Comment: If pagans can get time off for Halloween, can we set up a gay religion?
Pagan members of the police force are to get holidays on their religious festivals, bringing them in line with more established faiths.
While some religious groups have protested, it proves that no one religion is really any more entitled to respect than others. Are Druid spells any more irrational than prayers to an unseen and unresponsive God?
If all faiths are equal, why not have a “gay” religion? Perhaps it could be morally wrong not to be gay?
Stephen Price to considers whether gays should set up their own religion in order get Pride days off.
Following the announcement that pagans in the police force have been allowed to establish the Pagan Police Association, the first task at hand seems to have been ensuring some extra time off. And who can blame them? Holding a speed camera in your hand all day instead of a good old truncheon would drive anyone to seek some solace in a well-earned break from the nine to five.
So, with a re-allocation of all of the traditional Christian bank-holiday festivals to suit their pagan faith, practising pagans within the police force are able to take Halloween off from work to, I assume, ready their costumes for a spot of trick-or-treating. And while we slave away at our desks during the summer solstice, our lucky pagan friends will be polishing their broomsticks and heading along the M25 to litter Stonehenge once again. Lucky bastards.
Anyway, with all this talk of time off from work, it naturally led me to think of what this might mean for myself and all of the other PinkNews.co.uk readers out there. Religion and homosexuality don’t tend to go hand in hand as most of you will attest, despite the fundamental principles of love and free wine being close to even the most heathen of people within the LGBT community. So what could we do to ensure we get an equal playing field? (i.e. more time off work.) How about we set up a gay religion?
Think about it now – days off work for any and every gay Pride. In place of a crucifix or a turban we might want to simply wear whatever’s in. Where others have prayer rooms, I call for little disco booths to practice dance moves (Yes, Beyonce, I will put you to shame with my Single Ladies moves, you wait). And how about a nice chillout area to watch Tipping the Velvet or Doctor Who? And then there are our two-week holidays for our pilgrimages to the great gay meccas of Gran Canaria and Sitges.
If pagans (along with members of other faiths) are having time off from work to worship their deities, then I demand that right too; I still haven’t seen the Sticky and Sweet tour and I have no doubt that Madonna (peace be with her) will still be going strong when other head of faiths have long since been forgotten.
We should also demand time off during the January sales, not to mention the ever-fabulous summer sales; both of which have been known to run in some stores for a number of weeks. A gay religion would embrace the virtues of all things sparkly, and what could be more sparkly and rainbow-coloured than time off from work? I’m going to make a Facebook group now, it’s bound to then go and change the world, and by the time I’ve thought up even more excuses for holidays I’m sure none of us will ever have to get our gay arses out of bed again.
I don’t just want equality. I want so much more than that.
p.s. Just to be clear, this article is obviously a joke. It provides soome light relief to PinkNews.co.uk readers ahead of the weekend. The author is not mocking religion. It doesn’t represent the views of PinkNews.co.uk
