have the right to practice their religion as they see fit,its not like they sacrifice humans or sth that could harm others.this is violation of the freedom of religion and besides they could say that what they did was accept donations for the church like all churches do,the sex could be considered irrelevant to the monetary profit,but a religious practice of the beleivers(like the first christians,who had orgies),not to mention that there is a certain religious practice,which has been made illegal when the feedom of religion was officially established,converting.why dont they arrest all theese christians that still try to do this to this day?
laida, converting people to Christianity, or any other religion, is legal in the United States. Freedom of religion includes the freedom to switch to a different religion and the freedom to try to persuade others to switch to a different religion, and those others are free to convert and free to refuse to convert.
You are in Greece, which I read in your earlier comments. Does Greece have a law against proselytizing, or only against Christians proselytizing?
there is a law in greece against persuading someone to switch to another religion,yes,no matter the religion.switching on your own is legal.the orthodox church(the official dogma of most greeks)doesnt do it for that reason,but there are still heretics,who try this.(and of course jehovah witnesses as well)
Freedom to proselytize is essential to both freedom of religion and freedom of speech. I can’t see how it is possible to prove legally that one person persuaded a second person to convert and that the second person would not have converted without the first person’s influence; that is really a law that presumes the legal system’s ability to read people’s minds.
The second Phoenix New Times article states:At the press conference today, Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who will assist in prosecuting the suspects, made it clear the authorities see the temple’s practices quite differently.
“This was no more a church than Cuba was fantasy island,” Montgomery said.
The Phoenix Goddess Temple never claimed to be a “church”, which means Christian house of worship. It claimed to be a pagan temple. What this prosecutor is really saying is that the only legitimate house of worship is a Christian church.
I’m a Christian and I find this seriously offensive.
I find nearly every press statement cops and prosecutors make seriously offensive. 🙁
It’s sad to think that when it comes to religious freedom, it largely boils down to “mine is bigger than yours.”
Even today, decades after Prohibition, Christian churches still give alcohol to children, in public, and it’s legal, because they’re a church. But consenting adults having sex? That’s going too far!
the law doesnt take away the right for ministers to preach,inside their churches,so i dont see how it violates the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion is about to beleive in whatever religion you choose,not attempting your dogma to have more followers.granted,unless its as blatantly obvious as the practice of jehovah witnesses to go to peoples houses and try to convert them,by selling their version of the testament etc.,it cannot be proven(and even those dont get persecuted,so i cant say the law really comes into practice)i think it was created largely due to the fact that greece has a painful history with 400 years of turks forcibly establishing islam and persecuting those who didnt convert.greeks were made to pose as muslims and practicing christianity secretly.so when we were free,it was desided that all kinds of conversion(not just the forced one)would be illegal.
laida wrote: “so when we were free,it was desided that all kinds of conversion(not just the forced one)would be illegal.”
laida, can you see the difference between forced conversion and voluntary conversion? Not the same thing at all. Forced conversion is a violation of freedom; voluntary conversion as a result of non-coercive proselytizing is not a violation of freedom.
I don’t mean to change the topic of these comments from the issues of Maggie’s blog post, so let’s agree to disagree.
Anybody ever wonder why Maricopa county is always in the news? I don’t EVER want to go there.
Stephen, you just made me realize that, although I’ve never even set foot in Arizona, I’ve heard/read the words “Maricopa County” many times.
I vowed long ago, after reading about Sheriff Joe’s antics, that I would never spend a red cent in Maricopa County. Ever.
I suspect the real reason that big religions get exemptions for victimless crimes is that if they didn’t get exemptions too many people would start agitating for the legalization or decriminalization of those victimless crimes. There would have been a lot less support for alcohol prohibition in America if American Episcopalians and Catholics had been forbidden to drink Communion wine.
Exactly so. Politicians have to silence any voices loud enough to be heard over their bullhorns, and if they have to do that by granting unfair privileges that’s just fine with them.
What I find most depressing about the comments on Pagan news stories about this issue is the capitulation to lawheadedness. So many Pagans have ended up on the “wrong” side of the law, merely because they profess a religion that is different. People have lost jobs, their children, and in the case of the West Memphis Three, their freedom.
Unfortunately, this minority religious status is not lost on Pagans. Many are now trying to go mainstream in the struggle to be seen by the Overculture as a legitimate religious and spiritual path. The problem with mainstreaming means no longer being an anarchic, anti-hierarchy, loosely organized bunch who can fly under the radar. Mainstreaming means hiring attorneys, filing paperwork, paying fees and taxes and taking on, at least the appearance of respectability.
It saddens me that Pagans feel so beaten down by authorities that they feel they must disavow anyone with even the appearance of flouting the law. I kept screaming at my computer, “Since when did we turn into a bunch of pussies who begin every sentence with, ‘so long as there haven’t been any laws broken…'”? I guess we’re going along to get along.
I have a similar reaction when I see gay rights activists trying to present themselves as being exactly like everyone else; whatever happened to “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it?” 🙁
I think it’s perfectly reasonable for gays to point out the ways in which they are like everybody else: they work (when they can), they pay taxes, they keep an eye on your house when you’re out of town, they’re not these super-pervy weirdos who want your children. And that one way that they’re not like everybody else? Get used to it.
That’s not what I mean. They used to put forth a message of tolerance (even if we’re strange, you might as well get used to it) but now they prefer to lie, downplaying all the weird aspects of gay culture, pretending half the men in history were queer, that sort of stuff. I talk a lot about whores being not all that different from other women, but I don’t feel the need to cover up the bad stuff or pretend that we’re superior to others (like that bogus study that purported to prove kids from two-lesbian households were better-adjusted than those from male-female households, etc)
Modern Family, which I just watched, is an American comedy show about an extended family that includes a gay man, his partner, and their adopted baby daughter. The two gay men are totally monogamous and clearly committed for life. The partner is a househusband and stay at home parent. The show portrays the gay men living exactly the same way the straight couples live.
The reality is that the vast majority of gay men are unwilling, and perhaps unable, to practice permanent monogamy; when they do have long term relationships they usually end within a few years, and whether they last or end, they’re usually open relationships with plenty of outside sex and/or threesomes. Most out of the closet gay men have no interest in raising children. The only typically realistic thing about the gay men on Modern Family is that they don’t associate with lesbians at all. Hollywood simply will not allow any realistic portrayals of gay men television; the gays-are-just-like-straights meme is the only one allowed.
I’ve heard talks that they are going to turn “The Client List” (that Lifetime movie with Jennifer Love Hewitt) into a tv series. Lord save us from unrealistic media…
I never saw that movie, thank Aphrodite; what particular flavor of unrealism was it, to good or too bad?
I saw the movie “The Client List” and it’s based on the true story of Crystal Ann Burchett (Jennifer Love Hewitt bought the film rights to a Texas Monthly article about Burchett). I don’t know how realistic it is but it struck me as truthful in some ways. The character Samantha is a working class young wife and mother in Texas. She and her husband both lose their jobs and are in danger of losing their house. She answers an ad for a physical therapist, and it turns out to be a sexual massage parlor. She starts working there, having sex with clients, and pretending to her husband and everyone else that it’s non-sexual physical therapy. This culminates in a bust in which publicly exposes Samantha’s list of exactly 69 clients – and their wives go to Samantha’s house and ask her for sex tips! (Yes, there are definitely unrealistic aspects.)
Positive aspects: Samantha is a normal adult who reacted to economic circumstance by engaging in consensual adult indoor prostitution, not a human trafficking victim, runaway minor, drug addict, or pimp-controlled streetwalker.
Didn’t they also throw the drug pitch in there? Something like she got addicted to drugs after she started prostitution? Personally I didn’t see it either but read a lot of reviews (both good and bad).
My memory of this is vague, but now that you remind me, I think she may have started abusing prescription medication after she started prostitution, though the cause of her new drug use could be interpreted as either prostitution or cheating on and lying to her husband.
I’ve seen one article about the planned “Client List’ television series, and apparently in the TV show she’s going to be unmarried, a single or divorced mother.
I watched it after reading this and may end up doing a blog post about it. She was working too many hours, falling asleep at the wheel on the drive home, a client asked what was wrong and gave her cocaine. She didn’t use it until her daughter woke her up at night saying that she had to have an item for a bake sale. She started using when she had to stay up to make a cake. It had not a damn thing to do with having to do drugs to get through her job or having to continue to prostitute to support a habit. Bravo for them showing that there isn’t enough time in a day for many hard working moms (in any profession) to work and take care of kids much less a husband.
Brandy, thanks for refreshing my memory. It seems like the movie tried to have it both ways, portraying the prostitute doing cocaine but portraying the cause of the cocaine use as overwork and tiredness, without explaining how she managed to cope with her overwork and tiredness before she became a prostitute.
Maggie wrote;
profess themselves to be gods (of the little tin variety) and imagine that they have the ability to read minds and thereby determine guilt or insincerity.
Ye gods, but you can turn a phrase!
On another note, an old acquaintance of mine who has been in law enforcement for 25 years shows just how corrosive that environment is. When he was a rookie, he turned his captain in for assault – the guy had beat a drunk homeless man with his night stick and had ruptured a kidney and his spleen, and then tried to pass it off as a proportionate response to resisting arrest. Apparently the “resisting arrest” consisted of the drunk, on all fours, vomiting on the captain’s shoes.
Of course, the thin blue line came into play and he found himself dispatched to bar fights,etc., where his backup somehow never materialized, etc., as well as direct threats against his life. He got a job elsewhere and even taught at the state academy – he transferred because he said that the old boys network was putting cops on the street that shouldn’t ever have been given a badge, let alone a gun. And he talked about how police standards dropped seriously after 9-11; people who had been refused badges because of psych profiles were now acceptable candidates.
He said that if you are ever on a jury and a cop testifies that the suspect resisted arrest or “attempted to evade” the odds were pretty good they were testilying and that you’d better take a real close look at the case before accepting their testimony.
He also said that most police departments have about 15% of their number that are bad or corrupt and in the larger municipalities that number was closer to 30%. The irony, he said, was that the usual punishment for these types was to put them on night duty with scant supervision; the last shift you’d want bad cops to be assigned to.
Unfortunately, over the last 5 years or so, he has moved up in the police hierarchy and his attitudes have changed. I don’t know for certain which came first; whether toeing the party line resulted in promotion or if promotion brought conformity with it.
It’s sad. Although we had our differences, chiefly on the Drug War – he knew it was futile but thought that “we” had to try – I considered him one of the most honest cops I knew.
Thank you kindly, sir! 🙂
Sorry, I omitted a point.
But good as he was as a human being, he still thought he could detect when people were lying. He thought all cops could even though we pointed him to several academic studies that showed cops were no better than other citizens at “lie detecting.”
They’re no better at driving, either, though they claim that ability as an excuse for speeding and other reckless maneuvers.
I’ve seen the fact that police officers have about as many accidents as the rest of us presented as proof that driving skill is irrelevant when it comes to safety.
Think about that for a minute.
Wow, talk about tortured logic… 😀
[…] Yet they got arrested. As Maggie McNeill pointed out in her post last year after the raid called Size Matters: Because at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter whether a minority group is persecuted […]