This is a
long article, but well done and interesting. Not quite a "witch hunt" per se (i.e. it could happen to any one of a non-majority religion) but another wake up call.
http://www.inpgh.com/html/2001_08_01/news/feature.tmpl
Wyrdsister
__________________
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND MATE
A local Wiccan may go to jail for exposing his child to his religion. Is this the 21st century, or the 17th?
Written by MARTY LEVINE
"This is the ghoulish corner," Conon Brewer jokes, leading a visitor past his front door, with its "Jesus Lives" sticker, to his computer desk. It's the most colorful spot in Brewer's small house in Cabot, an hour's drive north of Pittsburgh in Butler County, but it's scary only if you haven't experienced American pop culture lately.
Scattered on the table and tacked to the walls are a spider left over from last Halloween and a plastic raven from Wal-Mart. There are Pokemon and cat figures Conon says his 10-year-old daughter Sara gave him. There are skulls used in fish tanks, Buddhas, a yin-yang symbol, gargoyles, skeletons and a stone water fountain of the type available in most department stores. There is a Cartman mouse pad. And there is a poster of a Hindu god, which Conon got during a public tour of the Sri Venkateswara Temple in Penn Hills with Sara and his new wife Paula in April.
"My uncle, who is into Harley-Davidsons," Paula volunteers, "his personal space is scarier."It would be an absurd contest, except for this: Conon Brewer may be held in contempt of court this week for allowing Sara to see his computer desk and anything else that hints at his personal sense of spirituality. He stands accused of violating his 2000 divorce decree, which orders him not to expose his young daughter to books with "spirits and ghosts" or to the teachings of his religion -- Wicca.
It is a decree he never signed. He knows perfectly well it violates his First Amendment rights.
Wicca, like all religions, is impossible to summarize in a few sentences. It has its feet in the pre-Christian nature-centered pagan beliefs of Europe and its head in New Age and Eastern philosophies. Some Wiccans are witches who join covens, but the spells and other "magic" Wiccans practice, they emphasize, is centered on improving the self. There are several neopagan sects and a variety of deities; most commonly, pagans acknowledge a Lord and Lady at the head of the cosmos. Although Wicca remains an obscure practice in mainstream America, it is common enough that the U.S. Army allows Wiccans to worship in services at army posts.
Conon's ex-wife Jennifer refused to comment to INPGH on this case. But in her contempt petition she claims that their daughter, Sara, following her first and only visit to Butler in April, reported that Conon held a Wiccan service at his home and took Sara to another service at a friend's home, as well as to a party at Hocus Pocus, a New Age store in Oakland. Sara also told her Conon "is a high priest and his wife is a high priestess" and that Conon "dresses in ritualistic attire and displays a symbol representing said Wicca religion around his neck, on his computer, and on various other things in his home...."
All of which is substantially true, Conon says -- apart from the attire, which he dons only for services. And he was careful, he emphasizes, not to expose Sara to Wicca's teachings, as opposed to its trappings or participants (his house and his friends). Sara was simply not present anywhere near the worship services, Conon says, or wandered up to Wiccan discussions voluntarily and without participating. The simple stone altar behind the Brewer house -- about the size of a stool -- is set in a clearing at the far end of the backyard, invisible from the house. And the crowded party at tiny Hocus Pocus, which spilled out onto the sidewalks of Meyran Avenue, left Sara no chance to do anything but socialize, Conon adds.
Wiccan artifacts may be unavoidable in the Brewer house, but their meaning is not at all obvious to the uninitiated, and they're hardly frightening. In the Brewers' otherwise empty dining room sits another small altar and what Conon refers to as Wiccan "knickknacks" in a wooden cabinet and on an antique chest: candles, herbs and oils, souvenirs from nature walks and an ornate doll, which turns out to be Paula's favorite Christmas tree angel -- representing the feminine side of nature, she explains. The obviously fake spine-bone staff in one corner, topped by a skull, is just part of the costumes Conon and Paula wear for fun to Renaissance Fairs. The maypole is for a Wiccan holiday. It is a collection no more or less obtrusive or influential than the family photos, vacation seashells and kitschy art found scattered throughout most homes.
But all of this is really beside the point. Simply substitute the word "Jewish" or "Lutheran" -- or the name of any other mainstream religion -- for the word "Wicca" in the contempt petition above, then make Conon a minister, an imam or a Catholic priest, and his dilemma becomes clear.
He is not being charged with exposing his child to snake bites or even with pressuring her to change her religion -- practices that, courts rightly find, have harmed children in recent divorce cases involving parents of differing Christian faiths. He is not even being charged with practicing symbolic deity ingestion or with cutting off a part of his child's sex organ -- both accepted rites of mainstream religions today.
In fact, he is not being accused of doing anything at all to Sara specifically. He is simply being charged with following a religion not many people understand, or care to acknowledge.
Conon Brewer, 32, is a red-bearded, ponytailed, jeans-and-T-shirt kind of guy who works for Ness Plumbing in Harmarville. He met Paula, 31, a small, slim blonde Butler native who works for Prudential Financial, while his first marriage was dissolving; they married and moved here last year.
But Conon and Jennifer were married -- and divorced -- in rural Lawrence County, Tennessee, which is where he is headed this week to face contempt charges. Part of the case may stem from the fact that he abandoned his Southern Baptist roots in the same state that brought us the Scopes monkey trial. But certainly part of the case is born of the usual human soap opera.
Conon discovered Wicca in the first six months of his 1988 marriage to Jennifer, while stationed in Watertown, New York, as a member of the Army Infantry, Tenth Mountain Division. He explored the religion through books and online, and three years ago found a Wiccan group in Nashville, 80 miles from his home in Lawrenceburg, a three-factory town in Lawrence County.
Jennifer, Conon says, was reluctant to go with him at first, but eventually she participated, bringing Sara voluntarily to Wiccan worship, as confirmed in court transcripts of their divorce proceedings. By the divorce, she was explaining her attendance as a way to feel close to Conon. Conon himself says he got something different out of the experience.
"I wanted spirituality in my life," he says. "I wanted to find other people who thought like myself."
The couple moved, for a brief time in 1997, closer to Nashville and their new house of worship. By October, 1998, Jennifer had re-embraced Christianity and the couple separated. Jennifer took Sara back to live with her parents. Six weeks later Conon, depressed, lost his job and moved back to Lawrenceburg and Jennifer, with the informal stipulation that he wouldn't have any contact with Wicca or his Wiccan friends. He gave up being a union pipefitter to take a factory job for lower wages.
After six months, he says, "I couldn't live like that." He began attending his Wiccan worship circle twice a month and took a construction job in Nashville. Finally, he moved himself there, where Jennifer served him with divorce papers. During those two months living alone he met Paula, also a Wiccan and also getting divorced after more than a decade, although for reasons having nothing to do with any religious conflict, she says.
Conon's adultery, although no crime in most states, is still grounds for divorce anywhere. But Conon's religion cannot legally be the reason to award physical and legal custody of Sara to Jennifer, who is a Southern Baptist. Nor can there be a blanket prohibition against exposing Sara to Wicca unless Jennifer proves that harm could come to her child, according to Conon's lawyer and a variety of family law experts nationwide.
But with Tennessee Chancery Court Judge Stella Hargrove -- a front-line elected jurist, equivalent to Allegheny County's Court of Common Pleas judges -- presiding over the divorce, Jennifer Brewer didn't even have to try to prove her daughter risked harm from Wicca. Hargrove, as court transcripts reveal, doesn't appear to believe Wicca even qualifies as a religion.
"Now Wicca appears to be a lifestyle," Hargrove said from the bench, "that has a creed of harm none, do what you will. It's been described to the court as a form of some kind of witchcraft. It's been described to the court as a lifestyle that has no moral code. There's no right or wrong. And while there may be some factors under this lifestyle that encourage visualizing yourself to be the best you can, to be in tune with yourself -- and there's some testimony about reincarnation and meditation; but on the other hand, there's also substantial testimony as to partial and total nudity that's involved in this lifestyle."
One hesitates to imagine what Hargrove might make of Buddhism, or any other religion whose followers outnumber the population of Tennessee but don't happen to live anywhere near her.
She also chastises Conon Brewer for things that might actually have an impact on his daughter, such as his choice of job or how much time he has spent with her. But after admitting she has never even heard the opinion of 10-year-old Sara, Hargrove leaps to her conclusion:
"Finding that on the front end of this marriage after this child was born these parties both agreed that Sara would be brought up under Christianity, then the court is going to limit the physical custody" -- that is, award control of Sara to Jennifer, leading to a divorce decree that forbids Conon's religion in his daughter's life.
William C. Barnes Jr., Conon's lawyer, seems as puzzled by the judge's decision as anyone. He calls himself "quite conservative," religiously, and admits not to knowing much about Wicca. But nowhere does the law say a couple, married or otherwise, must stick to any decision made on the "front end," let alone one this important. "I make a lot of front end decisions that are wrong," Barnes says. "If I make a decision to send my child to public school, do I have to keep that up?"
Hargrove's opinions and the prohibition against Wicca may just be a case, as lawyers say, of getting "hometowned" -- being hit with a ruling reflecting the peculiar ethos of a single locale. "What if the predominant religion in the United States was Wicca?" Barnes says. "Would I have to throw my King James away?
"It was just a witch hunt," he adds without intended irony.
"The child's best interests trump the parents' freedoms," notes local lawyer Joanne Ross Wilder, who recently researched the history of religion in custody cases. She says parents have been required to vaccinate their kids, give medical treatment and meet compulsory education requirements -- albeit by home schooling -- despite the religious prohibitions of some sects.
But courts are divided about what constitutes the "best interests" between two mutually exclusive religious beliefs. Half the time judges favor a variety of religious experiences for the children of divorce; other times they rule that multiple faiths cause confusion and therefore harm a child.
After hearing Judge Stella Hargrove's assessment of Wicca, Wilder seems unimpressed. "So far," she says, "I haven't heard [the judge] say anything about what's in the best interest of this child."
The seminal case in Tennessee on this issue -- one that Conon Brewer's lawyer may be able to hang his arguments on -- is Neely v. Neely, a 1987 divorce in which a non-churchgoing father discovered Pentecostal-ism after his divorce and wanted to expose the couple's son to his new faith. His ex-wife failed to prove that her son would be harmed by attending the father's church, as opposed to hers, and he was granted that opportunity on every other weekend.
In another Tennessee case, Baker v. Baker, from 1997, the court's arguments were even stronger. While ruling that the divorced parents' two Christians sects were at doctrinal loggerheads, and that the parents were using religion to beat each other up in front of the kids, the judge affirmed that courts must maintain neutrality, favoring neither one religion nor the other while requiring the parent who believes there is harm to prove it.
The court's decision quotes the Tennessee constitution: "That all men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscience...; and that no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship."
Even that neutral language contains multiple assumptions. But it ought to be good enough to support a legal remedy for Conon Brewer -- even in Tennessee.
Which is not to say that being Wiccan in Pittsburgh is all a frolic in the woods.
On the back patio of the South Side's Beehive coffeehouse, a dozen members of the nine-month-old Pittsburgh Pagan House Foundation gathered on July 19. Clutching very modern talismans -- cellphones, coffee and cigarettes -- they looked, frankly, quite a bit less unusual than the rest of the Beehive crowd.
Kelly Muzyczka-Lenhart, co-president with David Zoltan of PPHF, conducted business with a sleeping infant in her arms. Paula Brewer took notes while Conon spent the entire time socializing in the corner with other members. Hot topics: planning Pagan Day Out and Pagan Night Out. "Something family oriented," Muzyczka-Lenhart urged.
The core group of members active now is small, especially in festival season. "I think our best bet is to concentrate on the Witches' Ball," she said, "and" -- and what? And recruit little children? And perpetrate evil in the world? What? "And make it the best kick-ass time possible," she concluded.
So it went for this fledgling group of co-religionists, travelling entirely under the radar of mainstream faiths. They discussed how to audit themselves, how to discipline antagonistic members and how to be a successful religious organization. A visiting pagan from Columbus gave high marks to a book he'd read on how to run a mainstream Christian church.
"They've been in the religion organization business a lot longer than we have," Muzyczka-Lenhart laughed. And then the group discussed how to make certain people actually read the book.
Meanwhile, the other PPHF co-president and co-founder, David Zoltan, added that quintessential Pittsburgh moment, announcing he would be leaving the city shortly because "there are no jobs for me in Pittsburgh," despite his recent degree from Carnegie Mellon.
What was it like, then, living the pagan life in Pittsburgh?
Zoltan and Muzyczka-Lenhart were looking at a Lawrenceville church property up for sale recently, hoping to create a physical home for the PPHF.
"What are you going to do with it?" asked a local resident, noticing the pair.
"We're thinking of turning it into a community center," Zoltan told him. ("We were trying to be coy," Muzyczka-Lenhart explains.)
"Lawrenceville already has a community center," said the local.
"It's for a spiritual group -- Pittsburgh Pagan House," Zoltan revealed.
"Is that like atheist or something?" came the reply. "This is a good Catholic neighborhood."
Group member Sharon, who works in sales, says some of her customers wouldn't buy from her if they knew she was pagan, although her boss is obviously okay with it; he called her one day to ask for a rainstorm to keep his daughter's sports team from going down in defeat. "I take a lot of good-natured teasing from my co-workers," Sharon said. "I'll say I was raised Presbyterian if I'm really pushed." She keeps the tiny pentangle she wears inside her clothing.
Muzyczka-Lenhart, who was raised Jewish, began working for a reform Jewish temple after she had turned Wiccan. The friend who hired her knew she was pagan but the rabbis, and her co-workers, did not.
"I would use terms like 'spirituality' and 'our religious priorities at home,'" she said. "I went through that with my in-laws as well. I can't count how many times I've used some sort of euphemism."
"My favorite," Paula Brewer said, "is 'it's kind of like Native American spirituality."
"People aren't threatened by that," Sharon added.
Meanwhile, Conon Brewer's hearing on Aug. 3 will help determine how much low-level legal authorities still feel threatened by things they don't understand, like Wicca.
"We believe all paths are sacred," Paula Brewer says. "We don't believe if you're not of our paths you're damned."
Conon admits he was once behind on his child support payments and is still in arrears for some of the debt left over from his first marriage. But he says he's not interested in fighting for custody, and he appears to be one of the calmest upset divorced fathers imaginable. He remains certain that his daughter deserves to understand him.
"I just want to defend myself," he says. "At no time was I pushing my religion on Sara. She was raised Christian. I had no desire to mess up her life, to tell her her religion was wrong. But I didn't want my daughter to believe her father was going to hell."
That "Jesus Lives" sticker on the front door? The Brewer house used to be Paula's mother's place, and Paula has simply never removed the evidence. But she isn't in a hurry to do so.
"You know what the whole thing is?" she says. "That's a valid path too."
Much as Muslims consider Moses and Jesus to be prophets, Wiccans and other pagans can count Jesus, the Greek gods or any other deity in their personal pantheons. Call it generosity of spirit. It's an admirable quality; Wicca might have a thing or two to teach other, more established religions.
But God forbid Conon's daughter should ever find out about that. >> News editor Marty Levine's last INPGH cover story related a night's work by a Pittsburgh Police drug-busting squad [May 30].