Stone Circle Wicca (USA)

STATEMENT OF THE STONE CIRCLE TRADITION OF WICCA (USA) ON INCLUSIVITY

By Unanimous Vote of the Board of Trustees on This Day, 14 August 2020

The Stone Circle Tradition of Wicca (USA) acknowledges our faith as part of the Queer Spirituality movement. Stone Circle Wicca is home to people of all genders, sexual orientations, and identities, and while cisgender and heterosexual siblings are full members of this community, we affirm that the Queer experience is not marginal but central and foundational to our vision of spiritual community and human connectedness.

We recognize that gender, sex, sexual orientation, and sexual identity are aspects of the individual person which arise from encounters with sacred Mysteries of human love, longing, connection, desire, embodiment, self-understanding, and self-expression. Our sacred gendered and sexual selves are expressions at once of unique personhood, and at the same time also are manifestations of our chosen communities. No person has the authority or right to choose for another; each sacred individual is invested with the Divine capacity to know and live out their own gender and their own free choices in loving.

As a result of our commitment to Queer Spirituality, to freedom and responsibility, we must insist upon the full humanization of all people. We therefore affirm, celebrate, and honor trans and non-binary people, and we declare the spiritual and social equality of those who identify themselves as asexual, bisexual, cisgender, demisexual, gay, gender-fluid, genderqueer, intersex, lesbian, pansexual, Queer, questioning, same-gender-loving, straight, transgender, and by many other names.

We note with great concern the proliferation of hateful and dehumanizing speech directed against transgender people from within our family of Pagan and feminist movements. As a religious community with roots in radical feminism, we reject utterly the false claim that radical feminism can be anything other than trans-inclusive, anti-racist, and intersectional. Instead we insist that the struggle for woman's equality and liberation overlaps with and supports the struggles of Queer and trans equality and liberation.

We publicly renew our longstanding commitment to being a spiritual path that leads away from systems of oppression and toward a future based on full humanization and universal liberation. We honor the truth that every human being, whatever their identities, many gaze into the Obsidian Mirror of the Divine and see themselves reflected, exactly as they are.

We remember that the best authorities and experts on transgender and non-binary people's lives and needs are transgender and non-binary people themselves.

We recognize that individuals may, due to the profusion of different experiences of the world, share particularizing Mysteries that connect them to multiple communities and identities. There is room in Wicca for all these possible selves, including multiple forms of gender-specific Mysteries and gatherings based on shared experiences of embodiment and life journey. However, no one experience is an essentialized version of "being a woman" or "being a man," enabling some to demean others for coming to their own gender identity by a different path. 

In our Tradition's house, transgender, genderqueer, and non-binary people are neither unwelcome strangers nor even merely welcomed guests, but instead full householders, sharers in every blessing and birthright of the Wiccan faith.

Recognizing that the circle of the sacred has no outside, we will continue to hold our ceremonies, classes, and gatherings as inclusive and trans-affirming spaces. Those who come into our circle may expect such affirmation, and should know that at SCW venues, we will not permit hateful words or actions against any person on the basis of gender identity. We will not provide a forum to those who engage in transphobic speech, or demean their trans and non-binary siblings with deliberate demeaning, misgendering, or cruel labels. Recognizing that verbal and physical violence against transgender and non-binary people is both widespread and intolerable, we will be proactive and steadfast against cissexist words and deeds.

Our commitment is that our Tradition will always be a place of homecoming for those called to the Wiccan path, including fully and without exception people of all genders and no gender. As individuals, our actions to achieve Queer equality and liberation, and to promote the safety of transgender and non-binary people in particular, can not and will not be limited to just this statement, but we wish the broader community to know that for Stone Circle Wicca (USA) there can be no compromise in defense of the rights and dignity of our people.