From: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (That's RAEDWYNN, dammit!)
Subject: Re: consort gender
Reply-To: tabron@binah.cc.brandeis.edu
Organization: Brandeis University
Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1992 00:57:04 GMT

um, Arval...

I must beg to take mild issue with your delicately put and yet puzzling
sentence:
"The swastika and the pentagram may not be registered in SCA armory
because the corporation does not want to give its sanction to the use of
these symbols which are intimately associated in the modern mind with
mass murder."
In the first place:
As a witch I would like you to clarify just why you think the public
associates "mass murder" with pentagrams? Weird things, bizarre cults,
but I have never seen a pentacle get the kind of negative reaction one
has to a swastika. Yes, the general public is uneducated and fearful
about Wicca; but they _know_ what a swastika means, and they're right
to be afraid and/or offended. I don't like your placing these symbols
in the same category. BUT...
In the second place:
The society is not interested in whether or not it might give it's "sanction"
to these symbols by allowing them to be displayed; it states quite clearly
in the section of the Corpora on religious  freedom / tolerance that
symbols may not be displayed which might be termed coercive, intolerant,
etc. by anyone else. Personally, I don't see why everybody and their brother
gets to put crosses on their arms and i can't use a pentacle when the known
cases of witches burning Christians at the stake is in the negative
numbers, as opposed to the opposite case, but I am not prepared to 
attack the Corpora on this point. The _idea_ behind it is, as always, 
courtesy. Displaying the swastika is worse than discourteous, it is insulting
and terrifying. Apparently some people feel the same way about pentacles,
so i don't display them. My point is, it's not a question of whether or
not the society gives it's "sanction" (as if most people would care if
the "society", a large and seemingly impersonal organization the way you
phrase it, _would_) it's just a question of the society wanting, however
misguidedly, to preserve the freedom and happiness of its members.

As for the same-sex consort question:
I've avoided putting my $4 in so far. I've seen some truly homophobic
answers, some merely stupid answers, and some vaguely acceptable answers
(though one of the best of the latter, "It's not period," is, as far as 
I'm concerned, balderdash. These are the CURRENT Middle Ages, and thank
whatever deities you like we've progressed since the last ones. We don't
tax serfs into the ground these days either (well, WE don't :-) nor do
we lop the heads off of people we don't like for a living. 

But my lady asks me to pass on this message:
If I were fighting, and had to designate a lord rather than my lover/
wife/sweetie as my "inspiration", then I wouldn't be fighting for the
honor of my true love, I'd be fighting for some schmoe. This goes directly
against the chivalric ideal that Arval says is the whole reason for the
idea in the first place.
So sorry, that reasoning won't stand.

Homosexual couples may not be period but neither is women's rights or
tolerance towards Jews or many other things we could name. We don't
not do those things just because they're not period, so not being period
isn't really that good a criterion.
----------Above quoted VERBATIM from Etain macDhomhnuill.

So that's what I (and my sweetie) have to say.

--Raedwynn aet thaem Grene Wudu

Raedwynn the Loudmouthed
Judith L. Tabron		Raedwynn aet thaem Grene Wudu
Dept. of English Lit.		Yasun Bogeleku
Brandeis University		Household of the Great Dark Horde
Waltham, MA			(currently scouti-- LIVING in Carolingia)
	SAXON MONGOLS UNITE!
Darwin's Law -- If you're Dumb, you Die!

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