The Pagan Unity Campaign was founded by Storm Bear Williams in early 2001. The objective was to unite Pagans across the country in letting our state and federal leaders know that there was a large Pagan voting population in America.

The mission of the PUC: “ to unify the many diverse branches of Paganism in America. A lofty goal that has been tried many times before and not succeeded. However, we are not attempting to unify Pagans under a religious umbrella, but we want Pagans to come together under the banner of Freedom.”

At the groups inception they created and signed in a Pagan Bill of Rights which states:
1. Pagans shall have the same freedom to worship that is granted to followers of other religions.

2. Pagans shall have the same respect of all elected officials who represent them that is afforded to followers of other religions.

3. A Pagan parent’s religion shall not be used as evidence for the purpose of deciding child custody issues.

4. Pagans shall be free to work without regard their religion, and should be free from proselytizing and harassment at the workplace.

5. Pagans shall have the same freedom to conduct their lives that is given to followers of other religions, within the boundaries of the law, without interference by, or discrimination from representatives of their local, state, or federal government.

6. School district personnel and classroom visitors shall not proselytize or harass Pagan children while on public school property or at public school functions.

7. Pagans shall have the same freedom to exercise all of their rights as do all other American citizens.

8. Pagans are entitled to the free exercise of their beliefs and rituals and must be protected from the interference of others during the practice thereof.

9. Pagans shall have the right to redress when their religious rights are abused.

10. Pagans shall be able to wear sacred symbols of their faith in environments where followers of other faiths are free to express themselves similarly.

‘So Vote It Be’ is the PUC’s campaign that kicked off in 2002. The goal of this campaign was to provide voter education and registration to all peoples of Pagan faiths. This campaign is run leading up to local and national elections. For more click here.

The most well known of the PUC’s campaigns is the “I AM” project. This stands for sending a post card or a letter to our elected officials letting them know who of their constituency is Pagan. It stands to reason that the more our politicians understand that Pagans are educated and they are voting, that eventually the group as a whole will be known a serious voting group and start to get taken more seriously. This campaign was the first for the PUC and it began on February 9th 2001. The project has run every year during the Summer Solstice. For more click here.

The third on going project for the PUC is the Birthday Card Campaign. This campaign is designed to have birthday cards sent to their elected officials informing them of the voting Pagans in their area. For more click here.

Currently, the PUC is gearing up for it’s annual “I AM” campaign and if you are a Pagan that wants to stand up and be counted by your local and national elected officials now is the time to get ready for that movement. Follow the link above for more information on the campaign.

Technorati Tags: laura jean karr, Pagan Politics, pagan unity campaign, religious freedom

For years now the The Focus on the Family group has worked as hard as they could to over take what used to be something good for our country. The National Day of Prayer that was given to people of all faiths to take a day to pray in their own way no matter what religion they were has now been stolen by the group’s creation of The National Day of Prayer Task Force.

On the The National Day of Prayer Task Force website they state that they are the “National Day of Prayer official website” interesting that they don’t state on the front page that they are a privately funded task force and not what used to be the original government website for The National Day of Prayer. People do not learn that they are not the official group unless they first read through their mission statement on another page which states:

The National Day of Prayer Task Force’s mission is to communicate with every individual the need for personal repentance and prayer, mobilizing the Christian community to intercede for America and its leadership in the seven centers of power: Government, Military, Media, Business, Education, Church and Family.

This leaves me to wonder: Why is government placed first in their efforts and the family placed last?

On their What to pray for page, they list first our federal government leaders, then state leaders and then local officials. No where on their page does it ask you to join them in praying for your family or for your church.

While stating that this is a day for people of all faiths to celebrate if you want to help in any of the task forces events for that day you must sign an application that includes a statement of belief. You can read that form here. Oddly, enough the statement that you are required to sign is one of an evangelical view and excludes not only just the Pagans but the majority of the Christian and Jewish communities as well.

As to the theme of this years National Day of Prayer, what did our highest government official choose? Well, he didn’t. And did Congress come together to elect a theme that would welcome any citizen of any faith? No, they didn’t pick it either. The task force choose the “theme” for the national day of prayer taking a quote from the Bible and our president signed it into the governmental proclamation. What happened to our government not respecting an establishment of religion?

If you would like to take part in an open celebration for our National Day of Prayer you can ban together for your groups own prayer event or you could join in with the Inclusive Prayer Day and make a statement to the task force and our leadership that supports them by celebrating the diversity of religious freedom here in America.

www.InclusivePrayerDay.org

Technorati Tags: Ignorance, inclusive day of prayer, laura jean karr, misinformation, national day of prayer

I am sure most of you have noticed that the Pagan Professional article is missing from this Monday’s post. This is in part due to my own personal late e-mailing skills. An interview will be taking place and the Pagan Professional feature will return this coming Monday.

Now, in regards to what else has occurred this week which may be confusing to follow through all the comments spread over three different posts here at Simple Abnormality. I wrote an opinion piece on Supreme Court Justice Scalia basically stating that I don’t agree with the man. A fellow Pagan sister picked that article to review on her StumbleUpon page. A non-Pagan woman named Jackie found that StumbleUpon review and proceeded to harass Summer through twitter thinking that she was me. Jackie also proceeded to get into a comment war with Terry here through my feedbacks on posts. Jackie than proceeded to take snippets from my articles, combine them with snippets from things that I did not write and created a forum to discuss them (implying that I wrote all of what she listed there) over on a Christian website.

I contacted the creators and the moderators of the site to inform them of what was going on. I also joined the forum repeatedly asking Jackie to correct the false information through there as to let the other people on that forum know what was going on, as it did not seem that the moderators were going to do anything about it.

Jackie then wanted me to continue attacking me through a forum on a ex-witch site in a effort to remove me from the original thread she posted. I refused, of course.

The thread was finally pulled last night. This morning I received the following e-mail as a response to mine that was sent three days ago:
Hello there!

Thank you for taking the time to write us with your concerns.

At the bottom right hand corner of every post there is a link that says, “Report.”

In the future, please use that feature of our site to notify us of inappropriate activity.

In this case, we have removed the thread from the public board for review.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,

Fritz
Manager of Communities
Salem Web Network
Communities on the Faith Community Network

I’m glad the thread was pulled. Though no one took responsibility for the false information and no one corrected it, at least it is not continuing to be perpetuated. Jackie has continued to submit more religious hate messages here at the site. I am keeping a record of these but I will no longer post them live. I do not want to give fuel to this woman’s fire and run the risk of her attacking more people in her effort to attack me.

Sadly, enough Jackie is continuing to contact me this morning…

And now we will get back to normalcy around here. Thank you all for your patience through this.

Laura

Technorati Tags: laura jean karr, personal post

Earth Day started back on April 22nd 1970. Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic Senator from the state of Wisconsin created Earth Day as a way to show people holding political offices that the general population was concerned about the environment as a whole. That first year it was proposed more than twenty million American’s came together to participate in what was at the time a grass roots effort for environmental awareness.

The prior passing of the National Environmental Policy Act being signed into law on January 1st 1970 paved the way for Earth Day to show support and encouragement to our law makers that the general population was paying attention to environmental issues. Since 1970 the some of the following laws have been created from this grass roots effort: Clean Air Act, Water Quality Improvement Act, Resource and Recovery Act, Toxic Substances Control Act, Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, Endangered Species Act and many others.

To see a list of environmental policies that have been enacted since 1970 click here.

Want to find out about the air quality in your area? Visit AIRNow an interactive site that will show you the air quality of where you are now.

To find Earth Day events and celebrations in your area click here.

Technorati Tags: earth day 2008, earth day history, laura jean karr