Cross Posted at Pagan Rock Circle a “Hate Crime?”

The pagans at the Air Force Academy (yes, you read that right) recently got themselves a taxpayer funded circle of rocks to do whatever it is pagans do.  It was just a bunch of rock put in place to prevent erosion, but the Earth worshippers found it to be a place of power.

However, since they started channeling the power of stone, they have been the victim of what one pagan categorizes as a “hate crime.”

Someone leaned a cross up against a rock.

Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said an Air Force Academy staffer spotted the cross — erected with railroad ties — lying against a rock at a worship area for pagan groups at the academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Jan. 17.

Tech. Sgt. Brandon Longcrier, a self-described pagan who sponsors the group that worships there, said the incident was similar to someone leaving a pentagram or a pagan symbol at the academy’s chapel altar and claimed he and others are victim of a hate crime. In an e-mail to Weinstein’s group, Longcrier said his group had been "thrown under the bus by the system we trusted" and that the "hate crime" has been ignored.

I went to church one day last spring.  Someone had put a thick layer of gravel on the parking lot.  I thought it was routine maintenance.

Turns out it was a hate crime.  Some wiccan clearly vandalized our parking area.

Seriously though, leaning a cross up against your circle of rocks isn’t a hate crime.  Can we stop flying off the handle? 

Maybe I’m wrong, but this looks to me to be a Christian telling another group that there is an alternative.  They weren’t all up in their face about it; they weren’t screaming that they were going to Hell.

And to play Devil’s Advocate (is that hate speech), why couldn’t they just worship the wood?  It was a tree once.  It’s probably got some power left.

Yeah, this post probably just lost me all my pagan readers.  But it’s not a hate crime.

What do you think?