Inside the Mind of Linda Harvey

Click on the picture above to read about how Linda Harvey, of Missionary-Position America,  and her homo-sex-obsessed soul mate Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truthiness about Homosexuality,  might well end up in the unemployment line if everything they, and their Christianist comrades among the  extremist religious right, fear might happen under an Obama presidency comes to pass.
The Catholic-run news agency SperoNews features an interview with Linda Harvey, founder of Mission:America, and author of “Not My Child: Contemporary Paganism & the New Spirituality”, which claims to uncover the “casual occultisms” that lead teens towards “radical” Pagan spirituality. While I’m usually loathe to give people like Harvey any publicity, this piece does provide a harrowing look into her demon-haunted mind, and by extension, the minds of conservative evangelical Christians like her.

“A narrow definition of witchcraft would be a series of rituals, spells and actions that attempt, whether they realize it or not, to contact the demonic realm to try to get the evil spirits to cooperate with them with whatever they want to do … [witchcraft and the occult] has penetrated virtually all areas of entertainment and the media … Unfortunately, all these children have to do to get information is get on the Internet. Several Web sites have a youth section where kids can go and find covens in their cities and suburbs. Yes, these youth are going right from these books and media to these fora. All it takes is for them to have a little more interest and then going a little further with their interest and looking it up.”

Like all accomplished conspiracy theorists, there is no room for any competing theories or explanations, the secular world is an evil Satan-ruled place, and it is funnelling children towards Witchcraft covens. Anything that is not constantly sanctifying the Christian God is not only suspect, but actively anti-Christian.

“My family doesn’t celebrate Halloween since I became a Christian … October 31 is the pagans’ highest holiday and we are helping them celebrate it. What a slap in the face to our wonderful God! … keep [your children] in a good Christian school or home school them. Do not send them to public school … read and watch everything your children read and watch. Don’t assume anything your children read or watch is harmless. There are all kinds of accommodations to pagan beliefs and other practices throughout children’s media.”

Obviously Linda Harvey doesn’t speak for all Christians, or even most Christians, but she does represent a sizable demographic. It is with these sorts of believers that no real dialog can be accomplished, to the Linda Harvey’s of the world we are Satanic zombies overrunning all that is good, and the only solution is to wall themselves off and await God’s wrath/love to set the world to rights. No amount of logic or rational explanations of how Harry Potter isn’t some sort of Wiccan recruitment tool, or how we don’t invite children (without parental consent) into our covens is going to change her made-up mind. So instead, consider this an instruction into a certain worldview, hopefully one that is shrinking away in our post-Christian world.

*The Wild Hunt

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