Politics
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It Is Long Past Time for Women, God Damn It.
I voted for Elizabeth Warren for US President. She was clearly the smartest, most prepared, most compassionate and sincere and—yes, I’ll say it—most progressive candidate in the race. She really gets poverty. She gets bigotry. She gets intersectionality. She gets it. She wasn’t perfect, and she’s made mistakes. Who hasn’t? But Elizabeth Ann Warren is an educated, passionate, articulate, knowledgeable woman. And that, America simply could not forgive. I am sickened. I work in the nonprofit sector, and I have worked under a number of women. And I would characterize most of them as exceptional leaders with competency, empathy, compassion, and focus, who nonetheless had to be twice as good…
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The Long Game
It’s not looking so great for the future of the world right now, is it? The machinations of Vladimir Putin to stir up nativist and racist sentiments in the UK and US have led to disastrous results: the Trump election and Brexit. Both are systematically destroying the liberal democratic traditions of these countries and threatening spillover into other places like the Middle East. Meanwhile, China is playing go, calmly and methodically placing its stones throughout Africa, Asia and South America to claim resources and subvert democracies in those places…all the while committing its own domestic genocidal campaigns against Muslims, Tibetans and Uighurs. And, of course, there is climate change. These…
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Citizens’ Climate Lobby launches Earth-based Spirituality Action Team
12 September 2019 — The CCL Earth-based Spirituality Action Team announces its formation and inaugural conference call. The team will offcially launch just after the southward equinox on 24 September 2019, with an interactive call featuring guest speaker M. Macha NightMare. Citizens’s Climate Lobby is a nonproft, nonpartisan, grassroots advocacy organization focused on national policies to address climate change. “CCL has over 50 action teams in a wide range of areas, including a dozen faith-based teams,” said T. Todd Elvins, CCL Action Coordinator. “The Earth-based Spirituality team will give greater visibility to an often-overlooked religious orientation.” “The Earth-based Spirituality Team is for Pagans, Wiccans, Witches, Occultists, Druids, Gaians, Goddess-worshippers, Earth-worshippers,…
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Imagine
Ours is a vision of a better world. So let’s imagine it. In the world we seek to build, kindness is paramount. None are “Other” or “lesser”, be they queer or disabled or poor or differently colored in skin tone. And those who are unfortunate are helped: our society leaves no one behind, guaranteeing a minimum, livable standard of living in all the ways that matter, including housing, food, clothing, health care and access to transportation and education. Because we care about one another. In our world, intellect is valued and thinking and reason are considered to be good things. Expertise is respected, and all learn to think critically as they…
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Talking Paganism in the Mainstream
Ross Douthat, conservative columnist for the New York Times, has stirred some Pagan feathers with a column arguing that rather than becoming fully secular, the US may be moving away from a transcendentalist religiosity (such as that of Christianity and Judaism) and towards “paganism”, which he describes as a religion of “this world” as opposed to one focused on some other world or afterlife. He followed up with this piece, further expanding on these ideas and suggesting that the “civic religion” of the United States may be moving away from Christianity and its paradigms. Douthat is clearly unenthused at the prospect that his theory is correct, but I think he…
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If You’re a US Citizen, PLEASE VOTE!
Jon over at Humanistic Paganism has a great post up, reminding us of the critical importance of voting—and voting Democratic—in Tuesday’s U.S. elections. The domination of the nation’s current politics by the party of Trump simply must end, and the first step must happen now. I have just returned from the Freedom From Religion Foundation‘s annual conference in San Francisco. Among the presenters were atheists from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh who told harrowing stories about what happens when religion is allowed to drive politics. Trump and his evangelical supporters want similar draconian “morality” inflicted on our nation, but we have a tool that those presenters do not: elections with an…
