I Have No Plans to Kidnap Your Man

The Epping Forest Guardian reports that someone has been stuffing leaflets in local homes accusing Pagans of  wanting “to abduct a male member of the public for use as part of their rituals” this Lammas. Pagan Federation representative Mani Navasothy is not amused by this local smear campaign.

 “That’s just ridiculous. Nobody is going to catch a man and abduct him. I have got a degree in physics, so I’m not an idiot. Practising Pagans just don’t do that sort of thing. I myself have led rituals in forests and I used to tell the police and council – we always do it very carefully and formerly. If anything we just go for walks in the wood.”

I don’t know what his degree in physics has to do with anything, but I agree, we don’t run around abducting people to use in our ceremonies. It’s just the latest re-hashing of the old slurs against us: that ancient Pagan were supposedly bloodthirsty monsters, so the modern equivalent must be as well. This is the stuff of Chick tracts and evangelical ex-witch fantasy.

The truth is that Christians engage in kidnapping people, their children, at a rate that would dizzy the minds of any anti-Pagan conspiracy theorist. But since those kidnapping are parent-approved, and for the good of their God, it’s all swept under the rug.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOR77tWVxKc

“The film centers on the story of David, a straight-A student from Colorado who was sent to Escuela Caribe in May of 2006 after coming out to his parents as gay. Like many others, David was taken in the night without warning by a “transport service” and was never told where he was going or when he would be brought back home. While at Escuela Caribe, David had no way of communicating with any of his friends or family back home until the filmmakers arrived and he decided to ask them if they would smuggle out a letter that he had secretly written to his best friend. Once word got back to David’s community about what had happened to him, many people sprung to action and formed a plan to get him released. Getting David out of this school, however, turned out to be a much more difficult task than anyone had thought, and the trials they went through to get David released revealed just how far Escuela Caribe would go to prevent a student from leaving.”

The anxiety of a post-Christian America, a post-Christian West, has created far more real abuse than any fantasy of a hidden Pagan cult could ever achieve. So, no, Pagans don’t want to kidnap you, but you might want to watch out for your gay friend with the conservative Christian parents.