I am a 15-year-old who is writing to respond to the letters “Evil religion” by Bill Thompson and “Students’ interest” by Cindy Mehallow (Voice of the people, Feb. 26). I have been a Wiccan for three years and am concerned when people like Mr. Thompson and Ms. Mehallow make judgments about things they know nothing about.
Unfortunately, too many people are too fast to voice their opinions about things they have not researched themselves.
Ignorance, narrow-mindedness and prejudice breed too many problems. Bad morality in this case is really ignorance, not the Wiccan religion.
Mr. Thompson and Ms. Mehallow should have researched this old and earth-centered religion in order to get their facts correct about Wicca. If they had, they would have learned that Wicca is a nature-loving religion. No Satanism or devil stuff included–no evil to be found.
Why does Ms. Mehallow think that Wiccans don’t uphold values such as don’t lie, murder, steal, etc.? It’s only out of ignorance that she would think this because Wicca’s Golden Rule is “Do what you will, as long as you harm no one.”
Wiccans believe that everything in nature is sacred and should be treated with love and respect. That doesn’t seem evil to me. In fact, Wicca holds many core values that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists share.
As for Mr. Thompson, who asks what is so wrong about terminating teacher Shari Eicher’s contract? Would he be angry if he or a teacher of his religion were to be fired on the basis of his/her religion? I think he would.
Because Ms. Eicher’s religion is Wicca, which he has judged as evil (even though his letter demonstrates he knows nothing about the religion), it is suddenly all right for her to be fired. No one should be fired from his/her job simply because of his or her religion. Ms. Eicher was not teaching or talking about her religion to her students. Instead she was fired simply because she was a Wiccan. This is very scary to me and threatens the principles our country stands for.
If we begin to fire and discriminate against people simply because of their religion, we will have a nation filled with more anger, hatred, intolerance, narrow-mindedness and prejudice. It seems to me we already have enough intolerance in this country! Mr. Thompson, Ms. Mehallow and anyone else who discriminates against something or somebody they know nothing about should get their facts straight before they bring harm to innocent people.
