Pissed off Wiccan for Peace: 09/28/2003

Friday, October 03, 2003

Thank you Joel for putting this whole thing into the proper perspective. Pax Nortona - If You Made a Fuss About Clinton's Penis.... by Joel Sax
I mean really. If you think about it, the President of the United States of America was brought to the brink of impeachment by the conservatives because he had consentual oral sex and lied about it. It was a serious issue to them and they were running around like Zealots at the Inquisition trying to do everything but castrate the man.

Why isn't there the same furour over this? Why aren't conservatives calling for Arnold's head on a platter for his obvious contemptuous attitude toward women. And his admitted "playful" molestations of unwilling women.

Can someone please tell me what the difference is? Aside from the fact that a conservative republican in the gubenetorial mansion in California will be a tremendous boon for GW in the '04 presidential election?

posted by Kimber at 9:55 AM :: ~#~

Thursday, October 02, 2003

I'm not just a loveable witch with an attitude (although it is one of my more endearing qualities ;oD). I'm also a mom. For those who don't know, I have a 4 year old son with Asperger's Syndrome. Over on the left there are links to see a pic of my boy and to read all about AS.

I have never had to deal with disability before. Well, not on a personal level. I have worked for years in the mental health field supporting those who help folks that need it. Technically I could be labled as disabled because I have a slew of diagnoses but they have never really signifincantly affected my ability to function in the "real world". But when my first born, my baby boy was 18 months old the school he was attending started telling me that they think something might be wrong with him. I ignored them for a long time. He is a wonderful, loving, intelligent child. He just doesn't like to play with other kids. I had a slew of excuses. 'He's an only child', 'He has only ever gone to a small daycare with 2 other kids'. But as time went on and his sister came along and started growing up a little bit, I could no longer deny that in some areas with his peers he wasn't typically developing.

So we started down the long, lonesome, confusing road of screening. First the Psychiatric Evaluation to get the diagnosis, then the Occupational Therapy evaluation to determine what physical needs he has, then the Speech evaluation to determine what verbal/social help he needs. This whole time I am saying "But he's a great kid. He's not disabled! He can run and play and talk and we have great conversations about everything and he understands things most grown people don't. He's Ian! He loves animals and construction vehicles. If there is anything you need to know about dinosaurs, ask Ian!" But none of this process was about that. None of it was getting to know who Ian was. It was all about shoving him up against a cookie cutter and trying to figure out a way to trim him around the edges.

No, he can't read body language instinctively like we can. He has to cognitively learn how to do it. No, he can't comfortably interact with his peers, especially in large groups. He has no concept of how to do it. He has games he likes to play and things he likes to talk about that are different and in some cases far beyond what his peers are interested in. He doesn't like to play Power Rangers or other fighting games. Aggression confuses him. Emotionally he is a bit behind some of the kids but he is more aware of his own emotions than my husband is and more able to verbalize how he is feeling and identify why he is feeling that way. He has some poor fine motor skills most significantly in pencil grasp and control. But these are all things that can be cognitively learned and he is doing that just by playing with the other kids in his school and having some of the adults around him coach, model and cue for him.

However, this is not happening quickly enough for the professionals and if he is going to be ready for Kindergarten he will need to have these skills somewhat in place to be included in the general classroom and curriculum. So they are taking him out of the school he is in, where the kids he knows and teachers he knows are and where he has been making small but significant strides in these goals and shipping him 30 miles away to a "Special Purpose" program. Actually 3 different ones. One for one-on-one Speech Therapy with a professional, one for Group Occupational Therapy with about 4-5 other kids and their therapists, and 2 afternoons a week at a Developmental Therapy preschool with a group of kids who are also needing Developmental Therapy.

So instead of building on the relationships he is already building in the classroom he is familiar and comfortable with, they are pulling him out and bussing him around to teach him these skill with kids he has no other contact with other than these sessions. And these are not typically developing children. When you are a child past the age of 3, you're personality and actions start to become more and more influenced by your peer group. If you want anyone to conform to a social norm of behavior, to read and grasp the rhythm, cadence and body language of a group, wouldn't you want to expose them to those influences as much as possible? Why on EARTH would you want to take them out of the environment you want them to adjust to, put them into an environment full of people with similar issues to theirs and try to teach them how to conform to the environment they just LEFT! And to take a child out of a stable, structured environment where they can get into the routine of the day (one of Ian's objectives is to be able to adjust to the routine and discipline of a classroom setting making appropriate transitions) and put him on the road 3 days a week. He is in a car/van almost as much as he is in school some days!

How would a typically developing child react to this? Would anyone expect a 4 year old to take this kind of upheaval in stride? But so far we have been lucky. Ian is a wonderful, even tempered adaptable kid. At this point he still thinks it's fun. But he's only been doing it for a week. I will have to keep feeling him out and assessing him and if it seems to be doing more harm than good, I will just have to put the kaibosh on the whole thing and battle the Kindergarten when he gets there.

Why does it have to be like this? Why does everyone have to feel like they need to single people out for one reason or another? This is why I have been harping on IDEA so hard. In 1975 Special Needs Kids were given a more level playing field with the passage of IDEA. Under IDEA schools are held to a certain level of accountability for the equal education of these kids. So they can go out and compete equally with the Typically Developing kids who are given this education without a second thought. If someone came up to you and told you your son skipped out of math or science class and played in the art room every day wouldn't you be enraged! How could your child pass the SATs if they were in the art room during math or science class?! Why was the school allowing this to happen?! Well, what if the school came to you and told you that they were going to put your kid in the art room during math or science class? Or what if they told you that your kid just couldn't go on the field trip to the Museum of Natural History? Schools are doing this every day under the current version of IDEA. Just imagine what will happen if it is gutted the way congress is talking about now?

Everyone wants what is best for their kids. I know I do. Ian will be a great Paleontologist or Marine Biologist one day if I have to storm Washington DC to get it done. But think about it from a totally non-parental, pragmatic viewpoint. Say you don't have any kids. You are just a tax-paying citizen. Some of your taxes go for severely needed social programs to support disabled citizens. I am labled disabled, but I work for a living and pay my taxes, my mortgage, my second mortgage and my car payment on top of everything else. My son is labled disabled. But if he is stuck in the art room instead of in the classroom learning, will he be able to do the same thing? Part of your property taxes go to pay for schools. You have to pay that anyway cause you own your house. But if he's in an assisted living/supportive environment, that is extra money out of your pocket that you wouldn't have needed to pay if he'd been educated to support himself in the first place! He'd be paying taxes right along side of you out of his salary from the University where he would be employed!!

Am I the only one to whom this makes any sense?!?!?!?!?!?!? This is just one of those things that makes me want to sit down and cry it's so obvious and so obviously the right thing to do. I don't have a college education. Well, ok, 2 years of a 4 year degree but it was in Written Communications. Isn't this all just common sense stuff? GAD.

posted by Kimber at 1:09 PM :: ~#~

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

I was perusing my site stats, as I often do, just out of curiosity, seeing who is reading me, who is bookmarking me, what search engine phrases get y'all here... You know, that sort of thing. And I came across an interesting one the other day that has been rattling around in my head for a while. Someone got here by searching "wiccan opinions on christianity" or something like that.

Now my first thought upon reading that was "Dang! I didn't think any of them really cared WHAT we thought about them!" Then I thought "Well, ok good, ok fine. I have a good post up on the front page relating to that subject maybe this is someone who is sincere in their desire to be open"

But as I was driving back from getting my lunch I heard Paul Harvey mention something called the United Nations of Religion that is forming to talk about terrorism and religion. This piqued my curiosity so when I got back to the office I searched it on Yahoo. They must be calling it something else, cause I didn't find it. But I did find this:

Get US out! of the United Nations

I don't recommmend reading it because it about made me sick to my stomach with quotes like :

"Presented to the world as a mystical revelation, the UN Earth Charter is actually a diabolical blueprint for global government."

"The Charter is intended to become a universally adopted creed that will psychologically prepare the world’s children to accept the necessity of world government to save the environment. It is also an outrageous attempt to indoctrinate your children in the UN’s New Age paganism.

The Preamble of the Earth Charter states:

… we are one human family and one Earth community with a common destiny. We must join together to bring forth a sustainable global society founded on respect for nature.... Towards this end, it is imperative that we, the peoples of Earth, declare our responsibility to one another, to the greater community of life, and to future generations."

(Now see, I like the Earth Charter. Always have. I, as most of you know, am a globalist. I think it's way past time we unified the earth as one body instead of all this nationalistic "We're better than you cause we say so" or cause we've been here longer or cause we eat more cheese in a year than you etc. It's just so stupid and wasteful of global resources.)

This page was written by a Dean of Religion at Midlebury in Vermont. Obviously a christian. This is why I and a lot of other pagans and atheists have such a problem with christianity. They NEED to be in charge. They need to be right. They have always been of the opinion that they were the State Religion of the United States. And whenever they see that illusion threatened they go (the phrase that comes to mind is "ape shit" but that is so vulgar) bananas and run around screaming they are being persecuted and discriminated against.

Now I have friends who are christians. And they all say the same thing to me when I bring these kinds of people up. "They may call themselves christians but obviously they're not because you can see by what they say that they're not following the teachings of christ." Now I just went and did a search and came up with 145 christian denomenations that had sections on Yahoo. There are probably hundreds more than that. And each of them follows some form of the Hebrew bible. And each of them has a diffrent interpretation of the bible. And each of them knows for a fact that their interpretation is the correct one and that the others are mislead by false prophets and faulty translations and interpretations. All of them. From the Catholics to the Branch Dividians to the Jehovahs Witnesses. Now I don't know how all the denominations work. I was raised a Nazarene, married and ex-Catholic, attend a Unitarian Universalist church and I am very good friends with a Jehovah's Witness. But these are all as different from one another as night and day.

So let's say that there was a religious coup and christianity was made the State Religion. Which one? Catholicism? After what has been going on the last 2 or 3 years here? I doubt it. Baptist? I think the homosexuals would have something to say about that. Episcopalian? They're too busy splitting themselves up again over the gay minister. Nazarenes? You'd better hope not cause you'd have to shut down every night club, movie house, bar, theater etc. in the nation. No dancing, no going to movies, no drinking, women...toss out those jeans, you're wearing dresses from now on, no pornography and that includes Playboy, Penthouse and Cosmopolitan. Shut down the music industry, cause you can't make any music that doesn't glorify god. Trust me, I had to go through committee to be able to play "Why Me Lord" by Kris Kristofferson for the church talent contest. And definitely NO OTHER RELIGIONS. They are all going to hell, you know.

So who? And who gets to decide? And what happens when the other denomination wins and gets to be the state religion. Then they get to come in and officially tell the rest of y'all that you're wrong and it will be sanctioned by the state!! They can have the Religion Police come into your sanctuary and force you to change your worship practices. They can tell Jehovah's Witnesses they have to take blood transfusions. They can tell Christian Scientists they have to see doctors. They can tell Catholics that confession just isn't enough anymore and that priests can get married and women can be priests. Or they can even tell them that they have to disband their congregations. "Sorry, your church doesn't follow the State Sanctioned religion so you have to shut down. We will open a State Church here next week and you will all have to attend that one."

No one thinks about this sort of thing when they stand on the steps of the courthouse with the Klansmen demanding the 10 commandments in a government building. Or when they go to court demanding the right to pray on a public address system.

Once again, people, I highly recommend you read A Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. It gets less and less far fetched every day!

And that's what I have to say about what wiccan's feel about christianity. I don't speak for all pagans but I know I speak for quite a few. We're offended by christianity but we will defend to the death their right to religious freedom just as we will our own.

posted by Kimber at 1:33 PM :: ~#~