Bob Barr Now Pro-Wicca?
Lee on Aug 03 2008 at 6:54 pm | Filed under: Around the Web
Those of us who remember the political scene of the 1990s remember Bob Barr as a hero of rightwing social conservatives. That was before his peculiar (some say opportunistic) transformation into libertarian civil rights crusader. Anyway, I’d missed this a week ago, but apparently Ed Brayton cornered Barr on his 90s crusade against Wiccans. Barr compared his unsurprisingly changed position on the neo-pagan religion to his former opposition to gays in military, which only reminds us of yet another soc-con cause he once championed and now repudiates.
(via Nate Uncensored via IPR)
“I’m sure that’s because there are no specific incidents and those military leaders who complained to him did so out of bigotry, or because the problems it caused were really caused by bigotry against Wiccans.”
I doubt it.
And this is the sort of assumption that anyone who disagrees is a bigot that I really abhor. It’s bigotry of it’s own sort isn’t it?
In all likelihood the military persons who opposed wiccans did so for the same reasons that many oppose gays openly serving (and still do) which is that the nature of the military means that there is no “off-work” and there are no “outside of work” activities and anything at all that requires accommodation (women, anyone?) is a certifiable pain in the *ss . Particularly when it comes to something like the chaplain system (and those serving do deserve to have their religious worship facilitated by the military, particularly in situations where they really *can’t* go “off-base”) there is enough strife (and yes there most certainly is!) between Christians and Mormons and non-Christian religions (heck, getting a methodist preacher assigned to a charismatic congregation is bad enough… been there and done that!) that the mere notion of introducing wiccans into the mix would give any open minded non-bigot base commander a rash.
Oh sure, those involved could have been bigots but there is no reason but bigotry to assume that is the case.