More people needing freedom lessons.

This is where the idea of replacing liberty with human rights ends up - a bunch of witches complaining of being persecuted discriminated against by the Catholic Church when they booked a church hall for a Halloween do. Yep, really.

Sandra Davis, the "high priestess" of Crystal Cauldron group in Stockport, Greater Manchester, said she was shocked to be told that the pagan group was not considered to be compatible with the church's "ethos".

Shocked her? Why? What the fuck did she think they'd say? "Yeah, come on in, we're planning to have mass in the local Sikh temple that night anyway, because the Sikhs are using the synagogue and the Jews are using the mosque and the muslims are using the CofE church ever since they got that fucking druid in and made Anglicanism about as fashionable as brown cords, tweed jackets with leather elbow patches and a Zapata moustache. It's called 'Faith Swap', what do you think?" Of course they're going to fucking discriminate against you for not being compatible with their beliefs, and this is perfectly fine because - deep breath - IT'S THEIR FUCKING BUILDING. Oh, and incidentally it doesn't come remotely fucking close to 'persecution' despite what you'd like to imagine to achieve that coveted victim status you're so clearly after in order to get your way.

"It makes you think that there is still a little bit of that attitude from the past of the Catholics wanting to burn witches," she said.

See? In the mind of this silly witch (sorry, gratuitous pun I know) "no, you can't use the hall" is equal to "we're going to put you on a pile of oily wood and light it".

"I thought we had made progress, tat [sic] we could accept other people's religious paths."

Dream on! Clearly we haven't made any fucking progress at all. Your idea of acceptance of "other people's religious paths" is for them to accept you not matter how batshit crazy your beliefs may be. You, on the other hand, feel absolutely no obligation to accept them and their crazy beliefs, one of which involves not renting out their property to people whose beliefs aren't reconcilable with their own.

As I said the other day, I don't believe in anything you can't show me. Values I can "believe in" in the sense that I have an opinion on them, but I'll treat with equal scepticism* any mystic forces, gods and other entities that must be taken on faith. But I'm siding with the Pope's troops er, wrong thing to say, his team on this. Their beliefs are no more convincing to me than those of Wiccans, but they own the building and are perfectly at liberty to set the house rules. If that's no Wiccans, no food, no Abba tribute bands or whatever then that's just tough for Amethyst Selmeselene, or Mrs Davis as she's known in this dimension, or that ridiculous bullying fuckwit as she's known in this house.

Amethyst thingummy Davis, go fuck yourself with the bristly end of your own broom, you deranged bat.


*To anyone reading this who is a believer of something, I'm not saying it's not there - I'm just saying that you can't prove it is. If you want to believe then good for you, and I'm not going to knock you for it. I'm literally agnostic (only because atheism strikes me as being belief in the absence of something) about everything from God to the zodiac, but in the continuing absence of anything convincing I think it all seems equally unlikely.