Recognized as a religion by the IRS, the group uses the religious right’s tactics, and their victories, against them
Satan is a feminist now
The devil works hard, but the Republican party works harder. Not a day seems to go by without anti-abortion zealots on the right advancing some cunning new plan to strip women of their bodily autonomy. As well as shutting down abortion clinics, Republican states are trying to essentially outlaw abortion pills: on Friday, Missouri, Kansas and Idaho renewed a legal push to drastically reduce access to mifepristone.
Amid this hellscape, help may be at hand from a somewhat unlikely source: Satan. Or, to be more accurate – and since the devil is in the details – the Satanic Temple.
Founded in 2012, the Satanic Temple (which is not to be confused with the very different Church of Satan) is not about devil worship. Rather, it is about raising hell to fight for freedom from the religious right’s crusade to impose their beliefs on everyone else. “Right now, we have a minority religious theocratic movement, so entrenched in politics and getting away with whatever they want,” co-founder Lucien Greaves told the Guardian earlier this year.
It would be absolutely hilarious (and sad) if the abortion-as-a-sacrament effort takes off, and clinics in abortion-free states start becoming official Satanic Temple places of worship left and right, complete with minimal decorations and everything, clinic doctors as priests, things like that.
They’d probably have to win a court challenge first, but that could totally happen.
Like, what’s the bare minimum for something to legally be considered a sacrament? What about a place of worship? What legal avenues can states even approach without running into a strong constitutional conflict? All these edge cases are fascinating to me, especially with how much of a headache they’ll give state legislatures.
The effort is underway. Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic is a Satanic abortion clinic in New Mexico that offers teleheath consultations and medication abortion through the mail.
clinics in abortion-free states start becoming official Satanic Temple places of worship left and right, complete with minimal decorations and everything, clinic doctors as priests, things like that.
why bother pretending that they’re places of worship? religious hospitals and schools don’t pretend to be places of worship and they apply their their prejudices anyways; so long as it they don’t violate federal law.
just create a satanic hospital with an extremely generous obstetrics wings & laboratories and satanic obgyn schools.
they could even take this a step further and get trans people to identify as satanic and that their trans identification is an expression of religion; protected by law and invalidating any anti trans laws.
they could also apply this to library book bans by saying that the trans and gay books they’re banning are texts sacred to their religion and must be displayed like the bible or the ten commandments.
why bother?
They need to go the extra mile, to make it as difficult as possible to challenge them legally. Christian hosptials and such aren’t going to get invesigated or sued for being Christian hospitals, but the Satanic Temple won’t get it easy anywhere.
then i hope that americans can rediscover religion quickly if kamala loses; amen. lol
The Satanic Temple supports it’s trans members using the same basis as it’s stance on abortion. There are 7 fundamental tenets of Satanism. The third states that “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” and the fifth is “Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.” Based on these tenets it is the religious stance of TST that trans individuals have a fundamental religious right to decide what happens to their body and a religious obligation to reject unscientific claims and “treatments” with regard to their gender identity.
religious hospitals and schools don’t pretend to be places of worship and they apply their their prejudices anyways
They tend to have large congregations who donate enthusiastically to the local elected bigot bureaucrats in their city and state. The Satanic Temple as a loophole is cute, but there is no Congressman or Judge who relies on Satanic congregants to raise money or GOTV.
abortion-as-a-sacrament effort takes off
It won’t. The idea of “freedom of religion” in the US is a farce. People have tried to use this loophole for legal drug use (“The undisputed evidence demonstrates that permitting a religious exemption to laws that prohibit the use and possession of marijuana would hinder drug enforcement efforts statewide and negatively impact public health and safety”), get around rules for feeding and housing the homeless, sheltering undocumented migrants, and protesting war. With few exceptions, the state’s claim to protecting “public health and safety” override all arguments around religious liberty.
Like, what’s the bare minimum for something to legally be considered a sacrament?
That’s not the legal standard.
Though the church still wins in this case, because those of Christian faith would be dissuaded even more from using the services, which lets more babies be born, which means god gets to collect those souls like pokemon cards.
The church is against abortion because the only way it survives is by having more babies born into the religion.
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I’ve been donating to them for a couple years now and I’m always pleased to be a part of it.
Go Satan Go!
If you arent careful these Satanists will teach your children about STEM topics and tell them about their constitutional rights. Dont let this happen!
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Donated and became a member for legal protection in a very red state.
I’ve grown differently from Satanism into other areas, but being able to produce a membership card for a legally recognized religion that isn’t Christian has its perks in some work places.
Mainly, the group is LITIGIOUS as fuck. They will go to court for a person’s employee rights. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I know people come in all shapes and sizes, but what is going on with that guy’s legs and shoes. Like is it just a perspective thing? It looks like the shoes are photoshopped onto his legs or something.
Associated Press - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
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MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - United States of America
Wikipedia about this sourceThe Guardian - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/19/satanic-temple-fight-against-religious-right
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/04/friend-of-satan-how-lucien-greaves-and-his-satanic-temple-are-fighting-the-religious-right
https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pill-mifespristone-state-lawsuit-f03bfe0d9b9fc04e4c8b01a1c6d16851I’m well aware of the fact that Lucien Graeves is a shitbag, but TST does great work in spite of that, and they’re one of the only organizations that fight theistic nationalists in ways that actually bring attention to the issue.
Until a better group with unproblematic leadership comes along (maybe Global Order of Satan if they gain the resources to do similar activism?), I’d say it makes sense to critically support their work instead of dissuading people from supporting them at all.
Wanna give me the TLDW? Cuz that’s too long and I didn’t watch it.
If you jump around the video Lucien Greaves’ real name is Doug Misicko
List of problems surrounding TST in the video:
Anti-Semitism: around 13:00 Ties to the far-right: 17:14 Views on Eugenics: 20:08
I’ll add more later. I don’t exactly have the video memorized
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There are some people you don’t want to associate with, even when you have common cause.
Hezbollah is opposed to the genocide in Gaza (and the murder of Palestinians in the West Bank), as is Iran. I’m opposed to the genocide in Gaza. I’m sure as fuck not gonna ally myself with Hezbollah or the Ayatollah Khamenei, even on that one issue.
I’m not saying that TST is a bunch of terrorists, but I’m using hyperbole to make a point. It’s up to you if you want to associate with a group that has some very, very shady upper leadership. Personally, I loved 95% of the people at a local level when I was a member; I think there are a lot of great people involved. I just think that national leadership is entirely untrustworthy and fucks up things that should be simple and easy.
AFAICT, Mesner, not Misicko. Look at the legal filings, where they’re incorporating TST-related entities, etc.; Doug and Cevin have to use their real, legal names on those documents.
The antisemitism you can kind of handwave, because it’s hard to disentangle being opposed to Judaism as a religion, versus Jewish people. Mesner has been a little wishy-washy on that, but the most charitable way of reading it is that he’s opposed to the religion, in the same way that he’s opposed to Christianity, Islam, etc. It’s just messier with Judaism because Jewish is both religion and ethnicity/cultural. (This, BTW, is the same way that people opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza and Lebanon get tarred as being antisemitic.)
Ties to the far right are probably valid.
Views on eugenics is… Complicated. Eugenics is, by itself, not really bad. Ashkanzi Jews have practiced eugenics to almsot entirely eliminate Tay-Sachs Syndrome in their communities, because marriages are arranged, and all couples go through genetic testing before being allowed to marry. You could do the same thing with sickle-cell anemia; test everyone before they get married, and couples that both have copies of the gene don’t get married. OTOH, in both of those cases you’re talking about specific, known genetic disease; most people that are in favor of eugenics aren’t talking about eradicating genetic diseases, but are talking about very nebulous concepts of ‘purity’ or some such. E.g., blond hair/blue eyes ubermensch nonsense.
An immediate problem is that the org itself is deeply authoritarian, and numerous people that helped the org grow have been thrown out (or left) because they don’t want a top-down leadership structure. Doug and Cevin–mostly Cevin–have total legal authority over the organization, and there’s no mechanism in place to censure or remove them if they do things the membership disapproves of, or engage in misconduct.
