Religious Discrimination
Throughout our news, etc. we hear a lot about religious discrimination. People often fear what they don't understand, and thus try to avoid it, or openly revile it, or even use passive aggression against it. Oftentimes, you won't know why the discrimination is taking place, or even THAT it is taking place. It is quite easy to keep it relatively hidden, or be quite subtle about it, for example if you are in charge of hiring, and you deny a candidate because of their religion but justify it in other ways. Up until now, I hadn't knowingly experienced religious discrimination personally, or at least found anyone with the guts enough to tell me that I was being discriminated against because of my religion.
Imagine my surprise and confusion when a friend that I had known for over 10 years told me that he would not provide a service (for pay) to a group I am affiliated with, because we are Pagans. I am still rather in shock over it. Of course, I tried to get him to tell me the reason for this, but he refuses to say why Paganism bothers him to that extent.
Of course, I feel personally betrayed in a way. While obviously an individual has the right to deny services to anyone they see fit under many circumstances, my feelings are hurt, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I believe that a person's religion shouldn't matter so long as they didn't try to impose it on others or use it to hurt people. Perhaps it's because I thought that this friend was more open minded than to discriminate against an entire group of people. Perhaps it was because I thought he liked me, and this had never come up in the previous 10 years. Or, perhaps it's because he won't TELL me what issues he has.
This is definitely something I'm going to have to mull over for quite some time. It is quite difficult to consider.