HP vs the Excorcist. Intersting question. I actually did read the Excorcist when I was 13 or so, saw the movie shortly after. Frankly I was a little young for it and would probably make any child of mine wait until 16 or better. But I also don't read things the way you do. Which could be the basic source of contention. I made it all the way through the Excorcist and didn't see or care if there was any message about playing with ouji board. To me it was just a really intense horror novel, made more so by how innocent the girl (Regan, Megan? It's been a long time) was. I still say the movie is probably the single most frightening movie ever made by someone not named Hitchcock.
To me people see what they want to see. I see you (probably the most reasonable person in FR's anti-HP crowd) generally looking for occultist stuff in books and movies then looking to see if it comes with sufficient warnings and if it doesn't that means it's bad. Me I see occultist stuff in a book or movie if I look for anything (which I usually don't) I look for believability, my question is does it follow the basic principles that have been outlined in both fiction and "non-fiction" (remember I don't believe in this stuff, and I don't believe because I have first hand experience with it not doing anything). Mostly I look for points to make fun of, if I see the characters using crappy birthday candles in the power points of the cirle when doing a summoning I know what's next in the script.
It comes down to perspective. As the author points out (and I really am glad you posted this article, it's excellent) one of the source issues seems to be that Rowling (like myself) comes from a point of disbelief. To her, and to me, there's no reason to warn people of the dangers of the occult because the most common danger is that people will waste a lot of time. So there's no form of warning within her books, and that doesn't bother me. To you the occult is a real and tangible danger so you see anything that portrays magic in even a neutral light as dangerous.
My only problem with the anti-HP group is when it starts becoming lies. You're pretty good about sticking to truthful verifiable and ofen irrefutable charges against the book (though I often don't find them important, that's for each of us to decide individually) there are others in this group that spread out right lies (the "real spells" crowd). These people have been hounding my forms of entertainment for decades, they're always full of crap and they always make me mad. And I will fight them everywhere they rear their ugly heads forever (since they tend to follow me through the book store it makes it easy). And this article does a very good job of confronting them, debunking them then moving on to deal very much with your objections, and it really helped me to understand them, until today I didn't see two distrinct groups in the anti-HP movement and now I do and I think back on the posts and I can see who's in what crowd. I still don't agree with your objections, and I think you're way over the top on it even if your objections were correct, but I understand them and can see why you would think that way.
That would explain our differences then. I appreciate your candor and reasoned arguments. BTW, are you a Christian, atheist, agnostic or some other religion?