81 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
81 lines
3.9 KiB
Plaintext
1
|
|
|
|
|
|
Believe it or not, this comes up from time to time:
|
|
whether or not witches are tax-exempt.
|
|
Witches think they are, and the state of Rhode Island is
|
|
the latest to agree. The state granted tax-exempt status to Our
|
|
Lady of the Roses Wiccan Church in Providence. The witches claim
|
|
it's not the money, it's the principle of the thing. (Won't
|
|
anybody ever admit it's the money?)
|
|
The witches say they hope the state's approval will make
|
|
people accept witches as legitimate. This is something witches
|
|
want. There's even a Witches' Anti-Defamation League. Boy. If
|
|
you can't bad-mouth witches, who can you bad-mouth? (I am
|
|
actually considering starting some kind of minority subculture
|
|
that is willing to be defamed and perhaps actually seeks out
|
|
defamation. I bet it will be the most popular minority group
|
|
ever.)
|
|
I'm not sure the witches will get their wish. Some folks
|
|
probably liked witches better when they weren't hustling a free
|
|
ride from the government. Now, you probably get people scuffling
|
|
around Providence muttering, "If they treated us half as good as
|
|
they treat them witches...."
|
|
Witches, it turns out, are also bothered and bewildered
|
|
about the whole, as our president has taughht us to say, Satanism
|
|
thing.
|
|
You mean it was all a big misunderstanding? Whoo, are our
|
|
faces red.
|
|
I am willing to concede that current practitioners of
|
|
Wicca are causing no more trouble for the commonweal than, say,
|
|
the Elks, but I've got to assume that, way back when, a few
|
|
witches stepped out of line. I mean, if they were all bent on
|
|
curing shingles and landscape beautification, they never would
|
|
have got this bad rap. It only takes a few rowdy witches to spoil
|
|
things for everyone else.
|
|
The Rhode Island witches say they don't mess around with
|
|
newt eyes and Downey warts the way we have been led to believe.
|
|
The high priestess at Our Lady, one Jouce Siegrist, even put down
|
|
crystal balls.
|
|
I like the way these new witches talk.
|
|
Talking about root canal, a friend of mine once said, "It
|
|
might not be so bad, if only they called it something else."
|
|
Rhode Island tax officials took a similar position about witches.
|
|
If the folks at Our Lady called themselves Episcopo-Channelers or
|
|
Left-Brain Lutheran Spirit-Extruders, nobody would bat (you should
|
|
pardon the expression) an eye, the tax guys decided.
|
|
Still, don't expect the kind of perestroika here in nearby
|
|
Connecticut, witches.
|
|
This isn't Rhode Island, where life is cheap. Before you
|
|
get a tax break, we're going to insist on some heavy-duty
|
|
licensing. Put you through some testing just to make sure you got
|
|
all the basic witch moves, too. Otherwise, everybody would be
|
|
saying, "Me, too. I'm a witch, too." (And in connecticut, it
|
|
would be the money. To beat our current 73 percent sales tax,
|
|
most folks would be prepared to claim they worshipped tartar from
|
|
Judd Nelson's teeth if they thought it would help.)
|
|
Also in Connecticut, we'd have to insist on you witches
|
|
carrying some hex insurance. It's guaranteed in our state
|
|
constitution that everybody has to have lots and lots of insurance
|
|
and-even though you say you don't do that stuff anymore-what if
|
|
there's a big party and somebody gets turned into a skink?
|
|
Believe me, the litigants would have a field day.
|
|
Siegrist predicts the day will come when witchery is so
|
|
pedestrian that when people ask a witch "What's your religion?,"
|
|
the witch will say, "I'm a witch," and the asker will say, "That's
|
|
nice." Except who dares ask anybody about their religion anymore?
|
|
Hardly anyone.
|
|
By the time public opinion swings around in the witches'
|
|
favor, the question will be totally taboo.
|
|
Too bad.
|
|
Employers might actuallly like hiring witches, especially
|
|
if they were willing to work on Christmas. Of course, they would
|
|
probably want all those witch holidays off. Elizabeth
|
|
Montgomery's birthday. That kind of thing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Press <CR> ! |