Reading Time: 4 minutes Imagine you’re going to throw a huge party, no limits. You can invite as many people as you want. The setting is totally up to you: perhaps a mansion atop a hill? Or maybe an open meadow surrounded by deep woods. Or a beachfront yacht club. As for catering—whatever you like. Any food is possible […]
Satanism
Posted inLaw
Pseudolaw, Satanism, and the theocratic coup
Reading Time: 4 minutes Satanism is a maligned and marginalized minority religious identity. Though this fact seems indisputable, many bristle at the characterization just the same. Beyond those who hold to a superstition-driven certainty that Satanism channels negative magical forces that “real” religions are designed to oppose, there are those who, for a variety of reasons, dismiss out-of-hand the […]
Posted inCulture
Satanism in Japan: Running with the Devil in a non-Christian culture
Reading Time: 14 minutes Only around one percent of the population of Japan claims Christian affiliation, so most Japanese have little resonance with the traditions and symbols of Abrahamic faiths. As a result, residents generally perceive the imagery of the Devil as an ‘edgy’ aesthetic choice rather than a blasphemous expression.
Posted inOp-Ed
Lucien Greaves: Boston’s pray-for-pay scheme is discrimination against religious minorities through codified corruption
Reading Time: 3 minutes Last Thursday, I witnessed a deposition conducted by a lawyer for The Satanic Temple in which sworn testimony from a representative for the City of Boston was taken. The Satanic Temple filed suit against Boston following unsuccessful attempts to gain an invitation to deliver a pre-city-council-meeting invocation, typically opened with a Christian prayer. The deposition […]
Posted inEducation
After legal threats, Kansas school board repeals ‘Satanism’ ban in dress code
Reading Time: 5 minutes Earlier today, the Hays USD 489 Board of Education in Kansas voted to repeal a ban on “Satanism” from its elementary and middle school dress code. It’s the right move, though it comes weeks after a Satanist mother made the request and the ban appeared to be on the way out, and days after the […]
Posted inLaw
Kansas school board upholds anti-‘Satanism’ dress code
Reading Time: 5 minutes Two weeks after initially signaling that they would revise their dress code to remove a discriminatory ban on “Satanism,” the Hays USD 489 Board of Education in Kansas has unfortunately chosen to leave the ban in place. The issue surrounds the dress code in the district’s middle and elementary school handbooks. (The high school doesn’t […]
Posted inEducation
5 Satanic shirts kids can now wear to school in Hays, Kansas
Reading Time: 2 minutes Wearing Satanic shirts to school shouldn’t be such a big deal, but in Hays, Kansas, it kind of is. That’s because the school district recently ordered that the dress code, which stated anything related to Satanism couldn’t be worn, was discriminatory. At a recent school board meeting, Mary Turner, a parent and member of The […]
Posted inEducation
A Satanist got a Kansas school to rethink its anti-‘Satanism’ dress code
Reading Time: 3 minutes Most school districts have rules about how students’ clothing shouldn’t be revealing, or sex-related, or suggestive of “gang affiliation.” No surprise there. But the dress code for Hays Middle School in Kansas specifically bans references to “Satanism.” Similar language is used in the district’s middle and elementary school handbooks. (The high school doesn’t have the same […]
Posted inSociology
How dehumanizing language fueled the Satanic Temple arson attack
Reading Time: 6 minutes On June 10, 2022, an arsonist attempted to burn down the headquarters of The Satanic Temple (TST) in Salem, Massachusetts. Forty-two-year-old Daniel Damien Lucey took a bus from Chelsea, then walked to the building, arriving around 10pm. He was recorded on a doorbell camera pouring lighter fluid on the front porch and igniting it before […]
Posted inLaw
Lies the Supreme Court tells about religious liberty
Reading Time: 6 minutes Since its adoption as the national motto in 1956, the inclusion of the phrase “In God We Trust” on the American national currency has faced legal challenges, leading to unlikely judicial claims about the phrase’s secular intent and meaning. In response to a lawsuit against the government in 1970, the Ninth Circuit ruled that “It […]