In Bayside New York, there is a City Council race under that might see the election of the country's firs pagan council member, Jim Halloran-who also happens to be a Republican. A conservative Republican.

This story from the Village Voice seems to go to great lengths to try to dissociate Halloran and his beliefs from the more ominous racialist aspects that have ingratiated themselves into the modern Asatru-Theodish movements, particularly within the American prison system, where white supremacist gangs have formed around a concept of the worship of the old Norse Gods, such as Thor and Odin.

The practices and beliefs of this most racist group of pagans, or heathens, are known collectively as Wotanism, and was formed by a man named David Lane. The Voice story goes into great detail in trying to draw a distinction between the two while acknowledging the existence of the racists within the separate movement, but in doing so has drawn a great deal of ire from many, including Rob Taylor from Red Alerts, and from Jason Pizl-Waters of The Wild Hunt Blog.

I don't know, they both might be right. I might be hopelessly naive in wanting to give the Voice the benefit of the doubt and assume the author of the piece is just going way overboard to be objective in pointing out to excruciating detail that Halloran is not an adherent to the more racialist oriented sects within the Asatru-Theodish movement. I can see where others would feel differently, given the Voice's pretty clear left-leaning bent, that he might be trying to throw a monkey wrench into Halloran's candidacy for the benefit of his Democratic opponent.

But really, once the story of Halloran's religious beliefs becomes more widespread (and how could it not, seeing as how Halloran himself makes no attempt to conceal his path, and in fact openly and publicly proclaims it unabashedly), people are naturally going to become more and more familiar with the racist elements that make up a a segment of the heathen movement.

The Voice might then be doing it's readership, and Halloran, a service by putting all this information on the table and going to great lengths to absolve Halloran of any but the most tangential connections to them.

It's really not much different from that old saw about Wiccans and witches being, in the public mind, "devil worshipers". It's not true, and it's not fair, and it needs to be hammered home. Let's not shoot the messenger just because he doesn't necessarily follow the word-for-word script we would like him to pronounce. It would be pretty disingenuous for a writer to do a piece on Wiccans for the benefit of a general readership intended to be objective and yet make no mention of such fallacious beliefs. Talk about an elephant in the room.

I wish Halloran luck, and hope he wins. It is a great affirmation to me for a pagan to run for and potentially win elected office running on a conservative platform. And he well might win. He is said to be running a strong race.

But if he doesn't win, it would be kind of misplaced to blame the Village Voice for his defeat.