Front Royal, VA: A Witch-Free Community

A Front Royal citizen speaks at a hearing about the witchcraft ban, comparing witchcraft to homosexuality.

Last night there was a fabulous story on the local news about how Front Royal, a quaint little Virginia town, is sharply divided over an old part of the city code banning witchcraft, “gypsies,” and fortune telling. The offensive language has already been removed, but the law is due for a second reading before it can be fully repealed, and the good people of Front Royal are taking the threat of witchcraft in their community very seriously.

Two interesting things from the sections of the debate quoted in the article linked above:

A few anti-witchcraft speakers linked witchcraft to homosexuality, in a “we want neither gays nor witches in our town because they’ll try to convert our children” kind of way.

But more interestingly, Catholicism seemed to be quite a flashpoint. Several of the pro-witchcraft speakers referenced their own Catholicism, as a source of a belief in religious freedom or citing the Catholic church as an example of commercialized religion (the way a tarot card reader charging for her services might be.) But at the same time, acceptance of witchcraft seemed to be described as an implicit attack on Catholicism, as noted by one pro-witchcraft speaker:

“You know there are abominations within the Catholic Church and within the other religions that happened and we’re not focusing on that and condemning people for being Catholic. We’re only wanting to practice our spirituality.”

I predict that this sleepy little town will begrudgingly permit witchcraft and move back out of the spotlight, but I also kind of hope it doesn’t, because wicca and paganism’s legal statuses are an interesting question and I’d love to see what happened in court.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Animated Social Media Icons Powered by Acurax Wordpress Development Company