Our spiritual tradition sees the sacred as The Goddess, the Great Mother of all, and there can be no greater moral imperative than to care for the young and to nurture the next generation. Not just for our own biological children—but for all, and for the health of the environment that supports life, for we are all interconnected and interdependent.

No one gets through life without loss and sorrow, without times when grief overwhelms our ability to cope, without some instances of bad luck, injury or disease. It is our responsibility as a community to share the burdens, not to let them fall on individuals or isolated families, and especially, not to let them fall on children who have the least resources with which to meet them.

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Torture is never justified. Torture dehumanizes the torturers, even more than the victims, and demoralizes the society that condones and allows it. Torture does not produce safety or security or even accurate information. Under torture, people will say anything, implicate anyone. The use of torture undermines our moral credibility and makes a lie of any claims that we stand for democracy or even decency. Every time we torture, we create a hundred new enemies.

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When harm is being done, our prime concern should be to stop it. Until that is done, forgiveness is not appropriate—we should be focused on ending the abuse and righting the wrong. Women are always being asked to forgive our abusers—but unless the abuse is stopped, forgiveness can easily become collusion and victim blaming.

Once the wrong has been ended, when the wrongdoers have shown remorse, admitted their fault, offered apologies and made amends, forgiveness can be a way of letting go and moving on. If we continue to nurse a hurt or chew on a resentment, we give away our power and compound the hurt that was done to us.

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To Pagans, sexuality is sacred, for it holds within it the possibility of deep, loving, ecstatic connection to the great creative life-force we call the Goddess. So, we start from the premise that sex itself is a good thing. However, we also recognize that many people carry deep wounds around their sexuality, and that sex can be a terrain of pain as well as pleasure. For that reason, we need to be gentle with one another, and aware of how power and coercion can poison the well of the erotic.

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