On March 26, Roberta Stewart, known for her part in the Pentacle Quest, took part in a historic church-state simulcast held in 37 theaters across the country. Her part of the show is about 30 minutes in and covers her fight to stop discrimination against Wiccans by the V.A.

The show is now available online at :

http://tinyurl.com/5ee4bg

"Everything You Wanted to Ask About Separation of Church and State But Were Afraid to Ask” was hosted by First Freedom First, a joint project of Americans United for Separation of Church and State at: http://www.au.org/site/PageServer , and The Interfaith Alliance at: http://tinyurl.com/68m78d

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For readers of ACTION for the last two years, Roberta Stewart and the Pentacle Quest has shown up a good many times. Our first article this issue carries her latest activity taking part in a simulcast on church-state separation issues. She talked about fighting discrimination by the VA.

Work still remains to get one symbol accepted by the VA for each Pagan religion represented by active service personnel and veterans. Christian veterans have 16 variations of the Christian cross to choose from, depending on their denomination.

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A Bit of History

In December 1999 Darla Wynne went to her first Great Falls, SC town council meeting to see how to stop the crack dealers that were harassing her on the street. The subject did not get discussed because the town council was more interested in her bumper stickers and her religion. So she was outed as a Wiccan in public and told she was not welcome in the town of Great Falls. This would lead to years of harassment at council meetings for not being Christian, with increasingly church-like prayers before meetings. It also meant years of vandalism and the trashing of her house, sabotage of her vehicles, her animals being hurt, tortured and killed, death threats and attacks on her.

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The No Place to Hate Committee held a panel discussion on April 12 at the Old Town Hall in Salem, MA. To find out more I contacted Jerrie Hildebrand, one of the members of the committee, and asked for an interview. Jerrie was kind enough to say yes.

Christopher: Tell us about discussion panel held at the Old Town Hall. Who took part? What were the subjects?

Jerrie: The subject was about the Wiccan faith, path and religion bringing understanding, education and information to the larger community. The evening included Margot Adler, Wiccan priestess and NPR reporter, and myself as panelists and Dr. Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello from Salem State College as moderator. Gypsy Ravish and Katrin closed the evening out with beautiful music about the Goddess, God, our commitment to the Earth and creating a world of peace. The evening was supported by the generosity of the Salem Witch Museum and The Gathering Church as well as the City of Salem’s No Place for Hate Committee.

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at UN during Pope address to UN on April 18, 2008

http://protectreligions.org

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/protectreligions/Demonstration_images

New York: The Forum for the Protection of Religious Pluralism held a peaceful demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters during Pope address to United Nations on April 18, 2008.

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I start out not knowing what articles I will be doing for an issue. Getting enough articles is he hard part, when most of the time I am going write most, if not, all the articles.

So the hardest thing to do is sit on a story as I did with the news about Darla running for office. But running for office in a town that had been so dangerous to live in once she was outed as a Pagan by the town council was a consideration, and I didn’t want to stir up trouble for Darla. So I held my breath and wondered what would happen, as did several other people that knew about it.

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