A Week In Review

Last week was an interesting one for a Pagan newsjunky like myself. First there was the sentencing of a satanic murderer in Los Angeles, and on Friday, Salon.com dropped an article about the Family Research Council hosting a lecture on how the modern porn industry is a vestige of “Pagan Sexuality.” To top this all off, the murderer was Latino como yo, and I wouldn’t exactly call myself the harshest critic of adult entertainment.

The Satanic thing caught my attention cuz’ as any beginner, veteran, or recovering Pagan will tell you, they are two very different things that often get mistaken for the same. As a friend recently put it jokingly when I showed him a Pentacle art project I needed his help on, “Whoah, I didn’t realize we were gonna be doing some Satanic shit. I better talk to my priest first.” I responded with a straight faced emoticon.

This is all to say, depending on where you reside in this country, the upside down pentacle, the right-side-up pentacle...any pentacle, tends to either conjure perplexed looks at best, or hostile ones at worst. Thankfully, the Los Angeles Times article indicated the murdering dude’s Satanic imagery was limited to 666’s and upside down crosses. Still, as I was reading, I found myself hoping there wouldn’t be anything even loosely associated with Pagans...but there was. The murder was committed on a “Satanic” holiday - Feb.2nd which unfortunately is the same day as the old milk harvest celebration of Imbolc or Brighid. Nooooo! It’s a good thing the Times didn’t catch this, though I shudder to think what the Family Research Council would do if they found out.

Turns out the FRC was too busy focusing on Porn that week. And who was the latest scapegoat for the dangers of online skin flicks? The “sexual practices of Pagan Rome” of course!

And to think I thought it was those damn Hollywood liberals.

This one was a tad more complex because similar to other cultural stereotypes that can sometimes be taken as a compliment (don’t pretend like you don’t know), modern “Pagan sexuality” does indeed tend to pride itself on being...how do I put it? Many shades greyer than “Christian intercourse.”

According to the Salon article, Dr. Patrick Fagan (yes, his name really is only one letter short of reading “Pagan”), of the Marriage and Religion, Research Institute, delivered a speech lambasting “pornography (as) an anti-Christian vestige of a sick pagan world.” Reading the first part of Fagan’s list of sacrilegious sexual practices was an exercise in eye rolling:

"Abortion" - While I’m a casual Pagan, and don't believe the state has any business forcing a woman to have a baby if she’s not ready to, the connection between these two issues is more political than spiritual. In other words, probably the majority of pro-choice registered Democrats would also call themselves Christian, but you don’t hear that aspect come out in the cultural wars, so why would being Pagan be brought into the picture? And although I wouldn’t call myself an expert on the hundreds of Greco-Roman Gods and Goddesses of Antiquity, I’m fairly certain there is no “Abortion” deity.

"Homosexuality" - Okay, not only are the Pagans I know totally cool with it, the majority of Americans now are too. And seriously, America’s Christian Fundamentalist population really needs to recognize they’ve lost this one.

“Infidelity” - Modern Pagans might call that Polyamory and not all of us do it now, and seldom was it done, if at all in pre-Constantine Rome. And seriously, any basic reading of Roman history would not draw anything more than a superficial link between cheating on one’s spouse and honoring Jupiter. (Unless of course, the husband doing the cheating wanted to be like Jupiter, in which case, he’d have to turn himself into a swan or something first).

But then, the list got nastier “euthanasia, infanticide...” Wait, what now? How do those words even belong in the same sentence as “sexual practice”? Are these the same folks who think Warren Buffett is a Socialist?

The problem with Dr. Fagan’s claim that “Roman Pagan sexuality is back, run for the hills!” is that it's clearly based on exaggerated and poorly understood readings of history in general and Roman history in particular. Queer lovemaking for instance - While sex acts between people with the same equipment wasn't considered the norm in ancient Rome, it wasn't exactly considered immoral either. As one of my favorite podcasts "The History of Rome" once put it, the gender role, as in "who's the bottom?", was what was considered important, which is to say ancient Rome was definitely chauvinistic, but not homophobic.

As for the infidelity claims, long before Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, other emperor's attempted to reign in the cheating ways of the Roman Aristocracy, most notably Augustus, and he was about as Pagan as it got. The key word here is "Aristocracy" cuz' when you're super rich, well, your sense of propriety tends to loosen up...why? Well, you can afford it, just ask Tiger Woods.

This is all to say "Pagan sexuality" is no more to blame for the perceived permissive atmosphere of pre-Christian Rome, than Pagan Spirituality is to be given credit for the establishment of Western Civilization. Dr. Fagan may indeed have a point about the potentially harmful effects of too much pornography, and the general decadent nature of mainstream America, but drawing a connection between that and “Pagan sexuality” rather than with a culture obsessed with material wealth and domination is just a tad off target. And besides, there’s nothing inherently immoral about giving/receiving pleasure with one, two, or more consenting adults...provided it’s in a respectful and honest manner. That’s definitely something most Pagans would get behind, on top, or in front of.