As a Pagan, a member of an ancient and honorable religious tradition, I often feel like a stranger in a strange land. There are plenty of reasons for this, but perhaps the most obvious is in the realm of human sexuality. In short, most Pagans like sex. That is to say that we incorporate sexuality within our religion as a sacrament, or employ sexual symbolism in our rituals, or at least accept sex as a positive human activity. Usually all three. Because the public perception of religion is heavily influenced by Christianity, currently the dominant religious zeitgeist of the late 20th century, sex and religion are generally regarded as having nothing to do with each other, or even as contradictory. So it is that "sacred sexuality" has hitherto been regarded as mostly a middle-eastern or oriental phenomenon, not Western. Yet Paganism in its European and American forms is profoundly Western, predating Christ by thousands of years. Except for the mostly successful smear campaign by the Christian church against Paganism, there is no reason to believe that Pagan attitudes towards sex are not just as legitimate as the Christian ones. And for us, of course, they are more so. Sex is an ordinary, pleasurable, and life-affirming act that we believe should not be suppressed or vilified. It is not a sin, nor unholy, nor a secret to be shamefully hidden, and we have our own rules about its expression. For instance, the flap over gay and lesbian sex is pretty much a non-issue for us. Who you have sex with is a strictly a personal choice. With one important exception. The same exception we make to every activity: that it harm none. Rape, under this ethic, is never acceptable, nor is manipulative sexual coersion, nor any other form of sex that results in harm or injury to another. And that's real physical or mental harm, not the imagined or artificially created kind. So if you like to have sex with your own sex and no one is harmed by it, its OK. If you like having sex with sheep and the sheep is also having a good time, its also OK. In other words, all mutually desired sexual activity is acceptable. Group sex, incest, polyamorism, polygamy, prostitution, zoophilia, xenophelia... just let your imagination roam! There's nothing inherently wrong with any of it as long as everyone involved desires it. Pedophilia is the rare exception at this time because the possiblity that a child may incur damage that lasts a lifetime, even when they consent, is too real. However, Pagan children become sexually active earlier than non-Pagans and seem to have a better grasp of their own desires and personal boundaries. This tolerant, inclusive attitude towards sex being the case in much of Pagandom, it's not hard to see that conflicts do arise between Pagans and the mainstream American culture. Non-Pagan society is not condusive to Pagan values, and though that fact is not itself a problem, the reality is that we are often forced by law to hide our beliefs and practices. The fact is, when it comes to sex, the supposidly secular civil laws that govern Americans are often synonymous with Christian moral doctrine. When prostitution, beastiality, and other "perverted" or "indecent" forms of consensual sex are punished with fines and jail, the legal system is being abused in the service of christianized beliefs. There's nothing wrong with these beliefs FOR CHRISTIANS or christianized persons, but forcing others to conform to those sexual restrictions, prohibitions and taboos is not only wrong and unAmerican, but its a violation of the Constitutional prohibition against the Establishment of a state religion. The Christians have skirted this prohibition by simply expunging morality from the definition of religion, cloaking their sexual mores under terms like "family values" and "public decency". At the crux of the problem for Pagans is that we are in many ways the polar opposite of Christianity in values and morals. Christians can fit certain types of violence into their religious system, but rarely sexual adventurism; the Bible is a visciously violent and cruel book, but sex is frowned upon. On the contrary, Pagans are almost exclusively non-violent but have no qualms about what consenting adults do in private. We know that other peoples sexual choices are none of our business, and in truth, it's not the law's business either. Unfortunately many people are still barbaric enough to inflict great harm on persons who do not agree with and conform to the majority opinion, as relected in law and enforced by police. That is why Pagans have gotten to be experts at hiding ourselves away, hesitant to express our religious beliefs in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Like Jews and Blacks and Gays and Mormons and all the other groups who have suffered from American bigotry and hate, Pagans by greater numbers are coming out of the broomcloset and defending their Constitutional rights as a religious minority. The test of the Bill of Rights, after all, is not in the protection of the majority, but in those smaller groups for whom it was originally intended.