England: A group of British Wiccans have pressurised the owners of Highcross Quarter to change the name of their shopping centre to something else because it sounds a bit like a neopagan holiday-- presumably one of the even-more-invented ones found in fundie dossiers on the occult.
It was our only wish all along, to be left in peace to develop our Web site and maintain the aspirations for faith and of our simple way of life,said the group's spokeswoman, who gave her name as Morrigan Wisecraft.
Of course, the easiest way to be left alone is not to be a media whore and whine publicly about perceived slights that actually have bugger all to do with your recently made-up religion (as opposed to religions that were made up some time ago), and everything to do with getting your name in the papers.
Witches happy over shopping centre—Metro, 24th July 2007.
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If you pay close attention to this story, the witches don't come off so badly and it's actually the shopping centre that's over-reacting and playing things up.
It pretty much boils down to:
Coven registers website name. Quite some time ago.
Shopping Centre decides it wants to be called the same thing without knowledge of this.
Shopping Centre tries to register website.
WHOIS says Witches already have it.
Shopping Centre sends nastygram and threatens court.
Witches say 'We got there first. You've no more right to it than us. Don't really care about anything else. Just leave us our properly registered URL.'
Shopping Centre says 'oh noes!!1! We can't possibly call ourselves something that isn't the same as our website! The eeevil witches are making us change it.'
Witches say 'Eh? That's not really what we said. Oh, and mumble mumble explain a bit about our name and it's meaning.'
Shopping Centre changes its name and their PR dept decides to spin this into some free publicity as it's nearly silly season anyway.
The media say 'OH NOES!!1!! Witches make shopping centre change its name! POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD!'
Witches say 'Oh, FFS. This is what really happened. It's quite simple really.
Media say 'WITCHES! MINORITY RELIGION FORCING CHANGE ON MORAL MAJORITY! OH NOES!'
Other pagans say 'OH NOES, TEH FLUFFIES ARE AT IT AGAIN! GET OVER TEH BURNING TIMES, FLUFFIES!'
People who actually paid attention to the story say 'If you pay close attention to this story, the witches don't come off so badly and it's act...'
20 GOTO 10
Oh - and more here, including the coven's side of the story, with info about the pressure put on them:
http://highcrossquarter.co.uk/resources_press_releases.html
Oddcult summed it up perfectly. It's just a bog-standard whingefest over a domain name.
It's nice to see the religious group being honest, and admitting it's a commercial venture. It's refreshing to see such openness about their nature.
The website in question is horrible (both htlm and content wise), mind you.
I especially like them (twice) quoting Ron Hutton saying that there's no actual historical establishment of their High Cross Quarter praxis! Plus the bit about how Hogwarts and Discworld have done pagans more harm than the Burning Times...
Cat #5, I can see how it could be argued that Harry Potter is damaging, in that there's no "real" witchcraft in there but it still attracted the attention of young people to neopaganism, and fundies of course. But Discworld? Perhaps they don't like neopagan stereotypes getting a friendly deflation.