![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meirwen_1988It seems like a hundred years ago I posted an exclamation linking the
Kansas State Board of Education with the members of the Taliban still
at large in Afghanistan. I tried a couple of follow-up posts, but they
always got whacked by the great cosmic god Computus Crasus.
Today I found out about something equally whacked in Indiana. It seems that a heterosexual married couple (we’ll call them Joe and Jo) are getting divorced. They are both Wiccan. They have a nine year old child (who we’ll call JoeJo). Here is the info, from the Indianapolis Star (the information is also available on the Indiana ACLU site):
An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."
The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.
Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.
And then, there’s the mother in Pennsylvania who is suing the school her 5 year old attends on the basis that they infringed on her protected right of free speech when they prohibited her from reading the Bible to her child’s kindergarten class.
Okay, for the record, in reverse order.
Mommy in PA) If it was open reading time and all parents were invited to read for a set amount of time from their child’s favorite book, the Mommy could read the Bible (assuming she didn’t pick any of those nasty sexual parts, or really really violent parts if the school had a standing policy against exposing students to graphic sex or violence) if it was, in fact, her child’s favorite book. If it was not open reading, and if all parents didn’t get the same invitation, then maybe the school had a right to control what she read in the classroom. Otherwise, they’re just being so stupid PC as to defy description. [Of course, by my logic, that would mean that someone should be able to read some misogynistic diatribe or stories about overthrowing the government, too, but, hey, if it was the kid’s favorite book...]
Wiccans in Indiana) So, just out of curiousity, how did this come up in the first place? Mommy Jo is Wiccan. Daddy Joe is Wiccan. I’m assuming that neither one of them wanted the child to be raised in some other faith (the “over their strenuous objection” line was my clue). Best guess: there was a section in the divorce proceedings similar to the “JoeJo will spend Rosh Hashanna with Joe in the Hamptons and Yom Kippur with Jo in Palm Beach” section (only insert “Yule” or “Ostara”) of more “mainstream” divorce documents, and the judge decided to go all Inquisition on their butts when he saw funny holidays. I find it interesting that he seems only concerned with them exposing JoeJo to the “wrong” faith. Nothing in the order requires them to take the little bugger to church—they can raise JoeJo as an atheist, I guess, or cultural Christian/secular Jew/non-observant Muslim. And what the heck is a “mainstream religion” anyway. Mainstream in America? Well, if you live where my brother-in-law does in the Shenandoah Valley, then that would make it Mennonite Christian. Does he mean “people of the book” as Islam puts it? Or is it what’s mainstream in Chinatown? Little Moscow? Little Calcutta?
Kansas) Where do I start?
For a long time now (feels longer) I’ve been watching as more and more of the visible world (yup, boys and girls, it's not just them--it's us too) slides further and further into religious fundamentalism. I blame the end of the Cold War. Really—it’s all Reagan and Gorbachev’s fault.
Here’s what I mean. Humans, as a species, are an antagonist, aggressive, paranoid bunch. It’s how we got to our vaunted position on top of the evolutionary tree (right below dolphins and sentient lichen)—by killing everything that pissed us off, whether they were actually a danger to us or not. Reduced competition for resources, greater room for expansion, plus that huge ego boost from winning, which leads to sex, which leads to more of...okay, so it isn’t a perfect system.
Anyway, we’ve had, for most of the last 500 or so years this lovely, insane, virulent nationalism that’s managed to channel people’s aggression into nice wars with clear battle lines. They were clean, tidy little examples of slaughter on a massive scale. Even when it was ideological in nature, the ideology tended to be cloaked in regional interest (for example, “The War of Northern Aggression”). So, you could have in WWI German Jews and Christians fighting side by side against the Brits (who, somehow, managed to come from 4 continents and a subcontinent). It was all about the flag. We’d gotten past those nasty religious wars (okay, except for in Utah) and we’d managed to corral our basically violent natures and harness them to the cause of “patriotism”). Sure, there were the occasional wars of ideology (Soviet revolution anyone?), but, again, it was all about the country—Marx wanted their to be an internationale, and the communists talked about it, but it was never really about an international movement—it was about controlling borders, and who would be the main controller.
So we end up with the Communists and everybody else (come on, isn’t that really how people mentally divided the world?) Oh, Hitler came along and gave everybody a common enemy for awhile, but it was more about not wanting to split the pie three ways, and I’ve always suspected if he’d kept his ambitions to the boundries of the former Holy Roman Empire that no one would have said very much, no matter how many millions of priests, nun, gypsies, homosexuals, differently-abled, and Jews the Third Reich exterminated.
No, we had the Communists and not-the-communists, and the world happily channeled its anger, aggression, and paranoia into that scenario. In the not-the-communist world, whether you were Catholic or Protestant, secular or observant, atheist or devout didn’t matter as long as you were against “the Reds.” As long as you understood the USSR and the People’s Republic of China were “the big bad.”
But then, they weren’t the big bad anymore, and the world got smaller as we knew more, travelled more, learned more. Borders became more porous, not just physical borders, but mental ones. Suddenly we needed to find a way to define us and them in ways that nationalism no longer did in such a satisfactory way. They tore the Berlin wall down—so people had to find new walls to put up.
We aren’t equipped to handle peace, brotherhood, prosperity. We thrive on strife, stress, and stupidity. So the Kansas school board decides to redefine science, because they need an enemy, and science is as good a target as any other. It isn’t about God, or creation, or evolution. It’s about war. What’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t give the average American (or Brit, or ... ) a nice, clean, defined object of hate and aggression. It’s not like a wall, or a line on a map. So, they have to look closer to home, draw their own lines, and build their little bunkers against the guy down the road with the wrong bumper sticker on his pickup truck and the wrong make gun in the rack in the rear window.
Maybe I’m being too big picture here, I don’t know. But, at least today, that’s how it looks from my little corner of the bipolar universe.
Today I found out about something equally whacked in Indiana. It seems that a heterosexual married couple (we’ll call them Joe and Jo) are getting divorced. They are both Wiccan. They have a nine year old child (who we’ll call JoeJo). Here is the info, from the Indianapolis Star (the information is also available on the Indiana ACLU site):
An Indianapolis father is appealing a Marion County judge's unusual order that prohibits him and his ex-wife from exposing their child to "non-mainstream religious beliefs and rituals."
The parents practice Wicca, a contemporary pagan religion that emphasizes a balance in nature and reverence for the earth.
Cale J. Bradford, chief judge of the Marion Superior Court, kept the unusual provision in the couple's divorce decree last year over their fierce objections, court records show. The order does not define a mainstream religion.
And then, there’s the mother in Pennsylvania who is suing the school her 5 year old attends on the basis that they infringed on her protected right of free speech when they prohibited her from reading the Bible to her child’s kindergarten class.
Okay, for the record, in reverse order.
Mommy in PA) If it was open reading time and all parents were invited to read for a set amount of time from their child’s favorite book, the Mommy could read the Bible (assuming she didn’t pick any of those nasty sexual parts, or really really violent parts if the school had a standing policy against exposing students to graphic sex or violence) if it was, in fact, her child’s favorite book. If it was not open reading, and if all parents didn’t get the same invitation, then maybe the school had a right to control what she read in the classroom. Otherwise, they’re just being so stupid PC as to defy description. [Of course, by my logic, that would mean that someone should be able to read some misogynistic diatribe or stories about overthrowing the government, too, but, hey, if it was the kid’s favorite book...]
Wiccans in Indiana) So, just out of curiousity, how did this come up in the first place? Mommy Jo is Wiccan. Daddy Joe is Wiccan. I’m assuming that neither one of them wanted the child to be raised in some other faith (the “over their strenuous objection” line was my clue). Best guess: there was a section in the divorce proceedings similar to the “JoeJo will spend Rosh Hashanna with Joe in the Hamptons and Yom Kippur with Jo in Palm Beach” section (only insert “Yule” or “Ostara”) of more “mainstream” divorce documents, and the judge decided to go all Inquisition on their butts when he saw funny holidays. I find it interesting that he seems only concerned with them exposing JoeJo to the “wrong” faith. Nothing in the order requires them to take the little bugger to church—they can raise JoeJo as an atheist, I guess, or cultural Christian/secular Jew/non-observant Muslim. And what the heck is a “mainstream religion” anyway. Mainstream in America? Well, if you live where my brother-in-law does in the Shenandoah Valley, then that would make it Mennonite Christian. Does he mean “people of the book” as Islam puts it? Or is it what’s mainstream in Chinatown? Little Moscow? Little Calcutta?
Kansas) Where do I start?
For a long time now (feels longer) I’ve been watching as more and more of the visible world (yup, boys and girls, it's not just them--it's us too) slides further and further into religious fundamentalism. I blame the end of the Cold War. Really—it’s all Reagan and Gorbachev’s fault.
Here’s what I mean. Humans, as a species, are an antagonist, aggressive, paranoid bunch. It’s how we got to our vaunted position on top of the evolutionary tree (right below dolphins and sentient lichen)—by killing everything that pissed us off, whether they were actually a danger to us or not. Reduced competition for resources, greater room for expansion, plus that huge ego boost from winning, which leads to sex, which leads to more of...okay, so it isn’t a perfect system.
Anyway, we’ve had, for most of the last 500 or so years this lovely, insane, virulent nationalism that’s managed to channel people’s aggression into nice wars with clear battle lines. They were clean, tidy little examples of slaughter on a massive scale. Even when it was ideological in nature, the ideology tended to be cloaked in regional interest (for example, “The War of Northern Aggression”). So, you could have in WWI German Jews and Christians fighting side by side against the Brits (who, somehow, managed to come from 4 continents and a subcontinent). It was all about the flag. We’d gotten past those nasty religious wars (okay, except for in Utah) and we’d managed to corral our basically violent natures and harness them to the cause of “patriotism”). Sure, there were the occasional wars of ideology (Soviet revolution anyone?), but, again, it was all about the country—Marx wanted their to be an internationale, and the communists talked about it, but it was never really about an international movement—it was about controlling borders, and who would be the main controller.
So we end up with the Communists and everybody else (come on, isn’t that really how people mentally divided the world?) Oh, Hitler came along and gave everybody a common enemy for awhile, but it was more about not wanting to split the pie three ways, and I’ve always suspected if he’d kept his ambitions to the boundries of the former Holy Roman Empire that no one would have said very much, no matter how many millions of priests, nun, gypsies, homosexuals, differently-abled, and Jews the Third Reich exterminated.
No, we had the Communists and not-the-communists, and the world happily channeled its anger, aggression, and paranoia into that scenario. In the not-the-communist world, whether you were Catholic or Protestant, secular or observant, atheist or devout didn’t matter as long as you were against “the Reds.” As long as you understood the USSR and the People’s Republic of China were “the big bad.”
But then, they weren’t the big bad anymore, and the world got smaller as we knew more, travelled more, learned more. Borders became more porous, not just physical borders, but mental ones. Suddenly we needed to find a way to define us and them in ways that nationalism no longer did in such a satisfactory way. They tore the Berlin wall down—so people had to find new walls to put up.
We aren’t equipped to handle peace, brotherhood, prosperity. We thrive on strife, stress, and stupidity. So the Kansas school board decides to redefine science, because they need an enemy, and science is as good a target as any other. It isn’t about God, or creation, or evolution. It’s about war. What’s happening in Iraq and Afghanistan doesn’t give the average American (or Brit, or ... ) a nice, clean, defined object of hate and aggression. It’s not like a wall, or a line on a map. So, they have to look closer to home, draw their own lines, and build their little bunkers against the guy down the road with the wrong bumper sticker on his pickup truck and the wrong make gun in the rack in the rear window.
Maybe I’m being too big picture here, I don’t know. But, at least today, that’s how it looks from my little corner of the bipolar universe.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 10:05 pm (UTC)You made my head hurt! Kiss it better.
headache
Date: 2005-05-27 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-26 11:49 pm (UTC)That rocked.
Now, can you explain to me when to use 'which' or 'that' or 'who' when refering to objects and people? I got confused today when I was driving and I can no longer refer to things. "The cow that jumped over the moon?" "The driver who cut me off?" Right, but then the word 'which' came to me. I think it was the hetero-wiccans who sent their child to a Catholic school. I think those people were just afraid that their kid wouldn't be screwed up enough. You know he's going to become a Jesuit. You know it.
Tangent back home, Weasel.
Thank you for the entry, it was wonderful.
Now, review Eats, Shoots & Leaves, please.
ESL review
Date: 2005-05-27 03:37 am (UTC)Re: ESL review
Date: 2005-05-27 04:45 am (UTC)Snark snark snark.
I like to compose longer posts in Word or a wordprocessing application as I can more easily edit for content and grammar, and if I'm getting into something really involved, I can click over to my FRIENDS list and read over there without loosing what I've thrown together.
I would really like to read any book review that you'd care to write, but ES&L is fresh in my mind and there are lots of nice sticky parts that are just waiting to be picked off and enjoyed.
So, if you're still awake and stuff and happen to check in here, check out an_gadhar as an lj entry.
Oh, I'm so glad I don't live with you as I don't think the two of us being stuck awake late at night would be any help to one another.
Go to bed.