Gavin And Yvonne Frost

SPECIAL NOTE-I was going to publish Chapter Fourteen of Radu tomorrow, but I consider this post important to the Wiccan/Pagan community, so I am going to leave it at top of the blog for at least one whole day. The next Chapter of Radu is only of transitional importance, and can wait a day or two.

This is going to be a very dated post, in two ways. I recently noted an old post from last month on Jason’s WildHundBlog pertaining to the long time Wiccan American pioneers, Gavin and Yvonne Frost, in which Jason reports how they were taken to task by pagan author A J Drew for a chapter in an earlier book by the Frosts.

In one Chapter of the book, entitled "Good Witch's Bible", the Frosts encouraged the “ritual deflowering” of a child initiate, one who has gone through puberty. This caused quite a heated discussion on Jason’s blog, particularly in the Haloscan page of comments. Some people defend the Frosts, such as Isaac Bonewits, who relates that he has known the Frosts for decades, that they are kind, warm, generous people who do not advocate child rape or molestation.

Others would like to have the Frosts’s heads on a platter. One poster suggested the Wiccan community should buy their books, and, in individual acts of renunciation, burn them in a quiet, private ceremony (and thus avoid the possible result of the general public shining the spotlight on pagans as “book burners”).

Others would like to see the Frosts brought to task in a more public manner, even intimating at the possibility of a court trial, on the grounds of promotion and encouragement of pedophilia. A. J. Drew himself encourages this. Others insist the Wiccan/Pagan community should collectively denounce the Frosts.

Uhhhh-no thanks, you can count me out of that. I do not agree with Gavin’s recommendations in his book, but it should be taken in context. He was, I think, incorrectly noting the supposed manner in which earlier tribal people’s observed the passage of children, through puberty, from childhood into adulthood, and simply suggested this as an appropriate ritual for modern pagans.

I disagree with this, of course. For one thing, I tend to think this was, in most ancient cultures, all but unheard of, though there were possibly a few obscure tribes that did engage in such practices. Nevertheless, it would be a fallacious undertaking in any event. This is one of the things I have pointed out previously in regards to Pagan Reconstructionism. It is not always appropriate for modern times, and this would be a glaring example of such.

The only time a parent should be involved in a child’s sexuality is in teaching self-discipline and restraint, while not embedding within the child’s’ psyche the equally horrendous philosophy that sexual longings are evil and “dirty”. Yet, such longings should not be engaged in wantonly, not merely for moral reasons, but for obvious reasons of psychological and physical health, and the dangers of long-term consequences. When the child does enter into sexual activity, it should be at a time and place of it’s choosing, hopefully having considered all the repercussions and taking appropriate measures to safeguard against the unintended consequences of unwanted pregnancy or STD’s.

By this time, the “child” should by now hopefully be a responsible adult, and should have made this decision from an adult standpoint. This should be with an appropriate partner, chosen and agreed upon by mutual consent of the two of them-not by a High Priest and coven made up of family members and family friends overseeing the proceedings of the “deflowering”, conducted by the “most appropriate” coven member.

I hope I am clear on all this. At the same time, we should remember that this book of the Frosts was written during the period of the late sixties and early seventies, when the world was in flames, a period of social and sexual upheaval and “liberation”. A lot of half-baked theories circulated about child raising, as with other ideas.

As far as I’m concerned, the child “raising” theories of Doctor Benjamin Spock are far more destructive, in some respects, than this one obscure passage in one little known book by the Frosts. Yet, you rarely hear suggestions that Benjamin Spock be burned in effigy, as Drew has suggested for the Frosts. A good many people might well like to do that, but you will be unlikely to read any heated discussions concerning the possibility. Yet, the equally fallacious philosophies of Benjamin Spock are still held by many to be the standard on how a civilized society rears its children. As a result, way too many children in western societies are anything but civilized.

However, I will avoid turning this post into a renunciation of the abhorrent Spock. I just use him to illustrate the point that there are far more things that children are faced with on a daily basis than this issue alone. In the sixties and seventies, child sex abuse was not nearly the issue that it is today, and though it was known to have occurred (and many were appropriately prosecuted and imprisoned for it, well before even this time), the long term effects on child victims were nowhere nearly so well known and documented as they are now.

The Frosts-especially Yvonne (a former Mensa member) are intellectuals and idealists, and like many such people tend to have their heads in the clouds. I do not defend them, but at the same time, it seems to me that they actually believed that, were this the norm in child-raising, it would be much better than what they currently saw going on at the time. It always helps to look at things within the context of the times in which they occur.

When the Frosts wrote this, they doubtless saw the huge so-called “generation gap” that caused an emotional disconnect between families, and saw that it was widening every day. They saw the various manifestations of this, in the form of unmoderated and growing illicit drug abuse, astronomical school dropout rates, juvenile crime statistics rising to an alarming level, and-of course-wanton increase in illicit sexual activity amongst the young, resulting in an increase in STD’s and unwanted pregnancies.

Gavin and Yvonne Frost did not formulate this theory or suggest it because they were perverts, any more than Benjamin Spock actually intended to harm children. In both cases, they both probably thought their ideas had merit and would be beneficial. That it might help alleviate the myriad of social problems that were manifesting on an explosive level at this time-and which still go on today. It was, remember, during the sixties and early seventies that all of this manifested on a large scale for the first time. Yet, Spock was wrong about so many things. So were the Frosts.

It is right that their theory is widely denounced. At the same time, while the message might have been repugnant, that does not detract from the overall beneficence of the Frosts, who did much to familiarize Americans with Wicca through their
Church and School of Wicca, which still exists, and was one of the first such organizations to qualify for recognition by the IRS as a legitimate religious organization. In this one instance, they made a mistake, though with the best of intentions-one that involved nothing more than theoretical musings about a controversial, in fact an emotionally charged issue.

For others now to come to the forefront to denounce them and insist that all others join in the denunciation-or else-is self-serving and insulting. The entire Wiccan/Pagan community should feel insulted by such obvious self-promotion and aggrandizement. It smacks of Savonarola. I for one refuse to go along with it or tolerate it.

Remember that old saying-patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. In some cases, such as this one, you might easily substitute the word religion for patriotism. A. J. Drew might well consider that when he looks out upon the sea of twisted, angry faces that answer to his drumbeat. Hopefully, it won’t be a sea, but a small pond, a body of water with no inlets, and no outlets, and thus, stagnant.