In 1993, during Clinton's first term, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was passed. It was quite benevolent. It was intended to address the fact that Native American tribes who used peyote in their Religious ceremonies were at risk of prosecution for drug crimes, and so RFRA was passed to ensure these tribes that had been using peyote in this way for hundreds of years could continue to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religi...estoration_Act

Since then, Christian Republicans have taken RFRA and turned it upside down, to use as a tool of discrimination and oppression. Christian Republicans now say that it is against their Religion to cater to a gay wedding, or to host gay couples in their bed and breakfast homes, etc.

I will quote one of my favorite Bible passages, because it provides the source of this intolerance for the LGBTQ among Christians.

- Leviticus 20:13

So since their God teaches them to hate gay people, they think they should be able to discriminate against gay people in the name of their Religion, and they are doing so by using RFRA laws, Federally and on the State level, in a malevolent way.

I am a Satanist, and I am a member of The Satanic Temple. They are the organization that is currently trying to put their statue of Baphomet on the grounds of the State Capital in Arkansas. This issue is very likely to lead to a lawsuit, with the State of Arkansas losing imo.

http://fox59.com/2017/01/27/satanic-...pitol-grounds/





The Satanic Temple has 7 tenets, and the 3rd one states:


The Satanic Temple is a very politically engaged organization, and what they are doing is flipping RFRA upside down again, back to benevolence. They have several campaigns, such as their reproductive rights campaign.

Our third tenet state's one's body is inviolable, so for the Religious Rights campaign, if a woman who is a Satanist and a member of The Satanic Temple wishes to have an abortion, they can claim Religious exemption from laws that restrict abortions, such as mandatory 72 hour waiting periods, or forced reading materials, or forced vaginal ultrasounds. If this exemption claim is not respected, The Satanic Temple and their pro-bono lawyers will sue on their member's behalf.

Similarly, in many states it is legal for faculty in public schools to spank children as punishment, and The Satanic Temple will defend children wishing to claim Religious exemption from spankings.

What The Satanic Temple is doing, is being very proactive, and they are flipping Religious freedom upside down from the predominant way it is used in our culture, and and using it in an affirmative, benevolent way. They are fighting the ever-expanding and pervasive encroachment into the legal system and public sphere by Christians pushing their religious beliefs into Government. I think they are proving to be the most effective at fighting this encroachment. Before Arkansas, The Satanic Temple was trying to put their Baphomet monument on the grounds of the Oklahoma State Capital, which led to a Supreme Court case in which the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled the 10 Commandments monument must be taken down from the State Capital.




I'm using this clip from Fox News, as an example of how manipulative, and propagandist they are. Lucien Greaves, the co-founder, and spokesperson for The Satanic Temple, makes Megan Kelly look like a fool, and then after speaking with Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon, she spews some propaganda.


The OK Supreme Court ruled against the Ten Commandments based on this section of the OK Constitution.

https://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_Pub...tion_790_(2016)

Yeah, those damn Liberal Supreme Court activist judges in Oklahoma had an end they wanted to meet, and they read the OK Constitution in such a narrow way!



So it's clear that this is an issue that's going to be debated a lot in the coming years, and as more States put up Ten Commandments monuments, or pass laws allowing people to discriminate on the basis of Religion, we're going to be seeing a lot of Court cases, and The Satanic Temple is going to be involved in many of them.

I'm interested in everyone's thoughts on the issue of Religious Freedom in the United States!

Wow that's a lot of OP. Lots of real politics to get into there but for now:

lol teh pope is a party pooper

How about we just get all the religious crap out of this country and then we'll be doing a whole lot better.

Thanking Satanists for religious freedom thought and threads to confront the religious right.

Zero chance of this happening in our lifetimes.

I know.

So to be clear, when you say you are a member of the Satanic Temple, are you talking about a political organization or a religious one? When you say you are a Satanist, is that your religion or a political viewpoint?

So Trump's revised travel (Muslim) ban just met its first bump in the road.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...t-court-battle



I think the intent of these bans should be a significant factor in the decisions Judges make in various Court cases involved in this. And make no mistake that the intention is a ban on Muslims. Donald Trump, and Rudolph Giuliani, stated this quite clearly.






http://thehill.com/homenews/administ...im-ban-legally


Oh, so this isn't about Islam and Muslims at all. Carry on then, it's just about terrorism. Right? Riiiiight ....


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijack...ber_11_attacks


http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local...386991701.html


So fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, and they received financial support for this terrorist attack from other Saudis, and let's just let Saudis right on in because this is totally about terrorism and it doesn't make any sense at all to ban them!




Of course, it should be noted that Donald Trump has significant financial interests tied up in Saudi Arabia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/o...oney.html?_r=0


So this travel ban *wink wink* is just one of many massive blemishes on Donald Trumps faux Presidency, and like this issue of Religious based discrimination, this is clearly going to see a lot of Court cases. This is clear Religious discrimination carried out by the highest level of our Government.

I disagree with the by-the-letter interpretation of this statement. Perhaps you could clarify what you mean? Because my response to this is no. What you're saying is ban Religion, all Religion, and I disagree and think that's quite a horrible thing to want to do.

The U.S. was founded in large part to rebuke The Divine Right of Kings, and to establish Religious freedom. It's actually the very first amendment to the Bill of Rights.

Obviously privately, people should be free to express their religious beliefs and perspectives. But publicly I think people should be free to as well. What I do not think should happen is things like faculty or staff in public schools initiating and leading prayer, State Governments putting privately donated monuments of The Ten Commandments on the grounds of their Capitals, and I also do not think Muslims should be banned from entering the Country.

Religion helps provide a sense of Cultural identity, and perspective, and good people can do a lot of good things with Religion, whatever their Religion may be. Bad people can do lots of bad things with their Religion as well.

If these abuses of Christian privilege is what you're referring to as "all the religious crap", then please clarify. Otherwise let it stand that I completely disagree with you, in every way.

Well first I want to state that I do not want to come across as trying to promote The Satanic Temple, I intend for the focus of this thread to be on the broader issue of Religious freedom in the U.S., and included The Satanic Temple as an example to illustrate some of the conflicts that arises over the issue of Religious freedom, and as an example of novel approaches that can be taken to combat abuses in the name of Religion.

Having said that, I would say that The Satanic Temple is a multi-faceted Religious organization, one facet being engaged in political activism. They are not a Political Action Committee (PAC), they do not endorse or do fund raisers for political candidates; they seek out legal battles where there are issues with the separation of Church and State.

The driving forces behind the foundation of The Satanic Temple is similarly multi-faceted, and this is reflected in their Grey Faction. The Grey Faction aims to highlight the scapegoating of The Satanic Panic of the 80s and 90s, and aims to combat abuses carried out by Psychologists involved in "recovered memory" therapy, which was a large source of The Satanic Panic.

The Satanic Panic is typified in all of the various day time talk shows during the 80s and 90s that were always doing episodes on Satanic cults, and their victims. It was purported that there was a huge problem of degenerate, inhumane criminality linked with Satanic cults, which included sacrificing new born babies, and things like that. It was all total bullshit, and just another example throughout history of outcasts being demonized and labeled Satanists, so persecution could "justly" be carried out against them.

I am a Satanist, meaning that I am Religious, and my Religion is Satanism. Satanism is a very individualistic Religion, and like Christianity, there are different sects of Satanism. There are some who literally believe in Satan as a deity, and literally worship Satan. The Temple of Set, for instance, and I think the Luciferians as well.

However, literal devil worshipers probably do not comprise the majority of Satanism, as a Religion. Anton LaVey had a huge impact on Satanism in the late 60s and early 70s, when he wrote The Satanic Bible and founded The Church of Satan. I don't know if I agree, but it is commonly argued that LaVey was really the first person to sort of codify Satanism into a coherent Religious Philosophy.

In LaVeyan Satanism, much like probably most of Satanism, Satan is not seen as an actual deity that exists, but Satan is used as a symbol, because of Satan represents. It's largely an Atheistic Religion.

For me personally, Satan represents the archetypical rebel, the Anarchist. For me, Satan represents defiance against arbitrary authority and writ law, and the will of the self-empowered individual being borne out, with justice for the demonized scapegoat being the ultimate goal.

This Religious perspective helps inform my moral compass, and perspective on not only myself, and my place in the world, but the wider world around me, and those around me. As such, it helps inform my political perspective.

The Satanic Temple as an organization is made up of many different Satanists, from all areas of Satanic thought and belief, which includes actual devil worshipers. Simple Atheists are members as well, who might happen to support The Satanic Temple's legal pursuits. The membership is varied, but as far as the founders of The Satanic Temple, and the sources they draw on, they do draw from Anton LaVey in quite a few ways, but LaVeyan Satanism has some very hideous elements of Social Darwinism, and they espouse the virtues of Ritual Magick, which most in The Satanic Temple probably reject. The founders certainly do.

They also draw on the literary character of Satan, such as Paradise Lost, by Milton, or Revolt of The Angels, by Anatole France, where a mischievous Guardian Angel steals the Theological books of an Archbishop, reads through them and thus becomes a fallen Angel, who then sets about trying to organize a revolt against God to reclaim Heaven with other fallen Angels.

Different members also draw from the Christian Bible. For example, one of my favorite stories is the story of Adam and Eve. The Christian perspective on this is that Satan enticed Adam and Eve to defy God's Command to not eat of The Tree of Knowledge, and thus Original Sin was born. My perspective is that God's Command was entirely arbitrary, and God wanted to keep mankind disempowered, and enslaved. Satan justly encouraged Adam and Eve to empower themselves through knowledge, and thus achieved equal status with God, and achieved autonomy.

So like I said, Satanism as a whole is very individualistic, and it is also quite subjective. Different Satanists have different interpretations, perspectives, and beliefs, but I think this is true of probably all Religions.

The distinctions between rebel satan and villain satan looks like religious freedom.

The religion by its nature demands abusive behavior from its strict adherents. So do most other religions. If you're saying that the religion should be allowed as long as it's a weak form of the religion that has little to do with what the religion actually calls for, then ok.

OP, I think you are doing a disservice to your readers by not mentioning Luciferianism and its Left Hand Path because it is one of, if not likely the most popular of occult religions there is present day imho

Also, I will not be reading any typings you may do from this point forward for obvious (maybe not so obvious to some) reasons.

I certainly do not mean to offend, I expect you will understand.

He did mention it.
Not obvious to me (but before today I knew nothing about Satanism). Did I miss something?

Yes, she did mention the Luciferians. idk what to make of the other comment.

:shrug:

I'm assuming something about funny handshakes and weird initiations.

It sounds very sinister to me.

here is the point where we flood the thread with "checkmate atheist" memes ...

HAHAHAHA. The cult of the giant chicken has great potential.

You know some atheists may respond that they are playing Dungeons and Dragons, and not chess. How many hit points does a chicken the size of all the continents have?

Spank, you seem to be really in to D&D.

Sure. I started playing games like that as a youth in the 80's when the religious right and media fueled a "satanic scare" about it. It's the kind of thing that might be banned under a regime of Orwellian religious "freedom" like today's conservatives have cooked up.

Oh yes, D&D, Ouija Boards, Card games, all sorts of stuff was labeled Satanic, and there became a huge surge of nonsense in the 80s and 90s, but it has been present for a very long time.

When my grandmother was a child back in the 30s or 40s, she won some old maid game cards from a deal at her school. Her father said they were Demonic and burned them, and forbid her from having anything like that.

Now she's a raving evangelical. A Trump voter, for sure. I love it. God is love, God is so great, be a good Christian, build the wall, sell out the Nation to the Russians, destroy the environment, God is great, Trump is great.

Such values. So great. Tremendous. The best.