Hillsborough County, Florida, appears to be the first county in the country to have a 100% secular calendar. Normally, I’d be happy with the idea that certain religions weren’t going to be favored over others by the authorities, but this particular example reflects an unpleasant aspect of fundamentalist thought: it’s better to deny everybody privileges than to share them. Hillsborough County is no bastion of liberalism; it has a long track record of anti-gay discrimination and sour-faced ‘real Christians’ running the government.

What’s worse is that the people being blamed are not the people who decided that no one got their holidays off, but the poor folks who just wanted their holiday off, too.

... many of the people who sent more than 3,500 e-mails on the calendar issue last year blamed Muslims for taking away established Judeo-Christian holidays. The move to a secular calendar followed a request by the Muslim community for a day off for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

This is the same crap that happened with the airport in Washington State this past December, and the same crap that happened with the Gay Straight Alliance at Boyd County High School here in KY. When the school board realized that it couldn’t ban the one club it disapproved of while other, including religious, clubs met, they suspended all clubs for the school year.
Now Utah is trying to pass a law that lets certain clubs be banned for 'moral' reasons. Of course, it won't pass muster because the U.S. Supreme Court has already said that sort of ban won't fly. So, I foresee a costly court battle, followed by Utah cancelling all school clubs. And the gay students will be blamed, since we certainly can't blame the people who won't share.

I'm Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

Yes, I know I haven’t posted in a while. Once again, real life has interfered with my blogging. I had a great Yule and a Happy Birthday, but after that my life went straight to hell. Let’s just say that 2007 appears to be the year when my wife and I have to repair everything.

I hope that everyone had a happy Imbolc. We attended a local celebration where we got to meet a large number of local Pagans that I’d only known as posters on the Kentucky Pagan Forum. We planted seeds as part of the celebration, and it looks like at least one is germinating. We figure it’s the squash. The ground should thaw before it gets too big for the pot (holding the remains of our late lamented rosemary).

Yesterday, we celebrated Fornacalia. I realize that this sounds dirtier than it is. It’s the annual blessing of ovens (‘fornax’ = ovens, stop thinking ‘fornix’, you pervs!), and we normally bake bread or cookies (this year was oatmeal cookies). Naturally, since the name sounds suggestive, we have people who usually make lewd shapes with the dough. This year was unusually tame. The closest thing we had to a pussy was a fellow who made cookies shaped like his kitty cats.

It was a pleasant, calm get-together, though. The celebration was followed by people receiving 2007 Tarot readings (the January session was snowed out) while the rest watched Eddie Izzard on DVD.

Anyway, I hope to post more in the future.

Sarah