Recently, for some strange reason, I found myself on facebook even though I never go on there and I saw someone say the following in regards to Charlie Kirk, his death, and his views:

“…Frankly anyone who accepts the deaths of children as being in any way acceptable or necessary for the freedom of anyone should no longer be considered human and therefore have no right to anything. Kids are fucking off limits!…”

It got me thinking. Recently, though I haven’t talked much about here, the world itself has been swamped in “Age Verification” laws, laws which have been used to lock off certain websites and information. First it was just porn sites, even though they had had “age verification” for ages. Then it was things not so easily justified, like Wikipedia and other sights used primarily for information. More recently, in the US laws have been proposed which take it even further. Texas has passed a law with bi-partisan support that, based on the letter of the law, would ban Anime and Manga from being viewed or owned in the state. Payment processors have started debanking anyone who produces 18+ content and I doubt they’re going to stop there. No one else is.

Now, understand, all these things that are being restricted and are perfectly legal. Their viewing, ownership, playing, or participation in no way violate the law, and yet these things are being restricted, censored, and purged. Why? “Because we need to think of the children. Your freedoms aren’t worth the lives or suffering of children.”

Thing is, I disagree with this, fundamentally.

To preface this, no I do not personally have any children. Despite several long term relationships, nothing ever really came of them (not for my lack of trying) and so I have never been married on Midgard and have never had the blessing of having children of my own, despite my desire to do so. That being said, while I know many parents will argue “it’s different once you have kids,” what I am about to say are my views, primarily taught to me by Hel, and I don’t think having children would change my views on this subject.

To say that I am almost an extremist when it comes to Liberty and one’s Rights would not be an unfair statement. I believe each of our basic human rights and the liberties that come with them should be virtually absolute. Further more, I believe that, should it be absolutely necessary to curtail someone’s Right or Rights, it should be done on an individual basis, not on a universal one, and it should be based on their actions and their actions alone, not necessary because they harmed one group of another. That includes children.

To further explain that point, most anyone who has read this blog’s content will know that I worship Hel, the Goddess of Death. In death, all are equal. Man or woman. Adult or Child. Rich or poor. Cis or Trans. Straight or Gay. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you are, where you come from, what you’ve done, all are equal in the eyes of death. To me, the death of a child is tragic, but no more or less tragic than anyone else who dies. All are equal in the eyes of death, and so all are equal in my eyes. So to me, it doesn’t matter if twenty-five adults are killed in a mass shooting, or twenty-five children are. Twenty-five people have died, and their deaths are tragic, but they are not an excuse to deprive me of my Divinely Granted Rights.

Charlie Kirk, though we come form different faith and somewhat different philosophies, believed this as well. He did not believe that just because children were killed by guns, that that in any way should affect a law abiding citizen’s right to have weapons. He believed, from what I’ve seen, that if the cost of our liberty was a few dead children, then it was a cost we must pay because the price of giving up our liberties and rights would be far worse. In this, I agree with him.

Let us take a look, for example, at England. England disarmed its population, stripping them of their right to bear arms in the name of “public safety” and “protecting children.” What happened? Well, for the last three something decades, Muslim men have groomed, raped, and prostituted underaged English girls. The police, rather than do anything about the Muslims, would arrest and prosecute the parents and victims themselves for seeking help or talking about it. More recently, since they’ve passed their Age and Identity verification laws, the UK withing twenty-four hours turned quite literally into a facist police state and began arresting political dissidents.

Now, imagine if the British had their Civil Right to own guns. I for one, deeply believe that if every British household had at least a pistol or rifle, that the Grooming Gang epidemic, which has effected hundreds of thousands, perhaps even over a million, young women, would not have happened. Certainly not to the scale that it did. I also believe that if gun ownership were the norm in the UK, that the police would never dare ply their hypocritical, two-tier justice system and be arresting people for “wrong think,” because behind ever door would be a gun that might kill them and at the end of the day, Cops want to live as much as the next person.

If the price of liberty is a few hundred dead, but the price of safety is a few hundred thousand raped, trafficked, and enslaved, then I would gladly pay the blood price. I believe it was Ben Franklin who said something along the lines of “If a man would sacrifice his liberty for security, he shall possess and deserve neither.” Too many times throughout history have I seen the truth of these words.

There is, of course, a less extreme example I can point to about how this “for the children” thinking is harmful. Decades ago, the American Comics industry was utterly massive and it rivaled Japanese Manga in both scale and scope. Every genre imaginable was available in comic book form, but at some point a group of people started screaming “think of the children” and decalired that not only were all comics “for children” (a blatantly untrue fact at the time), but that the subject matter in comics was “harming” children. Thus the Comics Code Authority came into be and virtually ever comic book genre other than Super-heroes died out almost overnight. To this day, the medium has suffered this stagnation of genre in the US, despite the fact that in Japan and Europe, without such limitations, all genres have not only survived, but new ones have been created. Something the American Comic Book industry has never managed to do.

Further, while in the 90’s many of the bonds imposed by the CCA were done away with and we saw a return of violence and sexuality to comics, this “renaissance” if you can call it that was short lived. One need only look at the state of mainline comics these days to see an even more restrictive sort of implicit code having been applied to them. This code, too, while unspoken, was implemented to “prevent harms” such as racism, bigotry, and any number of other “harmful things” including Sexism…which is why almost universally women in comic books no longer look like…well women in comic books.

We traded our liberty for safety, and what we got was a bunch of nigh unreadable shit that has cratered the industry all over again.

Now, could someone, somewhere be harmed by the violence, the sex, the horror, and the racism, and all those other “horrible things we must be kept safe from?” Possibly, but studies have shown that exposure to these idea and their representation, even in interactive media such as video games, does not make one fall to or enact these behaviors. I’ve heard the claim very often that “gamers are mysoginistic” and while there is some truth to this statement, it wasn’t the sexy or sexualized women in games who made them so, it was the women who were nosy, busybody, controlling harridans who shamed them both socially and sexually that made them hate women. These women demanded that liberty be sacrificed for safety, but if the claims of death threats are to be believed, they got neither.

But let us return to this quote again and consider it from another angle. “…Frankly anyone who accepts the deaths of children as being in any way acceptable or necessary for the freedom of anyone should no longer be considered human and therefore have no right to anything. Kids are fucking off limits!…” If the death of a child is the justification to remove a Right and Liberty, well then this argument invalidates abortion in its entirety. After all, in the US alone abortions have killed between eleven and twelve times the number of Jews reportedly killed by the holocaust, in the range of 66-72 million. Now, the person who said this is blatantly a leftist, so I feel safe in assuming they are pro-abortion/pro-choice, but by their own logic they are now no longer a human and have no right to anything.

This can, of course, be taken further. Abortion, as a right (if we agreed it was a right at all) is inherently tied with Feminism as an ideology. Indeed, it is hard to argue that Feminism, at least as it exists in the modern context, can even exist without abortion. After all, Feminism isn’t just about women’s equality, it’s also about their liberation. One of these liberties is the right not to be forced to be a mother under any circumstances. If the right to bear arms is invalid because some children may be killed as a passive side effect (since the goal of the 2^nd Amendment is not to kill children), then the right to an abortion and feminism itself is absolutely invalid because it’s active goal is to literally kill children in finds inconvenient.

Then, of course, there is the matter of the LGBT+ community. While it is taboo to speak of it, the LGBT+ community has a very, very large problem with grooming underaged children. Indeed, many in the community celebrate this activity. I believe the Trans-community referse to it as something along the lines of “hatching eggs.” I’ve seen posts from the LGBT+ community claiming that various companies discriminate in hiring against them by refusing to hire people on the sex offender registery. I’ve also seen some instances where they have protested laws that would protect minors as “attacks on the LGBT+ community” and in California (though I forget which one it was) there was a law that was supposed to protect minors that was changed to be far less effective because “it could be used by homophobic parents against their (underaged) child’s LGBT+ partner.” Which is a pretty direct admission that members of the LGBT+ community are engaging in statutory rape and molestation. So, by this “logic” the entire LGBT+ community has no right to exist.

Now, this is nominally supposed to be a Religious blog and while my faith informs my views I don’t always speak about it directly, but in this instance this view of “death/harm invalidates a Right” does directly affect my religious practice as a Pagan/Heathen. Permit me to explain.

The predominant religion of Western Civilization is Christianity. We might not like it, it may very well be dying (although ironically enough Charlie Kirk’s murder seems to be giving it a bit of a surge, but given the fundamental corruption and flaws of most churches we’ll have to see how long that lasts). In Christianity, the greatest harm that can befall someone is Damnation, being cast by God into the pits of the Infernal Hell to be tortured for all eternity. This includes children, who are not shown any mercy in this regard.

Now, any religion, especially the Pagan and Heathen ones, present a direct “harm” to everyone from this perspective. After all, if you are not following God and giving yourself to Jesus, you are bound for the Inferno. Thus, because this harm could fall upon a child, either though them learning and converting to a Pagain faith or being raised in one, according to this logic of “safety invalidates liberty” all Heathen and Pagan faiths must be destroyed. You have no right to worship another God other than Christ, because that Liberty directly leads to Harm.

Now, we Pagans can argue that Christianity isn’t true, that it’s God isn’t real, or we can even hold that he is real but that because we worship other Gods we are not bound by his decree of eternal damnation. However, to the Christian Majority…those are lies. They aren’t real. The Truth is in Christ and anything outside of that is Harm. Thus, we Pagans are (by this logic) not human, and have no right to anything. “Kids are off limits,” and thus for their safety…we have no rights, no liberties, no humanity…nothing.

This logic and perspective can, of course, be applied in a Non-Christian context. Over my years on the internet and this blog, I have encountered many Left-leaning individuals who railed against the harms of “racism, sexism, bigotry, etc.” While I cannot speak to every Pagan faith out there, I can speak to Heathenism with some degree of certainty. Our religion teaches “Racism” because we are told to put our Folk first. Even if it is not in a hateful way, this preference for our own does meet the modern Left’s definition of racism. Further our religion teaches “Sexism” in the form of direct gender roles and expectations for both men and women on how to be men and women. We teach “Homophobia” because our ancestors held that homosexuality (at least between men) was “unmanly” and worthy of death. Many of our faiths teach “Transphobia” because we do not hold that a man can be born in a woman’s body or that a woman can be born in a man’s body. Our religion teaches us that we should judge people by their deeds…which can lead to some uncomfortable situations with the black community these days. The list goes on, with the “inherent harms” of Heathen faiths.

And like with the Christians, we can make any argument to justify our beliefs, but that doesn’t matter. Those beliefs lead to “Harm” and thus we (by this logic) have no right to them.

I for one find this to be unconscionable. A while ago I posited that much like the Wiccan code “an it harm none, do what you will,” there is a Heathen code of “an even if it cause harm, do what you must.” While this concept has not gained approval in the wider Heathen community (although the head of the AFA did ponder it when I chatted it to him), I still hold it to be fairly true.

Even if it harms someone, you have to keep your oaths. Even if it harms someone, you have to hold onto your rights. Because without our rights and our liberties…we as Heathens and Pagans do not exist. Be it from the Christian Right or the Radical Left, if we give up our liberties for “safety” then we shall have and deserve neither. It would be the ultimate betrayal of our Faiths.

In order to believe what I wish to believe, I must have the right to defend myself. To defend myself I must have weapons, weapons strong enough so that I might face whatever foe I have to. That is the right of all living things; to defend themselves and their beliefs. Will the free possession of arms lead to some crazy lunatic killing the innocent? Yes, and that is a tragedy, but it is a tragedy that I believe must be born to prevent an even greater tragedy from occurring.

Does this belief mean I am not a human? Perhaps. Perhaps it even makes me a monster, but I swore my oaths long ago to keep my Frith with Hel, even if I had to become her Monster to do so. So no longer being a human doesn’t bother me. I lost my humanity a long time ago.

There is a “question” that is sometimes asked, specifically about the 2^nd amendment. “How many children have to die before you will give up your guns?”

To which I reply: All of them.

“How many children have to be exposed to porn or hateful ideas before you give up your freedom of speech and thought?”

To which I reply: All of them.

“How many children have to burn under the devil’s hooves before you give up your godless and evil faith?”

To which I reply: All of them.

Because some things are worth dying for. Somethings are even worth killing for. Death means something different to me than it does to most people. I understand this, at least on an intellectual level. To me, and I believe to most Heathens, and even most Pagans, there is no more noble a death, no more noble a sacrifice, than to die doing the right thing, and few things are more right than standing up for the very Rights and Liberties which allow us to worship, serve, and live with our Gods and our Highest Ideals. And if that belief makes me a Monster, than so be it. I bear that title gladly in the service of my beloved Goddess and her realm.

There is, in a way, one last irony about this quote that has sent me on this long rambling rant. The person who posted it was an Leftist who was ironically happy that Charlie Kirk was assassinated. Charlie Kirk left behind two children (in fact reports are that when he was shot, the noise scared his daughter so badly she ran towards her father so he could protect her). These children have directly experienced harm at the hands of a Leftist driven by Leftist ideology. So, by their on logic, the original poster…isn’t a human and has no right to anything. Something I’m sure, were I to mention this to them, they would vehemently disagree with and come up with some argument to justify why they had “rights” in violation of their own belief, but the rest of us do not.

The cost of liberty is high. The cost of keeping and defending our rights is high. As one founding father put it, “The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots alike.” I believe in this wisdom. There is price for the freedoms we require to uphold our faiths. Sometimes it is the innocent who pay that price, but it is a price that must be paid none the less. My comfort in this price is that in Death, those innocents will be welcomed into the afterlife and their sacrifices honored, for knowingly or not, they have defended those most precious values which allow us to be…us. Just as those who would give up their liberty for safety will have neither, any of us who would give up the liberties that protects our faiths for safety will also have neither.

Hela Bless.