To answer the question in the title:

No, we are not a cult. Cults have leaders. We have none. Who, here, would we be asking you to surrender your judgement to? The latest person to host an event? Doesn't sound very effective to us.

The problem is both one of intolerance and one of public perceptions. Judeo-Pagans seem to be just barely accepted in the community, and Christo-Pagans have been greeted with open hostility. They would come to us in confidence, having often been living in a closet within a closet, as it were, as hesitant to tell their fellow Pagans about the non-pagan aspects of their faith, as they would be to tell many of their neighbors about their paganism. I want to be as sure as I can that when they speak openly here, they won't be speaking to someone who would betray that confidence.

Further, we will be encouraging critical thought here, and sometimes that means criticizing ideas that another will hold dogmatically. Sometimes, that commentary will be posted here under a pseudonym, and someone will be unhappy about that - unhappy enough to try to do something unpleasant about it. Such are our times in this age of Political Correctness, unprincipled fanaticism being excused as being mere youthful zeal in one's pursuit of a cause. So, we shield our members from harassment or abuse for having written something unpopular, leaving the person who disagrees with them no recourse, save for writing an article in opposition, a recourse we encourage all to pursue.

We mentioned public perceptions.

There might be some value to taking a look at those rules we mentioned on the last page, if you were wondering why we didn't simply publish a schedule of events and invite the general public to drop by. Or why we "hide" behind pseudonyms. We live in a society in which many people have trouble accepting that there is a difference, a profound difference, between sex and love. You mention that you're worshipping the goddess of the latter, and soon you're confronted with a line of heavily panting adolescent boys going "Awesome! When do we get to #?!@# the priestess, dude?" Hence our position is that we'd rather invite you to come to one of the events where one of us (or a friend) will be present, and we'll meet you there.

There are two virtues to this approach. One is that, unlike some other groups, we would be encouraging members to belong to other groups as well as our own, and would be scheduling with that in mind. One of the problems with Pagan society, as with society in general, in the 1990s has been, I think, the breakup of the population into small, relatively isolated groups. We'd like to help restore a sense of community, and by promoting an overlap between groups, we promote the network of connections that helps a community arise. This serves to benefit the larger Pagan community.

The other virtue is that it allows us a chance to screen our those who, for one reason or another, would be disruptive - the puritans as well as the pigs. One issue, here, is that unless we have an overwhelmingly good reason to not let you do something, here - and "it's not proper" doesn't qualify - we'll probably let you. You want to come dressed as a penguin and dance around singing "I'm a little teapot", at the end of the meeting? As long as you're not off-key, fine.

And let's face it, that kind of freedom is not standard issue, even in the Pagan community, where, often, one person can shut down any act of non-conformity merely by saying "I'm not comfortable with that". Some people will strongly disapprove, and some of them will not be above spreading rumors at the expense of those who won't live the way they're told to. Some will listen to those rumors. At that point, so much for the networking. So, membership in this group is not a matter to be divulged to outsiders, and will not be, until tolerance, once again, is more than a buzzword.

If we did it any other way, people would not feel free to be their own strange (or, perhaps, not so strange) selves. Let's be realistic about our time and place. We live in a city where, with public approval, the police have been known to step in, in force, to prevent as innocuous a thing as playing bongos in public at the end of the Blues festival and have arrested people merely for playing charades on the El. We've gone past "judgemental" in this city, straight into fascism.

It's just silly to imagine that real strangeness is going to be greeted tolerantly, here, or that those indulging in it publicly will get much respect from those around them, afterwards. If we announce to the world, "here we are at this address, come and see", that repressive world is going to step inside our doors and our souls. If we tell you any stories about our get togethers, believe it, the names will be changed.

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