Diane Vera

This past Sunday, June 28, I participated in the Gay Pride parade in Manhattan, as I like to do every year. This is a huge annual event, with tens of thousands of people marching.

( Some details of my participation, including a flyer I distributed )

There was a small handful of counter-demonstrators at the traditional barricaded place allotted to them on one of the side streets across Fifth Avenue from St. Patrick's Cathedral. ( Details about the counter-demonstrators )

As usual, there were quite a few liberal Christian religious groups marching in the parade. There were no Pagan groups, as there have not been for the past few years. There used to be a small group called "Witches and Pagans for Gay Rights," which marched every year. But not anymore -- even though there are some Pagan groups that meet at the LGBT Community Center in Manhattan.

( Details on Pagan groups meeting regularly at the LGBT Center )

( Some other groups meeting regularly at the Center, of possible interest to NYARBB )

On the blog A Heathen's Day, I just now learned about a news story in the Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina), SC lawmakers have religion on minds, in bills by Jim Davenport, Associated Press, Tue, May. 13, 2008, in which Democratic Senator Yancey McGill (of South Carolina) says that Wicca is not a religion, and he's not sure about Buddhism.

( More here )

"A Heathen's Day" cited the Wild Hunt blog, which referred to an earlier post, The ACLU, South Carolina, and Religious Minorities, about how South Carolina has generally become one of the "hot zones" for church/state separation and religious freedom issues.

I just now came across the following: Are the Quakers Going Pagan? by Matthew Streib, Religion News Service, Christianity Today, 4/28/2008. Among other things, this article says:
( Read more )

Thanks to Wolfshift for calling my attention to a complete online copy of The Scholars and the Goddess by Charlotte Allen, Atlantic Monthly, January 2001. (I had read that article a while back on the Atlantic website before it became subscribers only; there is now a copy on Rick Ross's site.) This article debunks some of the historical claims commonly made by Wiccan and other Pagan Witch writers.