Red,   Double whammy eh? I think perhaps your mom is stressing about your sister. Could that be playing into this? I was under the impression that you and your family already had an understanding on this. I can relate an experience from my family. My mother probably had the most influence on me in my curiosity for paranormal and pagan leanings, though being raised in a Catholic household. I discussed much of what I had found with her and generally found her very open minded as such things go. However, with the discovery of cancer in her sister and a shadow in herself recently, I saw her go full bore into the 700 Club and its fundamentalist leanings. Now we can only agree to disagree, as she fully believes that I will not be joining the rest of the family in the afterlife, due to my refusal to suspend rational thought and accept the Christian doctrine.

As you fully know, and supported by the general belief expressed in everyone’s letters so far, you are correct in your refusal to do what you do not believe. The machine is a powerful one. The general public believes that, of course you have the right to believe anything you want, as long as you follow societal rules as related to our Christian heritage. Exposing the hypocrisy is opening a huge can of worms with endless arguments and support documentation. Old testimate, new testimate, the bible itself is contrary on every subject, including baptism. You know all this.

What it comes down to is a fundamental right. That is, the right for a mother to do or teach what she feels is best for her child without the interference of society, or family, as long as the well being of the child is not at risk. Higher concerns, such as religion and spirituality are not something that a child or even an adult needs to support life. Higher concerns are found, or discovered when a person gets to that point where they ask the questions of why. Certainly an infant is not capable of communicating this concern. To baptize as an infant is to extend the influence of the church and its beliefs, into further generations. Baptism goes from an experience to dedicate oneself to a god of choice to a business decision for the machine that the Christian religion became with full knowledge of its decision to do so. To 'buck' this trend was initially an extremely dangerous thing. Though, no longer dangerous in most of the western hemisphere, because of thousands of years of habit, it's now thought of as antisocial as a minimum.

What can be done about it at your personal level? I believe it has risen to the surface in your family at this time, because your mother is at some level scared. Scared more than likely by the oncoming of your sister’s ill health. She feels both the need to do something and helpless. So when this subject came up, it became a duty. If I were you, I would hesitate on rationally defending your position, because logic and rational thought simply does not have anything to do with religion, or faith. (Faith being the secular name for 'make-believe') Just tell her you will consider it and think it over. Once the sore is no longer picked at, it heals and is forgotten.

There is one other thing you said that concerns me however. If your daughter is going around telling people she is pagan, she may not understand the importance that society puts on not being pagan. While it's fine for an adult to take on pagan pride, it's not going to generate a whole lot of good for your daughter. It is a risk that an adult accepts and understands. My personal opinion is that perhaps it would be better to discuss how one's beliefs should be kept obliquely personal, at least until she is older and better able to defend her position.