As Pagans, we think sex is a good thing. The Goddess blesses all forms of love. Gay, straight, bisexual, queer, transgender — all sexual orientations are welcome in our tradition.

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Should religion be taught in School? Which religion? And who decides? Do we institute a state religion in the U.S.? Somehow I thought this country was founded by dissidents looking for religious freedom. Whatever happened to that idea?

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Four Years Ago Today

March 16, 2007

Four years ago today, I was in Nablus in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement that supports the nonviolent movement among the Palestinians. I was also supporting my friend Neta Golan, an Israeli woman and one of the founders of ISM, now married to a Palestinian, who was about to give birth. I had spent a strangely idyllic day in a small village outside Nablus, where a group of ISM volunteers had gone because we’d received a report that the Israeli army was harassing villagers. When we got there, the army had left, the cyclamen and blood-red anemones were in bloom underneath ancient olive trees, and the villagers insisted we stay for a barbecue.

We were just passing through the checkpoint on our way back to Nablus when we got a call from Rafah, in the Gaza strip. Rachel Corrie, a young ISM volunteer, had trying to prevent an Israeli bulldozer from demolishing a home near the border. The bulldozer operator saw her, and went forward anyway, crushing her to death.

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When my youngest stepdaughter was ten, she was warned by her mother not to be too open, in school, about the fact that she comes from a Wiccan family. About ten minutes later she came running in, waving a dollar bill, and pointing at the words, “In God We Trust”.

“How come they get to put their God on the money, and we can’t even talk about ours?” she asked, outraged.

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