Joy of sects: Cali court adds Wiccan prison chaplain

Debra J. Saunders is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. In today's copy she writes:

[T]he Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco issued a ruling Tuesday that revives a California inmate lawsuit to force the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to hire a paid, full-time Wiccan chaplain. A 2007 Corrections survey found 183 Wiccan inmates - compared with 42,666 Protestant, 28,884 Muslim, 23,160 Catholic, 8,296 Native American and 2,678 Jewish inmates. Wiccan Rev. Patrick McCollum, who has served as the prison's unpaid volunteer chaplain, told me the department skewed its survey because it "did not want to facilitate nor allow the Wiccans to practice at all." "We don't do anything bad. We don't sacrifice animals. We don't kill babies. That's a bunch of crap. We don't worship the devil. That's a bunch of crap."

The Pew (get it?) Forum recently published this map of US cults.