Queens Makes History
New York City’s Borough of Queens made American history on Tuesday November 3, 2009. It elected the first openly Pagan public official in America. Dan Halloran, who is openly Pagan or Heathen – specifically he’s a Théodsman – won the race for City Councilman in New York City’s 19th District in northeast Queens.
What seems to come as a jarring shock to many people is that, not only is Dan Halloran a Heathen – his sect prefers that term over Pagan – he’s a Republican. Mr. Halloran dispelled the entwined myths that Pagans are Liberals and that the GOP is a Christian party.
Halloran won a decisive 52.5 – 47.5% victory over his Democrat opponent, Kevin Kim, in a bitter election struggle in which Kim, his Asian constituents, and the NY Democrat party used every dirty political trick in the book to defeat him.
Chief among these tactics was, of course, to use Halloran’s religion against him. They tried to both scare the Catholics and to paint Théodism, a Norse-based folkway, as a White Supremacist, Neo-Nazi cult to scare the non-Whites.
In the end the campaign of fear, prejudice, and religious intolerance waged by Kevin Kim and the Democrats failed. Not even allegedly busing in voters from out of the district and possibly out of state was sufficient to secure the 19th District’s NY City Council seat for Kim.
And so it came to pass that the borough of Queens, of all the unexpected places, was the first place in US History to elect an openly Pagan or Heathen public official.
Now the Pagan community is being forced to reassess who it’s members are, since they’ve been axe slapped with a fact that they had largely heretofore refused to see – that we’re not all, or even mostly, Liberals and/or Democrats. And now the people of America are going to have to reassess just who makes up the GOP and the Conservative movement; it’s not just the Christian Right and never has been just them.
Tags: America | Democrats | Halloran | Heathens | Liberals | New York | NYC | Paganism | Pagans | Politics | Prejudice | Queens | Racism | Religion | Republicans | Theodism
November 11th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
That’s like UNRR, a fellow atheist blogger who is a far right conservative. It’s a little odd, but no group is without its outliers.
November 11th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
You’d be surprised at how many Pagans are also Conservatives. Halloran isn’t really an outlier; he’s just one of many.
Also, you in particular might be surprised at how many Agnostics and Atheists are politically Conservative and often quite far to the Right.
In both cases, since the myth is that they’re outliers or oddities, they tend to keep to themselves more than the Pagans and Atheists who “fit the mold.”
November 12th, 2009 at 7:55 am
Jonolan, I have always been curious, what faith do you follow/practice? I have seen you mention that you are Pagan, but I have never caught your belief.
November 12th, 2009 at 10:03 am
zhann,
I’m primarily a follower of MorrÃgu and Cernunnos, though I offer prayers to other Gods and Goddesses as seems appropriate given any singular set of circumstances. Essentially I follow the ways of Celtic Paganism with a strong leaning towards Celtic Traditionalism. You might say that I’m a Fundamentalist Pagan. 😉
Not too surprisingly to anyone who’s interacted with me, I follow the Warrior’s path.
December 13th, 2016 at 6:09 am
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