This essay talks about recent events involving religious accommodations in the military and prison.
Recently there were a few cases that were brought to my attention
regarding religious accommodations for Pagans. The first was a Norse
Pagan in the military who won the right to wear a beard. The second is a
Wiccan who is trying to get a laundry list of increasingly absurd
accommodations in prison. Long ago I remember a different Pagan
requesting a name change in prison, too, and even longer ago there was a
Pagan teacher who had a face tattoo he argued was religious. This
discussion pops up every so often in the Pagan community, with a large
number of people thinking of cases like these as frivolous, ridiculous,
and making us look bad.
On this subject I need to soapbox a bit, starting with the following statement:
You should totally request religious accommodations. Even if people think they're absurd. Especially if you are incarcerated.
If you want to make some super off-the-wall claim like Jennifer Ann
Jasmaine that your religion requires you to be vegan except Imbolc when
you must get ice cream? Do it. Want to sport a beard so you can swear
oaths on it and because Thor definitely wouldn't be clean shaven? Go
ahead and fight for that. Want to be like Daniel LaPlante and demand
different flavors of cake for each full moon? By all means, continue.
I may very well think that you are a total dipshit,
especially if you're trying to make the claim that these are common
beliefs (one article claimed Wiccans call carrot cake "Wolf Ice" based
on this ridiculousness), but you should still goddamn get those
accommodations.
If you read comment feeds you'll find a
lot of pissed off Pagans, people who are convinced that this is going
to drag us all down as the non-Pagans of the world learn from these
requests. There are a couple of reasons why I think this is a bad
argument:
- Non-Pagans already believe absurd things about us because we are absurd people.
- Whether or not you personally consider something necessary to practice is irrelevant.
- Other religions get accommodations that are objectively no more
absurd, but are accepted because the religions themselves are more
accepted.
- Shaking up the prison and military industrial complexes is great.
Non-Pagans Don't Need Fringe People To Believe Inaccurate Things About Us; They Have The Rest Of Us
As
somebody who has been a Pagan for over two decades, I've had the
awkward experience of talking with people who had really off-the-wall
ideas about what we believe, but I've also had the equally (almost more) awkward experience of
having to deal with Pagans who try "correcting" "misconceptions" they
have about us with even more misconceptions. Pagan religions are
extremely diverse and it's hard to make blanket declarations of what our
spiritual needs are because there are so many exceptions to every "rule."
You
of course get the cases where people believe that we're Satan
worshipers who abuse animals and children a la Jack Chick's D&D
comics, but this isn't the usual stereotype of a Pagan. I know it's
hard to believe, but Christians can be well-read, too; in fact, a lot of
the misconceptions I've heard about Pagans from Christians were things
they learned from Pagans who don't know Pagan history (a therapist I was
working with went on about persecution of Wiccans during the Burning
Times once).
But if you ignore
for a second the more violent, nasty stuff, we're actually just
inundated with absurd beliefs that non-Pagans believe we believe because
we tell them we believe it. How many non-Pagans who want to be allies
to Pagans believe that we are all Goddess worshipers or that no Witch
ever casts curses? These are all super absurd things that people didn't need fringe bullshit Pagans to tell them because mainstream Pagans did it instead.
It Doesn't Matter If These Requests Match What You Practice Or Not
Back
when I was working at a summer camp one year, I argued that a Christian
woman who was trying to get me to stop using a talking board (Ouija
board) was violating my religious freedoms. I lived at this workplace, I
couldn't just go home and do it! My argument was successful; I offered
to only use my talking board when she wasn't around, and she stopped
bothering me about it.
This
probably seems absurd to you... but at the time I was really working a
lot with this particular type of divination, and divination is really
important to a lot of Wiccans and other Pagans. Many Pagans don't use
this tool and more than a few are even adamantly against them... but that's
irrelevant, because it was a well-established part of my practice.
There are a lot of practices and beliefs that are not universal
to all Pagans but which are in fact really important to individual
Pagans. There are Pagans (particularly Pagan men) who don't cut our
hair. There are Pagans with tattoos and piercings with great spiritual
significance. There are Pagans who change their names legally to their Craft Names. There
are Wiccans who go vegetarian due to hard line interpretations of the
Wiccan Rede. Is there any central authority saying that we need to do
these things? No... but it doesn't matter. One of the best things
about Neopaganism is that we can choose these things for ourselves, and
since the vast majority of these accommodations do not harm anybody, why
bother complaining about them?
Another story... as a minister I wrote a recommendation for a friend of mine who wanted to move out of the dorm before they had reached the age or attendance that would allow them to move out. The reason they gave was that they were unable to have certain religious accommodations... candles, incense, and a blade of a particular length. I would argue that none of these are really necessary to practice Paganism and could offer loads of substitutions, but that's not the point: This person's Pagan practice necessitates it, so I wrote the letter.
Other Religions Have The Same Absurdity And Inconsistency, The Religions Themselves Are Just Taken More Seriously
For
every accommodation that people say is absurd for Pagans, I it would be easy to find a
similar one in a religion that is taken more seriously that is also not
universally requested by folks within those religions.
- "Pagans aren't required to change their names!" Neither are
Christians, but many of them (converts especially) do it if they have a
name that comes off as non-Christian to them. Changing your name to an Arabic one is a commonly accepted practice in Islam, and yet you probably know of lots of Muslim celebrities who are not known publicly by Arabic names.
- "Pagans don't have dietary restrictions!" This is usually applied
to vegetarianism, which is valid praxis chosen for a variety of reasons
including animal welfare, animal rights, and environmental concerns.
Many people strictly interpret the Wiccan Rede to require vegetarianism
(whether they go vegetarian because they're Wiccan or interpret it that
way because they're already vegetarian doesn't matter). It also doesn't
matter that most of us do not have that requirement... deceptively few
Jewish people keep kosher, either, and yet nobody short of an open
anti-Semite would proclaim that a Jew shouldn't have that accommodation.
- "There is no requirement to wear amulets!" When I was in high
school they had to create a whole set of standards and accommodations
because Catholics wanted to wear St. Christopher medals when playing
sports. There's no rule in Catholicism saying that you have to wear medals at all.
- "There is no requirement for tattoos/long hair/beards!" I don't understand the tattoo cases because religious tattoos are extremely common among Pagans; it doesn't have to be literally required of everyone to be accommodated. Grooming standards are also not universal in more mainstream religions that have them... not all Christian women keep their hair long, but to some it is an important part of their religion, not all Muslim women wear hijab, not all Muslim men keep beards, even Sikhs--who are well known to never cut or shave their hair--often make exceptions for women who have facial hair.
And looked at objectively? All of these are pretty absurd. If other faiths are allowed to ask for absurd accommodations there's no reason we shouldn't.
Prisons, The Military, And Pretty Much Everywhere Else Needing To Make Accommodations Are Terrible: Fucking With Them Is Good Praxis
I'm sure this will probably the most controversial point, but it's honestly the first thing I think whenever this subject comes up:
Both these institutions suck, so you should be a pain in the ass to them.
Some of the people who are requesting accommodations in prison have committed serious crimes (murder, sexual assault) but a staggering number of people in prison are there for non-violent crimes, and even those who aren't are subjected to inhumanly cruel conditions. Somebody who gets to see the sky less than a goddamn battery hen trying to get more outdoor time or trying to finagle a way to eat something that isn't gruel or prison loaf is of no concern to me. Good. If anything, more people should do that.
This also applies (although to a much lesser extent) to the military, to schools, and to anywhere else with strict enough requirements on being who you are to make accommodations a thing. A school won't let you wear a sized pentacle because of some bullshit excuse about it being a "gang symbol?" Go big or go home: Get one the size of one of Flavor Flav's clocks and fight for that shit.
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In conclusion, we have just as much right to be obnoxious and absurd as any other religion, and in a culture of forced conformity sometimes requires it.
