Friggen hen-house in here... *throws a testosterone bomb*

So any way...going waaayyyy back....I kind of see where true was originally coming from. I knew people back-in-the-day as they say, who leaned Pagan and actually joined so called Pagan groups because it was trendy, hippy, "natural", sexual, and so many Pagans had the best weed!

I hate fakes, and it's hard to distinguish the REAL pagans from the posers. The posers gross me out.

By the way, posers populate all religions as far as I know. And it's just OFFENSIVE. I won't go to church just for that reason. So I don't have to see them, or FEEL like one.

I commend you all!!!!

I have seen many come into Pagan land who are there cause they think it is cool which is why the year and the day deal can be a good thing. It weeds out the those who are there to play at being watch. They get board when they find spell casting is a small part of it and the commit involved. In some covens you have to go through an interview. The whole Harry Potter thing has sparked a lot of interest in witchcraft. I don't let the Potter witches bother me. They come and go and in the mean time maybe they learn something about themselves.

I don't let the Potter witches bother me. They come and go and in the mean time maybe they learn something about themselves.

Actually I've encountered "christian posers". I'd rather meet someone that's into Harry Potter witchery, quite frankly.

These sites have a great many links to assist in learning about wicca. Bewitching Ways.Com~What is Wicca?

Basic Principles and Concepts of Wicca
More wicca links @ About.Com

I think the problem with poser Christians is they are allying themselves with a powerful base, and if they really are savvy enough can use it to their advantage, doing both great harm or great good. That's why I try to be pretty consistent on the "keeping religion out of government" side of the fenc

My original post on this was meant to imply that they can all be bothersome. I think the problem with poser Christians is they are allying themselves with a powerful base, and if they really are savvy enough can use it to their advantage, doing both great harm or great good. That's why I try to be pretty consistent on the "keeping religion out of government" side of the fence. I mean, faith based initiatives are fine, I don't care if Christians or Wiccans are feeding the homeless and volunteering at the Red Cross. Just don't legislate your faith/lifestyle/sexuality, etc. in my government. I think it's a dangerous thing to do, period.

White House Aide Angers Pagans
Towey Suggests Groups Lack Concern for the Poor

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A23

H. James Towey, director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has stirred up a pot of trouble by suggesting that pagans don't care about the poor.

Wiccans, Druids and other pagans across the country, along with the Washington-based advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, are demanding an apology from Towey for his remarks in a White House-sponsored online chat Nov. 26.
Pagan groups are demanding an apology from H. James Towey, director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, for remarks he made in an online chat.
According to the official transcript, Towey was asked by someone in Centralia, Mo., whether pagan groups "should be given the same considerations as any other group" that applies for government funds.

"I haven't run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor!" Towey wrote.

"Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can't be used to promote ideology," he wrote, "the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work, and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it."

Outraged pagans have since bombarded the White House and Internet chat rooms with scores of examples of their charitable activity. Particularly common, they say, are food drives in conjunction with Pagan Pride Day celebrations from New York to Wyoming, Arkansas and Nebraska.

In the past three years, Pagan Pride groups have collected 74,000 pounds of food and donated $51,000 to homeless shelters, interfaith food banks, the American Red Cross and other charities, according to the Indianapolis-based International Pagan Pride Project.

In Chicago, pagans support a battered women's shelter. In Massachusetts, they have given $20,000 for children with AIDS. Towey "obviously doesn't have his finger on the pulse of the pagan community," said Fritz Waltjen, 42, of North Hollywood, Calif. "I don't think the man was being malicious. I think he was just ignorant."

As retail manager of Raven's Flight -- "the only pagan book and tchotchke shop within a 20-mile radius" -- Waltjen is at the center of a West Los Angeles pagan community of about 1,000 people that collects food and personal-care items for the homeless on every one of its eight annual "sabbats," or holidays.

According to one major study, Wiccans -- one of several subgroups of pagans -- made up the fastest-growing religion in the continental United States in the 1990s. The American Religious Identification Survey, based on a randomly dialed telephone survey of 50,281 households by the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, estimated that the number of Wiccans rose 17-fold, from 8,000 to 134,000, between 1990 and 2001.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43967-2003Dec7

Exactly. Power-mongers co-opt the group's original intention.