"Pecenke {the girl's dad} said he was upset because the school district doesn't send students home for having ashes on their foreheads for Ash Wednesday.If they allow it for one religion they can not ban it from another. The superintendent's statement basically nullifies this girls beliefs by seperating it from 'faith'.
Livovich {district superintendent} said that was different, however, because it is part of a person's faith. Livovich said he had done some research and found no indication that wearing a pentagram on the face is a part of a person's faith."
The problem with the many pagan religions is that they do not have a central body of doctrine to stand up for them - it is fairly individually based, keeping to the tradition that each 'tribe' or community would have had their own ways of doing things in the religions hey-day.
Another problem is that there is no real records of tradition customs because of the 'purification' of history by the major religious victors of the many scurmishes before the 10th or 11th centuries.
Still another problem is the amount of superstition, bigotry, niavitee, ignorance, mistrust, and hatred towards the pagan religion - it prevents people from doing any real research of the many forms of the religion before making sweeping statements ... such as this one:
"... done some research and found no indication that wearing a pentagram on the face is a part of a person's faith ... "
While it might not be so in one pagan group, perhaps it is in the one this child belongs to. In actuality, there are pagan groups who believe that wearing symbols or words upon their body will in fact embide the person with their power or meaning.
Some of these groups believe it enough to have not only ritualistic tattooing but also 'cutting', leaving scars upon their bodies which show when they tan.
Such a sweeping statement can not be made ... it would be like my saying all christians use the KJV of the bible because it is the most popular version sold. It would be like basing my ideas of protestants on the teachings of Martin Luther because he is the one who broke away from the church.
It would be like my basing what Jewish life is like based on the teachings in the Old Testament ... while it would give an indication of one particular version of any of these groups it would never give the whole picture --- and the principal would know that, and would have made a decision based on the individual.
No this was religious discrimination.
Click to join MonthlyDishcloths
No comments:
Post a Comment