I Find It Offensive; How About You

[Anymouse]

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Anybody can be a free thinker if they don't let religion effect all of their philosophy. Simple? Unless you lost your individuality and let everyone else think for you, than you are NOT a freethinker

Also anymouse why did they picket your home?

This was in 1984. I was running a Wiccan bulletin board service on my Commodore 64. (Yes. I am that old.) It became the largest BBS in Virginia Beach (in terms of users). That got it attention from the local paper, the Virginian Pilot and Ledger-Star. Then the wackos at CBN started their pickets at my apartment. Including such loving placards as "Burn the Witch."

My wife and I had to take refuge on the Naval Air Station because the police would not clear the pickets (Virginia Beach is the home of Pat Robertson and CBN, they support him far more than a military Wiccan from Michigan), and the threats became personal, and the picketers would physically block us from entering or leaving our apartment.

Gradually, as things did with BBS's back then, mine dropped in popularity when new and different BBS's came along. (One called Tom's Place, a FidoNet porn board, did especially well against mine.)

I eventually pulled down my BBS when I was transferred to Spain. I briefly set it up there, but when I found that Wicca was unlawful in Spain, I pulled it down again, primarily because the Status of Forces Agreement between the USA and Spain would not have protected me as I lived in town, not on the base in Rota.

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CBN as christian broadcast network? Sounds like a story. Still i don't see any reason to picket over something like that. Reminds me of Westboro Baptist church with all their pickets.

Yup. Christian Broadcasting Network. They are located on the west side of Virginia Beach near Chesapeake, I lived in the resort strip on the Beach. I don't know how radical they are now (but that article on the Holy Interstate 35 my wife just played seems to indicate they haven't changed much), but they also have a university as well as the television network headquarters at their site. It is that university that does all the radical evangelizing. The students do the dirty work, and Rev. Robertson can take the high road on "The 700 Club" with such claims as gay marriage will lead to sex with ducks. (I love that Garfunkel and Oates video on YouTube. It is a quack. Or a hoot._

When I lived in Virginia Beach, they picketed anything that they thought was "anti-Christian." At the time, the Edgar Cayce Foundation (also located in Virginia Beach) got nearly monthly pickets. So did the occult bookstore in Norfolk.

Not a story (in the sense of an untrue one): Virginia Beach is really wound up. They bill themselves as a "family values city" and every two hundred feet along their ninety miles of public beach there is a sign: "No food, no drinks, no beach toys, no running, no thongs, have fun." The city seal incorporates a Latin Cross.