I’m neither a Pagan, nor a Wiccan – I am a Lutheran, and yes, I am a professional Psychic Medium. I have been judged by Christians, Atheists, Pagans, Wiccans and well, just about every group that wants to judge because they have opinions and feel the need to share them. At one event that I hosted, I had a group of Methodists who decided that they would hold up signs saying that they were praying for me and my soul. I was pretty excited because, well, I like prayer and maybe their prayers pushed my prayers to the head of the class in Heaven. Okay, that was a bad joke.
I grew up in a religious household (Lutheran) and attended parochial school from K-12. I also saw spirits from the tender age of 3 and I had difficulty understanding what I was being taught at school and church compared to what I was seeing, feeling and hearing. For several years I fought with the rationale, my sanity and my religion. It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I decided to consult my minister. Becoming comfortable with my gift has taken an awful long time and still when I speak with someone who doesn’t know “what” I am, I begin – “Now, I am perfectly sane, but….I see ghosts….” I am not different than you. Everybody has the ability to see, you just have to open yourself to it.
In school we learned about different religions, most of the time being told that unless it was labeled Christian it equated to a cult. As I entered high school, many of us debated and spoke up rather than accepting the teacher’s lectures at face value, asking for more love and acceptance, understanding and less judgment. I thought of that today when I saw this segment of Fox News.
In a nutshell, University of Missouri is asking for Wiccan and Pagan holidays to be included. Fox News and its contemptuous and arrogant so-called journalists ignorantly stereotyped the group as saying they are either Dungeon and Dragon players or middle aged woman living in the woods delivering babies. The prejudice and hate shone throughout the segment, but what got me the most was fear. “Oh, it will never happen,” and spouting that the group was small, not even discussing statistics. And despite the numbers, I am sure that I am not the only non-Pagan/non-Wiccan that found the segment religiously racist.
Several years back, Kathy Lee also made a naive comment about Pagans on the Today Show, saying that Pagans were nasty and bad.
Pagans have enough stereotypes and prejudices to deal with without Kathy Lee and Fox News airing obvious ignorance. Many called for an apology from Kathie Lee, and many are calling for an apology from Fox News, yet how about instead educating the scared journalists. In the meantime, the 1600’s called and they want their gallows back.
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