Dear President Obama and all of the members of Congress:

Kindly stop thinking and voting with your book of mythology and start thinking and voting with the Constitution of the United States of America that all of you swore to uphold. Every single one of you should be ashamed of yourselves right now for the travesties that have taken place in the states that tell a large chunk of their populations that they’re not good enough to get governmental benefits for making a commitment to a partner of their own choosing. Repeal DOMA. Fix ENDA to include everyone. Government-sponsored health care may be a socialist program, yes, but how’s that police force, fire department, public library and public school system workin’ out for you?

In other words, grow up. You are in Washington to represent us, not to stay in office. Because you can bet your over-privileged asses that if you don’t represent us, we will be very certain that you won’t stay in office.

Sincerely,
Jeremy Bredeson
Pissed-off voter

Evidently, last week, Pat Robertson’s CBN website posted some bullshit. This isn’t exactly news because the tinfoil hat-wearing asstards over there are always posting some bullshit. However, this was bullshit that made most of the rest of the Religious Reich look at them and go, “Homosaywhat?” Evidently, according to one Kimberly Daniels, the entire Halloween candy supply has been “dedicated and prayed over by witches.”

Um, homosaywhat?

Seriously? It’s not bad enough that the main Christian holidays were, as has been said a eleventy-pi times, stolen by the Catholic church and Jeezified so as to make the filthy pagans come worship where they were told and to the god they were told to worship, but now this crazy bitch is going after the fucking candy? Woman needs to take her meds. And the CBN pulled the “story” (well, it really is a story, but it’s pure, unadulterated fiction) within hours of it going live. Someone had a lucid moment, evidently.

This piece of crap “reporting” was balanced by a well-done post by Vin Suprynowicz. I tend to not read a lot of political blogs (I have a hard enough time keeping up with a half-dozen podcasts), but when Brett posted this link to Facebook, I went and read. And giggled. And cackled with glee. It made me happy. Of course, some people may take umbrage with it. That’s fine; take as much as you want. More will be made, I’m sure.

What does umbrage look like, I wonder? I’m guessing it’s remarkably similar to a glass swan. And we all know that CBN and the rest of the Religious Wrong is pumpin’ out enough of those that they’ll scrape the Sahara to bedrock in a couple of weeks.

You know you’ve made it, to know that you really are someone, when you get a post-ritual drunk-dial from your Close Personal Friend, World-Famous Author Christopher Penczak ™©®. It made my night.

For those who didn’t know, I’m the Archpriest for Central Ohio at St. Raphael Interfaith. Until yesterday, we were under the auspices of Church of Seven Planes. My bishop has been getting nothing but grief from the head office, and yesterday, it came to enough of a head that he resigned as Bishop of Ohio for them, and pretty much took St. Raphael’s out from under their wing. I thought about it for a while, and went through their website, and was unimpressed with what I saw, so I crafted and sent the following letter to the President and Vice President of the Church.

Effective immediately, I’d like to resign my ordination through the Church of the Seven Planes. As it stands, I’m the Archpriest for Central Ohio through St. Raphael Interfaith. I’ve been debating this action for some time now, due mostly to the fact that the Church of the Seven Planes, for all its mouthing the word “interfaith”, doesn’t seem to understand what “interfaith” means. Adding symbols of other faiths to documentation and stoles doesn’t do anything but pay lip service to those other faiths. I’ve been seeing a decided gearing towards Christianity, and if I wanted to be Christian, I wouldn’t have converted to Wicca nearly 20 years ago. Bishop Kramer’s resignation was just the final piece needed for me to submit this resignation.

I thank you for the opportunity, but I feel that my path is very much so divergent from the Church of the Seven Planes. I wish you hope and growth into a truly interfaith organization.

Brightest blessings,
Jeremy Bredeson
~ Daystar ~

Today, I got the rudest response from them.

Their response:

Dear Fellow Traveler:

It is with deep regret, that we accept your resignation as a Minister of the church of Seven planes.

It is always sad when travelers on the same path cannot find ways to get along and work together to

resolve their differences. However the door is always open for you to come back to the Church as a minster, and work within those bounds.

We wish you all the best in your new endeavors. As of this date we show you as having resigned.

I do however wish that you and Isaac would get your stories straight. You say we are too Christian, Isaac says we are too Pagan and are becoming the Coven of Seven Planes. If you guys are going to tell a story you should

decide which story you are going to tell.

Thank you

Jacob E. Woodby for the Church of Seven Planes.

All of the formatting WTFness is all theirs. Isaac and I did not discuss this. When he resigned, he told us that things came to a head and that he couldn’t stay with them anymore. He did not mention anything about his thoughts about the power structure and spiritual make-up of the Church. What this Jacob Woodby, someone who doesn’t even appear named on the website, has said, in essence, is that our concerns aren’t valid and that we’re to be treated as a group instead of individuals. Fuck that noise.

Here’s my quandary: do I respond via email, or should I let a blog post, cross-posted to LJ, Facebook and Twitter, with all of their comments, be my only response?

There’s a line from Independence Day that keeps running through my head.

“We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive!

There’s more to it, but that’s the part that keeps playing. This fight need to continue, loudly, until the institutionalized segregation and discrimination ends. Yes, I’m “free to marry a member of the opposite sex, just like everyone else in the country.” That’s not. Fucking. Good enough.

Today’s decision about Prop (H)8 will not be the end of this fight. The lawyers for the GLBT population in California will fight this. It will head to the Supreme Court. They may or may not decide to hear it. I can’t even hazard a guess as to what they’ll do. I’m praying that they’ll hear it and rule against it and declare it unconstitutional, much like their decision on Lawrence v. Texas. At that point, will all the other states who have bigoted, hate-filled, discriminatory amendments and laws have to change them? Yes, I think they probably will.

I would love nothing more than to see the word “marriage” become something that is relegated to religious institutions. I would love to see everyone be able to get a civil union, and have to go before a judge. If you want to go through the religious ceremony, do it. The one that counts legally is the one before the judge.

Fuck, WHY AREN’T MORE PAGANS OUTRAGED AT THIS?? More importantly, where is the pagan-rights advocacy group, Lady Liberty League? (Oh, that’s right, they’re resting on their laurels from two years ago, the Pentacle Quest. Because homos don’t matter.) The MORMON MOTHERFUCKING CHURCH bankrolled this piece of shit legislation that dictates how our religion functions. MY deities and tradition say that a handfasting is between two people who love one another, not a man and a woman. My religious practices are being curtailed, being restricted. This is unacceptable and unconstitutional. Because, kids, the US Constitution overrules the State Constitutions.

On his Facebook today, my friend Don asked where all the outrage was in 2006 when Ohio residents amended their constitution to not even allow domestic partner registries. If Prop 8 had been overturned today, would all of those protesters in California fight their way eastward to help overturn those indignities? In a perfect world, yes. This is far from a perfect world. Oh, don’t get me wrong, some of them would; those people would include my friends, because they know that I would kick their asses if they didn’t. The vast majority, though, probably wouldn’t. And that fucking sucks.

I’m pretty sure that a gay community is a fallacy, something that we like to tell ourselves exists. It would be better described as a gay population made up of smaller communities. We don’t play well together, and that seriously needs to change. If we don’t stand up and fight, shoulder to shoulder, as one cohesive unit, well, then, kids? It’s done. We might as well give up now.

I’m not willing to do that. Are you?

Why yes, me.

I have this knack for being one or two degrees away from Greatness. I think this is one of my lots in life. I know fantastic people. Clay. Christopher. Steve. Lisa. Shaun. People who are either on the verge of Famous, who should be famous or are famous in certain circles. With Twitter as popular as it is, I’m also able to follow people like Greg Grunberg, Wil Wheaton, Brent Spiner, and Brea Grant.

This week, I added two more people to my degrees of separation. I got to correspond with Sarah Avery, an author of AWESOME pagan fiction, and Barbara Bretton, an author of AWESOME knitting fiction. I’ve just read both of their latest works, and they’re fantastic. I can’t recommend them more highly.

He is still three weeks from His rebirth, and the better part of a full season from His sexual maturity. Yet today, and tonight, the Horned Forest Lord made His presence very known to me.

It is quoted in the Charge of the Goddess that “All acts of pleasure and love belong to me.” The Lady makes this claim, and I’m not of the right stature to contradict Her. However, Her acts are the subtle nurturing acts of love and pleasure. He takes the darker side of pleasure, those acts bordering on, and crossing the line of, pain. His are the acts of intensity, of strength of passion, of the animal rut of two bodies slamming together in the repeated rush of pheremonal blind fucking.

To have Him join you in a night of pure sexual pleasure is a heady feeling. He’s of an Other mindset; humanity is, while not necessarily beneath Him, most definitely on another plane of existence from Him, a plane that He visits for both carnal and oddly tender moments. Finding someone in the dark who is just there because he’s horny and turning it into an intensely erotic minor event can change the course of someone’s night, month, life. He shows us that, while, yes, He’s animalistic and bestial at times, He’s also protective and doesn’t usually cause pain without need.

I have friends who are of the mindset that all sexual acts are sacred sexuality. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree, but I wouldn’t add that final word. I think that all sexual acts can be sacred, but they don’t have to be. And sometimes you don’t know if they were until after the fact.

Spring has awoken Him and He is risen once again. Soon, the Earth will flower as She adds Her fertility to His and They continue through the Wheel.

Blessed Be.

GMSS has been pretty quiet lately. “Why is that?” you may ask. “Wherefore art thou, funny boy?” Well, it seems that my latest case of Internet ADD has kicked in. I’m spending less time online and more time doing things that don’t require sitting in front of the computer. I’ve been playing a lot of Legend of Zelda (I beat the holy hell out of Four Swords Adventure, and am working my way through Ocarina of Time for the bazillionth time). And when I am online, I’ve been on Facebook, LJ, Ravelry, and Twitter. Short Attention Span Theater at its best.

I’ve also been doing a lot of reading (I’m a little over one book from the end of the Weather Wardens series by Rachel Caine, and I have a stack of non-fiction (which I’m not good at reading) that has been calling my name lately, with titles like Our Gods Wear Spandex: The Secret History of Comic Book Heroes and Friends on a Rotten Day: The Astrology of Friendships, as well as four or five others).

I’ve got a ton of stuff in my knitting queue, but I’ve only been knitting on the bus to work and at my morning break as well as my weekly knitting group. I’m sure I’ll get the bug to knit more soon. Right now, it’s just small projects, for the most part, and I’m okay with that.

Work continues. It’s frustrating at times because I get my work done well before quitting time and then I have nothing to do. I’m still just a temp, and the way the job description has been re-written, I’m not qualified for the permanent position. And honestly, they’re going to train me to be the right person for the job, but if I do that, either I or one of my co-workers won’t be able to attend Between the Worlds, because we’re the only ones who will be trained to do a process that evidently has to be done on-site every day. It’s also frustrating due to some internal stuff that makes me want to take a Nerf bat to our programmers. Because heaven forbid we have efficient software. Overall, though, I’m happy. Because, well, having money is happy-making, for the most part. It’s not a challenging job, just frustrating, sometimes.

One of the big things coming up in my life is that, at the end of March, my High Priestess will be coming to Columbus for a weekend. She and her Main Love Monkey are coming in for a family wedding in Cleveland, and driving back down here for something less stressful and much more fun: a weekend with us! During that time, I’ll be getting my 3rd Degree. It means very little to the rest of the world, but I’ve busted my ass over the last six years to get to this point, and it’s something of which I’m very proud. I didn’t think I’d ever want this level of responsibility and Power (and the two do go hand in hand — with great power comes great responsibility, as said Spiderman’s uncle, but the reverse is also true; with great responsibility comes great power. The two go hand in hand), but I’ve discovered so much about myself lately, and if I let myself know it and really think about it (which, OMG, that sounds so Crystal Cruncher to me…), it’s kind of a big deal. Plus it might help with something kinda big that I’m not quite ready to discuss yet, as it’s still in the zygote stage.

Also, if you’re wondering, my birthday is coming up (25 days!). I have two wishlists: Amazon and Wishlist.com. Because what’s a little self-promotion between friends?

And by unicorn, I mean “mythical creature that doesn’t exist.”

I’ve met a lot of people in my life — a LOT of people; my hometown was in the Guiness Book of World Records for years, until they finally removed the category, for Most Churches Per Capita (something like 65 churches in a town of less than 5000 people) — who call themselves Christians. Sadly, though, I know very few true Christians. They include my mother, my friend Matt, and several people in the Columbus faith community with whom I’m proud to be acquainted. I would love to include this woman in this list. That article is brilliant.

Thank you, Reverend Smith, for your support and for knowing the meanings of Christ’s teachings, and for being willing to call bullshit.

I’m not doing resolutions this year. Instead, I’m doing the Mission 101 goal list. I’ve added extras into mine (and will continue to do so throughout the next three years) because I’m not stopping at 101 goals nor at 1001 days. I’m continuing for three years instead of the 2.75, taking me to the end of 2011.

I’m keeping my list (mostly) private, because while it’s important to have support, I’m trying to limit most of the support to people who actually know me. I’ve got it posted in a small, locked LiveJournal community of people who all mostly know each other, and I’ll post it in a VERY tightly filtered locked post on my own LJ (and I probably won’t accept “applications” for people who want to see it; it’ll be who I choose, because it’s that personal to me), but mostly, this is to keep me accountable to myself. I’ll update the list throughout the next three years (and in fact, I just remembered something else that needs to go on there), as well as updating the filter and the community.

I started on one of my goals today: potty train Belle. Since she gained the ability to go down the stairs, her favorite place to poop is right inside the front door on the doormat (which, ironically, says, “Wipe Your Paws”). I think it’s because she’s pissed off that we leave her during the day, even though Ben’s home with her. So I took her for a walk today, and we stayed out until she pooped. Before today, when we’d go on walks, she’d hold it until we got home and then do her bid’ness in the house, causing OH SO MUCH frustration. It’d be easier if we lived in a better neighborhood or in a house with a fenced yard to just let her out to go, but we don’t, so we just need to deal with her with much patience. Today, though, she pooped outside, and she was resoundingly rewarded for it with much love and good treats.

Another goal for me is to mend some friendships that I’ve neglected, flat-out ignored or pushed to the back burner for various reasons. That’s unacceptable to me, and it bothers me. It’s no secret that I’m kind of a bitch; whereas being the boss and being bossy are pretty different, being a bitch and being bitchy has a fine, fine line. I’ve been working on it a lot in the last few years with the help of some friends to help keep me accountable, but I’ve got a long way to go, and the only person who can really keep me accountable is me, and I need to learn how to do that better. I’m trying to* letting down the walls more, I’m trying to* learning to laugh at myself more and not take myself so freakin’ seriously. It’s a constant process, and I can’t expect everyone to immediately treat me differently just because I say I’m changing; I have to prove to myself and to everyone around me that I am, in fact, changing.

As expected, there are a lot of craft-related goals; thirty-nine of them alone are knitting projects, mixed in with five quilting projects, five beading projects, learning two knitting techniques (dyeing and entrelac) and designing another pattern. There are a nineteen spiritual goals. I’m going to create six different cordials (and if they’re successful, yes, I’ll share recipes, because damn, they should be tasty), create a cookbook with a friend and lose 40 pounds. There’s gaming, there’s baking, there’s education and blogging and fire spinning. I’ve got a lot ahead of me, and I’m looking very forward to the next three years.

2009 is off to a great start, and I will keep that momentum going. Who’s with me?

* “Do or do not; there is no try.” — Yoda