The Satanic Temple will soon be unveiling the statue of Baphomet that was originally intended for Oklahoma — until the state Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments monument had to be removed from capitol grounds — or at least, they will be if the Christian groups threatening it don’t “burn it down” first.
The statue’s first home in Detroit was to have been Bert’s Market Place, but owner Bert Dearing returned the Satanic Temple’s rental fee after he learned that the group was affiliated with satanists. “When I rented the place, I just thought it was a church,” he told ABC News. “I didn’t know about the unveiling of a statue. We weren’t aware they were into devil worshipping.”
The Satanic Temple’s co-founder Lucien Greaves isn’t buying that, because as he told Hemant Mehta Thursday evening, “the very contract specified that we are the Satanic Temple.”
Greaves believes that Dearing backed out because of pressure from local Christian groups — pressure that would make any venue wary of hosting the unveiling. “IT IS EVERY CHRISTIAN’S DUTY TO DESTROY THIS IF YOU SEE IT DESTROY THIS STATUE DESTROY THIS STATUE DESTROY THIS STATUE” reads one Facebook post Greaves provided to Mehta. “Let’s burn the statue down!” reads another.
The person responsible for this campaign, Greaves told Salon, is most likely Pastor David Bullock of the St. Matthew Baptist Church. “The last thing we need—in a city where we’re fighting against violence and fighting against economic problems and unemployment and the water crisis—is a statue dedicated to Satan right downtown,” Bullock told Christianity Today earlier this week. “They’re bringing a Baphomet statue to the city of Detroit valorising, elevating Satan. This is not even a real religion in my estimation.”
Bullock appeared alongside the Satanic Temple’s Jex Blackmore on FOX2 News’ “Let It Rip” to discus the matter, but he wasn’t more interested in talking over her about the “need for dialogue” than actually having a discussion.
“The statue is supposed to create a dialogue,” he said, “but statues don’t talk. If you want to have a dialogue with other faiths, send an email in advance or knock on a door.”
Also, I, as the Lord-designated (per Ephesians 5:23) head of my household, intend to enforce other biblical injunctions as well, including those of Leviticus. I will administer death or beatings, as the Law ordains, to my wives if they reap the edges of a field, plant differing seeds in that field (both from 19:19), pick up fallen grapes in our vineyard (19:10), sell an Israelite as a slave (25:40), or wear clothes mixing different kinds of fabric (again from 19:19).
In behaving this way, it might seem as though I’m breaking a raft of laws, state and federal. I may well be, but I don’t care! Doing otherwise would “burden my religion.” I’m obeying a “higher law” – the one decreed by the Almighty Himself. I can quote the Holy Scripture chapter and verse to prove it. That I’ve publicly decreed my atheism matters not; I can always say I converted. Who can disprove me? In any case, I have a growing number of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts to back me up, as well as the implicit support of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Want to put me on trial? I dare you.
Seriously, though, marriage as the ancient Israelites conceived it, and as demonstrated throughout the Bible’s rapine-replete rants, sagas of savagery and mind-deadening genealogical longueurs, has precious little to do with what faith-derived custom and Western history A.D. have bequeathed to us: the “traditional” matrimony between one man and one woman. We can be thankful for that. Those discriminating against same-sex couples, alleging a RFRA-type “burden” to their religion, and planning, if necessary, to present a RFRA-based defense, should beware: the sainted scripture they plan on adducing in court consists of “wild and disorderly compositions” (to quote Thomas Paine) so larded with evidence contrary to their case that they should not stand a chance of prevailing, at least before a rational judge in a fair court.
We don’t, however, live in a rational, fair world. The Supreme Court’s recent Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in favor of same-sex marriage should have been a no-brainer, permitting, as it does, Americans of different sexual orientations to enjoy equal protection of the law, as the Constitution mandates, and as the Declaration of Independence, with its phrase “the pursuit of happiness,” proclaims. But the case split the bench five-to-four, reflecting, in a way, the division in the United States as a whole, where, despite the burgeoning tide of nonbelief and a public ever more receptive to same-sex marriage (six out of 10 Americans now support it), seven out of 10 still call themselves Christians, with evangelicals accounting for a quarter of the entire population and actually increasing in number.
So it should shock no one that for some of the faith-addled, the SCOTUS ruling settled nothing at all. A county circuit clerk in Mississippi protested that her “final authority is the Bible” and that “the Supreme Court’s decision violates my core values as a Christian.” She quit, rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Clerks in three Kentuckian counties have also refused to give marriage licenses to gays, even though the governor of that state has stated that he would obey the law. Kentucky County Clerk Casey Davis, appearing on MSNBC, noted that he had sworn “so help me God” to assume his duties and defended his decision to halt the issuance of all marriage licenses as a matter of religious conviction. He will not resign, but plans to stand his ground. South Dakota’s Republican attorney general seems to have found a compromise of sorts, permitting religious dissenters to refuse to do their job, as long as someone else in the office will. Which would not work for Decatur County in Tennessee, where the entire staff in the clerks’ office quit and stormed out. In the same vein, Donald Trump’s newfound concerns about the tragic case of Kathryn Steinle, a white woman who was killed by Francisco Sanchez, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, is an act of obvious political opportunism. The combustible mix of race, immigration and white victimology was too tempting for Trump, and the white nativist impulses of movement conservatism, to resist.
This world of imperiled white people is a fantasy that is shared by both overt white supremacists and the mainstream right-wing media. It is a fantasy that ignores the following facts: Crime in the United States is at record lows. Most violent crime is intra-racial. Because of that reality, a given person is much more likely to be killed by a member of their own “racial” group than by someone outside of it. Moreover, most people are killed or otherwise assaulted by a person they know or who they are related to. Trump’s particular concerns about crime by undocumented immigrants are also specious—for a variety of reasons, undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than other groups.