And I Bet He's a Pro-Lifer Too...

Yet another depressing tidbit on how a fanatic, through his desire to control the public mindset, ended up doing something that just didn't rank too high on the overall scale of morality. Basically, a Baptist minister in Colorado found out about a planned local 'Pagan' fund-raiser to help benefit St. Jude's. He raised enough of a racket at a City Council meeting that the press associated with the event made St. Jude's eventually decline to accept the money.

Pagans' benefit shot down

St. Jude hospital rescinds permission to use charity's name

By Deborah Frazier, Rocky Mountain News
October 7, 2005

Pagans on Colorado's plains wanted to give St. Jude Children's Research Hospital a helping hand but say they got a slap in the face.

The Secret Garden Coven planned to donate proceeds from a festival on Oct. 29 in Ramah, east of Colorado Springs, to the hospital.

But the hospital's attorney recently rescinded permission to use the St. Jude name in the crafts festival, dinner and midnight healing ritual.

"We have no opinion regarding your chosen path of spirituality in this land where freedom of religion and speech are honored," wrote St. Jude's attorney, Diane Spears.

"However, your event, regardless of its affiliation with an organized movement or religion, has become politicized and controversial."

The group plans to donate the money to elderly Sioux Indians on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota.

George Shadroui, a spokesman for St. Jude's fundraising division, said coverage of the pagans' conflict with the Ramah City Council troubled the charity.

A Baptist minister had urged the council to ban the gathering in the town of 120.

Though some members agreed, the council did nothing and the mayor ultimately apologized to the pagans.

Now I'm not trying to create extra sympathy for Pagans as a whole, as it's pretty much a fluff faith. All the rituals and ceremonies that they so sincerely perform have all been created within the past 100 years. Though references to Pagan religions, and sects such as the 'Druids', are found throughout Europe's literary and archeological record, there has never been a single discovery of the detailing of the specifics of any Pagan or Druidic ritual. So, in essence, they've literally been re-making it up as they go along. Naturally, if that's the way they want to believe, that's absolutely their privilege; just as it is mine to snicker at it. On the other hand, I will say that these New Age faiths, on the most part, seem much less derogatory-based and vicious than the bulk of the older established religions.

Anyway, the long and short of it is because one zealous person disapproved of the way another person thought, sick kids ended up getting the ultimate short end of this particular stick. But, as is usually the case with narrow minds, the big picture generally doesn't figure into the equation. Sad... Jage

See, even Mattel doesn't mind taking
Pagan's money when it comes to kids...
(From the Secret Spells Barbie 'Wicca-Friendly' Line)