The movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail offers us an insight into modern witch hunts.In the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the scenes shows an unruly crowd of peasants who have found a witch and bring her to Sir Bedevere for trial. If you've never seen the scene, it's one of the finest brilliancies of comedy ever produced in a movie.
One of the peasants begins the process: "We've found a witch. May we burn her?"
"How do you know she is a witch?" Sir Bedevere asks.
"She looks like one," is the reply.
The accused is brought forward, "I'm not a witch! I'm not a witch!" she insists.
"But you are dressed as one," responds Sir Bedevere. The woman sports a tin funnel for a hat and has a carrot strapped to her face for a nose.
"They dressed me up like this. And this isn't my nose, it's a false one," she says.
A peasant responds, "Well we did do the nose...and the hat. But she is a witch." After admitting they dressed her up like a witch "a bit" the peasant insists, "She has got a wart."
Through an extraordinarily wonderful and complex system of "logical" questions, Sir Bedevere leads the mob to understand that if the accused woman weighs the same as a duck, then she must be a witch. To this, the woman is placed on a scale opposite a duck and, as it turns out, weighs the same as a duck. She's subsequently taken away to be burned.
Witch hunts are a historical fact of human nature. Whenever misfortune arises in a society, witch hunts are not far behind. As humans, we seem to have an innate desire to find someone or something to blame for our misfortunes. The Greeks had the Fates - three "witches" who determined peoples' fortunes and misfortunes.
As a side note, we've been taught in our history classes many misconceptions about Western witches. For example, many have the mistaken idea that European witch hunts came out of the so-called Dark Ages. That's a common myth. (As it turns out the Dark Ages were fairly enlightened and the Enlightenment was fairly darkened.) The popularized witch hunts started around 1570. These lasted for nearly 60 years and remained a possibility into the 18th Century. The most famous example in the US, of course, were the Salem witch trials of 1692. Another myth holds that witch hunts were a sexist way of punishing women. In fact, men and women both were decried and killed as witches. What was more true was the fact that accused witches tended to be older and tended to be reclusive. Hence, ageism might be a more accurate explanation of the type of people most accused of witchcraft and dancing with the devil.
Back to the modern day. Although few Americans believe in the stereotypical witch (I'm not talking about the modern Wiccans) we still have our share of witch hunts. Most people point to the 1950s and McCarthyism as a prime example of modern witch hunts. McCarthyism occurred in the US because Washington and Americans felt the pressure of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear holocaust. Soviet communism was a real threat to world stability, hence, it became the focus of the blame game. In denouncing communism, Senator Joseph McCarthy gained public notoriety as the best-known leader of the hunt to ferret out communist traitors in the US.
During the 1960s, the "Establishment" became the focus of witch hunts. Protesters across the US focused on charging the Establishment with the misfortunes of the 60s. Some good came out of this, for example, by finally establishing equal rights for Blacks and women. After Congress passed federal civil rights laws, the protesters turned their attention to the war in Vietnam. As a consequence, Lyndon Johnson's presidency and political future were destroyed as he became the object of the witch hunt.
Carrie Prejean, Miss California and 1st runner up Miss USA. Was she a victim of a modern witch hunt?Today, witches are still sought and hunts conducted. Misfortune needs someone to blame.
After California voters passed Proposition 8, adding a constitutional amendment defining marriage between a man and a woman, the gay activists quickly took to the streets in a grand inquisition to lay the blame in their version of the witch hunt. Unable to identify or accept the real reasons that Proposition 8 passed (the majority opinion that same sex marriage is wrong), gay activists identified and attacked those whom they thought danced with the devil. In this case, their rage turned against churches, especially the Mormon church, against religion in general, and against individual contributors to the Yes on 8 campaign.
The gay activists created a problem for themselves - their witch hunt only succeeded in demonizing their own cause. Americans have short memories, but legendary stories such as McCarthyism continue. Americans could identify something wrong with gay activist finger pointing. This should have keyed Americans in to the gays as modern witch seekers. The only thing that saved the gay activists, in this case, was the lie they've successfully implanted in American society, that somehow same sex marriage is a civil rights issue. So while most Americans saw what happened in California and thought "gays - bad" these same Americans also thought "civil rights - good."
Carrie Prejean, the woman who lost the Miss USA title because of her beliefs, is the latest victim of the gay witch crusades. Perez Hilton, in his loaded question and his subsequent attack on Prejean, showed the country, once again, the true nature of this spiteful witch hunt - a hunt to ferret out and persecute anyone who doesn't agree with the idea of same sex marriage. Yet, once again, Americans embraced the dichotomy - "Hilton - bad" and "civil rights - good."
What Americans fail to recognize is that same sex marriage isn't about civil rights and that the gay activists pushing for same sex marriage are the very same witch hunters who protested churches in California and who blog obscenities against young and sincere Christian women.
We in the US survived the witch hunts of McCarthyism and eventually identified them as a poorly led overreaction to a poorly defined problem. Will Americans wake up in time to see the gay witch hunters for what they really are? Or will decent folks like Carrie Prejean be sacrificed and burned at the stake?
If you've never seen the witch scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, here's the clip for your enjoyment:
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