Not love them like, "I love you, man," followed by hugs and spending weekends BBQing together or whatever. Not that kind of love.

It's more along the lines of encouraging, as a social norm, enough mutual courtesy and respect toward others so that we're not doing to others what we wouldn't like done to us. The Golden Rule, balanced with other considerations, some of them situational, helps pave the way to civility and functional equality (as opposed to giving equality a lot of lip service, but then things keep on falling apart when to comes to following through).

Different forms of the Golden Rule, balanced wisely with other considerations, helps prevent the need for so much damage control (if you think about it, most of today's dabates are on the far end of the damage control end of things).

In this way, "love thy neighbor" is a call for more personal excellence because if we're not going to treat each other in harmful and inconsiderate ways (a topic that deserves discussion and clarification), we just might have to apply ourselves to any given situation with more tact, more insight, more intelligence and more resourceful imagination (a more magical mindset)! We might have to imagine that this is part of the weave of society and that it has incredible directional force (understatement).

The Golden Rule or "Love thy neighbor" is very much a huge part of the basis for human rights.

No, you're missing the points and cannot support the ones you try to make. Your “argument” not only commits several informal fallacies but it uses one fallacy to defend the other. First you commit a type of informal fallacy called a material fallacy. Material fallacies have to do with the facts of the matter, of the argument. As far as various training programs to become a Pagan priest or priestess go, you state you are not aware of the facts, you obviously then cannot and/or will not refer to the facts, and you are therefore obviously not qualified or able to examine them in any intelligent and informed manner.

You try to defend this argument from purposeful ignorance (your bad faith decision, pun intended) with a call to common beliefs and prejudices. Unfortunately for you and your argument, ignorance is no defense and prejudice doesn’t support any argument or its points. There are rules and definitions to govern the emotion and logic of debate. E.g. http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/main.html

There are Pagan religions that do outline, publish, and follow through on demanding courses of study in order for one to become a priest or priestess in that religion. E.g. http://www.druidkirk.org/druid/clergy.html

On the other hand, some Pagan religions have prohibitions against publicizing certain portions of their religion and training. The reasons for this should be discussed rather than it be assumed that they only keep stuff private because they must be doing something wrong.

That both Pagan religions and their training programs may be very different (from the mainstream, from each other) doesn’t automatically negate their validity or their training programs. Anyone, mainstream or “other,” needs to present a much better argument than the fallacious default that ‘different equals inferior/invalid,’ when it comes to religion and each religion's training to become a chaplain. If you think major religions and their training programs are better/valid than ____ and its training, you not only have to know your religion and its training but you have to know the other religion and its training (not that Paganism is a religion, it’s an umbrella term for many distinct and often very different religions and paths).

Be prepared to be called to task to defend the very idea of debating a religion's validity. You’ll have to develop and defend that idea too. You’ll also have to be able to deal with the following differences…which you didn’t, you just aren’t sure many Pagan religions should even be called religions…and then you totally drop the ball. Orthodoxy (correct belief) commonly defines a valid religion as one that has declared correct beliefs. An orthopraxy (correct practices) may define a religion according to its practices and associated demonstrative values, virtues and tenets. Some Orthopraxic religions contain dogmatic elements but others do not. Most Orthodoxies have Orthopraxic elements. These can quickly become deep and complex topics and yet they undeniably impact the definitions (plural!) of religion and the idea and execution of debating different religions’ validity and the validity of their training to become chaplain.

People just don't want to see or accept that institutionalizing religious majoritarianism is a backdoor way of not just begging for informal-formal institutionalized prejudice but of "indirectly" ensuring it. Wrapping it up in a nicer package doesn't tone it down either. Not in today's contexts anyway.

People also don't want to believe that religious majoritarianism, even the supposedly inclusive Five Faiths Policies, heh, does more than beg for the very mammalian battle for top dog status between different types of monotheism but it begs that fight between the different denominations of the dominant monotheism of the land. So what if people aren't overt about it. Most of the time. It still matters.

It's still going on though.

Until people get this stuff, our battles are many times more difficult (understatement). But it's one of the strongest taboos left, that of laying things bare when it comes to religious matters, politics, power, and money.

Yes, yes, majoritarianism and its flip side prejudice can happen to any religion. A look at different periods of history proves that premise ad nauseum.

But I do think the God vs. Satan The Forces of Good™ vs. The Forces of Evil™ dualism does add a certain fuel to the fire that makes it all too easy. Not that its absence would prevent religious majoritarianism, but it, yeah, too easy.

Being so opportunistic as to use a criminal tragedy as a call to abuse a person or people who fit in the "other" category is pretty ugly behavior and it's kinda psychopathic to do it in such a truly horrific and public manner, public criminal trial and all, without guilt or remorse in an attempt to intimidate entire minority communities, by extension (what is part of the culture war).

For all their monotheistic zeal, it's a sort of human sacrifice to the 'gods of prejudice' to convict on the basis of being "other" at the cost of real monsters being left free to walk among us. This rewards two different types of monsters.

People often just don't want to see how wrong prejudice is, even systemic prejudice, if they feel justified in it, if they feel rewarded and entertained by it...if it doesn't strike to close to home.

And creedism still isn't a word in the dictionary. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creedism

Not that the wikipedia problem doesn't need to be addressed, but I did find:
http://pagan.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Okay. Thanks for clarifying.

Yes, of course people invested in inequality want to package any drive towards equality as the product of a sinister cabal, a corrupting ____ (fill in the blank the fashionable-to-hate minority of the day) agenda, or evil indoctrination.

They want everyone to have a blaming focus on the opposition (the problem) in a clash of political or religious **identities** instead of any necessary sustained and productive focus on telling patterns (today's underlying class war) and issues that concern us **all** (functional equality, what it is, what it isn't)...and why they concern us all.

They don't want us to find ways to create alternative realities that aren't anchored on the unnecessary and abusive mentality that assumes one must abusively confuse and disempower others in order to gain or maintain power.

So, without concerted intervention, "the collective is all-wise" all too easily gives way to majoritarianism and it's constant companion prejudice. Sounds about right.

One could say that equality is a minority agenda because prejudice and majoritarianism exist -- minorities and functional societies need equality. Equality is born out of a recognized, real and acted upon need. Every individual decides if they are present for this agenda and if they feel included.

Ready Made Culprits -- Inquisition Lite for People Who Don't Give a Damn (But Who Want to Maintain Their Own Dignity)

Social Amnesia -- The Hopes That Enough People Won't Remember How People Wised Up Last Time

Emotional Violence -- Emotional violence causes upset and trauma by acts, threats of acts, coercive tactics, or other tactics used to force the upper hand in a power struggle. The intent is to denigrate/devalue/discredit/disempower the other in order to be seen as right, to increase one's own power, and to hook up with others looking to similarly "better" themselves. Emotional violence is something that's most commonly brought up in contexts of school yard bullying or domestic abuse but it's certainly applicable to moral panics (what Satanic Panics are).

Moral panics that use religion or waves of exorcism interest like this are another way of getting off by hurting others while claiming the victims are the ones who are evil...while seeking social approval, power in numbers and perks for the effort.

I'm sure people will continue to try to drum up moral panic as pews become emptier but society doesn't have a ready-made (repetitively and arrogantly snaps fingers) "universal" platform from which people can verbalize (in ten words or less) non-religionist (well rounded, educated) systems of ethics, morals, values, virtues. Expect moral panics and interest in exorcism to come in waves as long as more florid fantasies of Dionysian vs. Apollian false dilemma are sold to the public with a religisized Liberals vs. Conservatives (conservatives being church going Christians only) slant.