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- Oklahoma school chaplains (“The Satanic Temple to place ministers in Oklahoma schools if SB 36 becomes law”)
- Hate crime (“Judge upholds hate crime charges against Christian who tore down Satan altar”)
- The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Rokita (Indiana abortion-ban appeal)
- TSTer reactions to Dead Domain video essay (“The Lies of The Satanic Temple”)
- Bonus: Answering anonymous questions
1. “The Satanic Temple to place ministers in Oklahoma schools if SB 36 becomes law”
We talked about this recently in regards to a similar chaplain bill in Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis picked a fight with The Satanic Temple, specifying “no Satanists” for the statewide school chaplain program because “Activists who mock religion—like Satanists—cannot qualify as school chaplains”.
What we said was that the Christian Nationalists and Satanic Temple are still on the same side here, and that side is about getting media attention for themselves by providing an easily digestible conflict for media to write about.
However, TST doesn’t have the resources or wherewithal to actually follow through on its programs, usually not at all, sometimes not for very long, but always only in the rarest of situations.
Despite consistently promoting them and getting press coverage, TST has gone years without any clubs and as of 2024, the Temple seems to have all of five active clubs nationwide (“29. The Satanic Temple currently sponsors over five active clubs in public schools across the country and is in the process of launching additional clubs in other school districts.“) In contrast, Good News Clubs in the USA claim “6,081 clubs; 37,700 teachers; 717,000 children”.
TST is not a threat to Christian Nationalists except in the way that the Washington Generals are a threat to Globetrotters. It’s pure theater.
And in Oklahoma, the superintendent of the state’s public instruction, went full wrestling promo with his statement: “Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell.”
Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters took a dig at The Satanic Temple (TST) on Wednesday after the organization said they would place ministers in public schools if Senate Bill (SB) 36 becomes law.
“In Oklahoma, we have conservative values. President Joe Biden and the National Education Association want Christianity out of the classroom and are advocating for our kids to have zero morality and faith,” Walters told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“Let me be crystal clear: Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell,” the Republican superintendent said.
…
If the bill passes in the Senate, it would take effect on Nov. 1. TST also recently challenged Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to a debate on religious freedom after the governor singled out satanists by saying they were not allowed to participate in a new chaplain program, similar to Oklahoma’s, signed into law last month.
FoxNews.com (Archive)
“Hell yeah, brother!” say his fellow Christian Nationalists, meanwhile liberals chuckle smugly about how foolish he is and doesn’t understand how the Constitution works (as if law is something pure and neutral, invoked as if by magic rather that exercised by real people in power).
Fox News picked up the story because it is rife with culture war angles built on a new Satanic Panic. But lots of straight news took the bait, too, because its very easy to frame the sides on this story, and most people have an immediate rooting interest
TULSA, OKLA. (KTUL) — The Satanic Temple (TST) announced it plans to have Ministers in public schools across Oklahoma after the House passed Senate Bill 36.
The measure would allow volunteer chaplains in public schools, however, there are some strings attached.
Districts must conduct background checks, and cannot employ a chaplain who is a registered sex offender or convicted of a felony offense.
The chaplain can also be dismissed for mental or physical abuse to a child, negligent endangerment, or an act of moral turpitude.
If the bill passes through the Senate, it would take effect Nov. 1.
TST said it has expressed a dedication to religious plurality and community service.
KTUL.com
OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – An Oklahoma Senate Bill could allow chaplains in public schools, which may include ministers with The Satanic Temple if signed into law.
Senate Bill 36 would allow public schools in the state to hire religious chaplains to counsel and work with their students. Recently updated language to the bill says public schools could “employ or accept one or more volunteer chaplains” to counsel and support students, as long as they get approval from their district’s school board.
KFOR.com
A Satanist group wants to send its “Ministers of Satan” into Oklahoma public schools should a chaplaincy bill become law in the state.
Senate Bill 36 would authorize public school districts across Oklahoma to welcome faith-based chaplains as hired staff or as volunteers to provide support, services and programs for students. SB36 is advancing through the Oklahoma State Legislature, after being approved last week by the Oklahoma House of Representatives. The bill is similar to a law passed in 2023 in Texas. Before the House voted on the measure, an amendment aimed at preventing chaplains from proselytizing was made, along with an amendment adding educational requirements for them.
The Satanic Temple weighing in on SB36 has been part of the debate over similar chaplaincy bills in other states like Utah and Florida, where elected leaders have balked at the idea of Satanists providing support services for students.
Oklahoma.com (Archive)
The Oklahoma Rural School Coalition jumped on it, too. They take the intended framing of “if you don’t want Satanists in your schools, you should oppose this bill’s passage”; but whether they don’t know it or just find it expedient not to care, there is no actual concern that this threat will be delivered on in a meaningful way.
There is an entire other conversation to be had here about the actual problem with TST’s ordination program and what sort of people those satanic ministers would actually be.
Would they be a danger to children in the lurid, Satanic panic ways that are the whole reason for this media panic? No, Satanists are inherently not worse people than Christians, and we lack most of the structural and social power that facilitates abuse as it occurs in reality.
But do you really want a minister in your school who paid $149 for a certificate and signed an NDA?
There won’t be many because as we’ve said, the point is the media circus (and per TST co-owner Cevin Soling, the disruption and undermining of public school operations), but those who are there will be “Scientology for mall goths” adherents who, like “June Everett”, “Rachael Chambliss”, and “Lucien Greaves”, may not even be willing to use their real names for the work and who have signed papers to not be candid about their organization.
Would you want Scientology chaplains in your schools just because it pissed off Christians?
2. “Judge upholds hate crime charges against Christian who tore down Satan altar”
We talked about this before, but other than perfectly illustrating how both Christian Nationalists and The Satanic Temple benefit from fighting with each other, the main interesting element of the case is the defense pushing back on the hate crime intensifier the prosecutors have applied.
From the defense’s motion to dismiss:
A legal entity cannot have a race, sex, or sexual orientation. A corporation likewise cannot practice a religion. It could never be said, save in Wonderland, that Best Buy is Buddhist. Neither can an LLC know skin color, ancestry, or a disability. These things are uniquely part of the human experience, and they simply cannot apply to legal entities.
Defense attorney Sara Pasquale in State of Iowa v. Michael Patrick Cassidy (Case No. SRCR376781)
The prosecution argues effectively that, no, for the state’s purposes, corporations are people, so the hate crime statute still applies to them. However, nobody involved seems to have yet specified which corporation in TST’s “constellation of affiliate entities” is the specific victim here, which could be important.
But the judge felt that there was enough there-there for the issue to survive to the trial itself and be decided there. The defense spoke to a couple of far-right media outlets to update them on Michael Patrick Cassidy’s case, including one (Republic Sentinel) that has been fundraising for him. So, you know.
An Iowa judge denied a motion to dismiss hate crime charges filed against Michael Cassidy, the conservative Christian veteran who tore down a Satanic altar erected in the Iowa Capitol, meaning he still faces as many as five years in prison, his legal team told The Sentinel.
Cassidy pushed over and decapitated the statue installed by the Satanic Temple of Iowa last year, as first reported by The Sentinel, before he surrendered himself to security officers. Attorneys for Cassidy recently filed a motion to nix the hate crime charges filed against him by Polk County Democratic Attorney Kimberly Graham, yet the judge informed his legal defense team on Tuesday that the charges would still be presented before a jury.
Davis Younts, an attorney who represents Cassidy, said in remarks to The Sentinel that the legal team is “deeply disappointed” with the ruling against their motion, which contended that the Satanic Temple of Iowa is neither a person nor a legitimate religion under Iowa law.
“Despite the inability of the prosecution to find a single instance in Iowa, or another state with a similar hate crime statute, where the law had been applied to an organization, the judge denied our motion to dismiss,” commented Younts, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. “We believe that the state is uniquely targeting our client with a hate crime because of his religious faith.”
RepublicSentinel.com (Archive)
A Christian Navy veteran toppled a satanic statue at the Iowa Capitol just before Christmas. A Democratic prosecutor subsequently slapped him with hate crime charges. This week, a judge ensured that the charges would stick.
While the Satanic Temple and the Democratic prosecutor might like to see Michael Cassidy ultimately locked up, his fate will be determined by a jury — a jury likely to contain at least a handful of sympathetic, God-fearing Americans.
“We believe that the jury will have the opportunity to consider all of the facts in this case, including Mr. Cassidy’s military service and motivation,” Davis Younts, Cassidy’s lawyer, told Blaze News. “He was compelled by his faith to act to protect others.”
…
Younts, Cassidy’s lawyer, told Blaze News, “The reality is that the Satanic Temple of Iowa chose a symbol of hatred, lies, death, and destruction in an effort to mock religious displays during the Christmas season. It would have been reasonable and appropriate for the State of Iowa to deny their application, the same way we would hope an application to display obscene material or a statue honoring Adolf Hitler would be denied.”
“The idol was displayed as either a sincere attempt to worship Satan, the enemy of humanity, and promote lies, death, and destruction, or it was placed in an intentional effort to show hatred for and mock the Christian faith and traditional American values,” added Younts.
TheBlaze.com (Archive)
We’ll have to see what the outcome of the trial is, assuming a plea deal doesn’t take place.
There just doesn’t seem to be any real incentive for the defendant Cassidy to take any such deal given how likely it is that he will be considered a martyr and have his pick of opportunities on the right-wing grievance circuit should be punished (plus, he has to be counting his odds as high that he can find a sympathetic jury who’ll acquit him).
But we’ll all have to find that out together soon.
3. The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Rokita (Indiana abortion-ban appeal)
We covered the background of the federal district-court level of this case in its own article back when it was dismissed. Refer to that for more context on that case and how it fits into other abortion-ban challenges that The Satanic Temple has filed.
But the actual court filing that the state of Indiana made for Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Todd Rokita at the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit also does a good job of explaining concisely and in plain language the reasons why they won and deserved to win based on the facts the Temple had to present and how TST presented those facts, both.
INTRODUCTION
Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Todd Rokita, Document #25 (Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit)
The Satanic Temple is an organization that venerates the figure Satan and whose members claim a right to destroy unborn children in a “Satanic Abortion Ritual.” This case, however, is less about religion or abortion than the Satanic Temple’s noncompliance with basic litigation requirements.
From the outset of this litigation, the Satanic Temple was on notice that it needed to provide factual allegations (and if they were challenged, competent evidence) sufficient to establish standing. It repeatedly refused. As the district court observed, Supreme Court precedent requires an organization asserting associational standing to establish that an “identified member” has standing in her own right by providing evidence “specific” to that member. Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 555 U.S. 488, 498 (2009). But the Satanic Temple declined to identify any of members or provide evidence that a specific member had suffered an injury in fact. Instead, the Satanic Temple tendered a declaration from a source with “no personal knowledge of [its] members” who merely offered statistical “speculation” about how Indiana law might impact a hypothetical member. BA14–BA15.
Nothing more supported the Satanic Temple’s claim that it has standing in its own right based on an abortion clinic that it created in New Mexico. As the court below observed, the Satanic Temple’s “own admissions” make “abundantly clear” that it has “no intent” to provide abortion services in Indiana using the clinic. BA25; see BA20. So the Satanic Temple failed to show any concrete, particularized, and imminent injury from Indiana laws regulating abortion. And even if the Satanic Temple faced some injury, that injury would neither be caused by nor be redressable by enjoining the only Indiana provisions that the Satanic Temple challenged. “[O]ther unchallenged” laws would “independently prohibit the Satanic Temple from lawfully”
shipping abortion-inducing drugs from New Mexico to Indiana by mail. BA23.
The district court properly dismissed this suit for lack of jurisdiction.
Why does this matter?
Because when The Satanic Temple whines about how they just can’t get a fair shake in the courts because they’re discriminated against as Satanists, that isn’t actually true, but if it were, it would be an argument against giving them money for legal challenges in the first place. However, TST usually markets itself as “the last, best hope for abortion” in their newsletters and the media, that’s demonstrably untrue.
Look no further than the much more successful challenge the ACLU of Indiana brought utilizing several Jewish people who could become pregnant (and a pagan) and a Jewish organization where the Plaintiffs managed to not only establish standing but gain an injunction protecting the continued abortion rights of all people in Indiana who can become pregnant — including TST members.
Earlier this month, a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals (which includes an appointee of anti-abortion Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb) unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling preventing the state from enforcing its near-total abortion ban on pregnant people whose faith could motivate them to get an abortion. This is the first state appellate court religious freedom and abortion decision since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and it could be persuasive in similar cases in other states. While courts have long recognized anti-abortion religious claims, this decision from Indiana reveals that those precedents are now available to those asserting their pro-abortion religious beliefs.
Just one month after Indiana passed its draconian abortion ban in 2022, five anonymous women of varying faiths—Jewish, Muslim, and spiritual-but-not-religious—and the grassroots organization Hoosier Jews for Choice, challenged the law in Indiana state court. They alleged that the ban violated their religious liberty rights under Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the controversial law then-Gov. Mike Pence signed in 2015. By preventing them from accessing abortion in situations where their religious beliefs motivated them to do so, the ban infringed on the women’s religious beliefs and practices.
Rewire News Group: “Indiana Now Has a Religious Right to Abortion” by Christine Ryan, Associate Director, Reproductive Rights & Religious Liberty, Columbia Law School
There is no “silver bullet” to protecting abortion rights in the United States. Conservatives didn’t land upon a more clever legal argument than they were making before; they spent decades building a movement, creating dual power organizations outside of the government, taking over numerous parts of government, and then packing the courts with partisan hacks who could trigger all of these other centers of power to activate together.
But, that doesn’t mean that law and courts aren’t a valid battleground to fight in, at least while reactionaries still find themselves constrained by plausibility. You just have to be prepared to engage in the fight competently and really make reactionaries work for it instead of wasting resources with sloppy arguments and filings they can bat away easily. (Note: at the district court level in this particular case, that isn’t even what happened considering the judge’s background.)
For all of our issues with the ACLU and how it prioritizes using the resources people give it, “they suck at arguing cases” is not one of those issues.
4. TSTer reactions to Dead Domain video essay “The Lies of The Satanic Temple”
For people who have not made time to watch this video essay by the YouTube/streamer Dead Domain, it two hours, but it’s worth re-familiarizing yourself with these issues, and seeing them presented all together.
It’s definitely really been something watching the completely uninitiated and the casual Satanic Temple fans who watched this and were horrified by it, saying if they’d known any of that stuff they never would have supported the Temple in the first place.
…but then the more dedicated TST members comes along, and their response is, “Oh, that old stuff again?” and continue supporting it because they just didn’t care and still don’t.
These sycophants don’t have any real response they can make. They don’t say, “That specifically is untrue”, or, “That’s out of context, and by the way, here is the specific exculpatory context.” It’s always just the sort of excuses that assume you won’t ask any specific or follow-up questions (e.g. “If this is old news and has all been addressed, how exactly was it addressed back then and what exactly changed?”)
Now, the “Lucien Greaves” sex-pest stuff seems to be genuinely new information for a lot of people because it was restricted to a whisper network before, but lots of the higher up and more dedicated TST people knew all about that, too, and apparently haven’t cared to do anything about it, either, including just speak out more publicly against it.
So it’s been nice to see that there are many, many more people disgusted by this when they find out about it than folk who continue to justify it just because they always have before.
But it’s worth taking a look in some more detail at the sort of standard deflections that are deployed.
@GarySanders
I want my 2 hours back. This was promoted SO heavy, like it was some new information, but it’s just the same old QS BS that holds no weight and has been refuted. I won’t post links here but they are easy to find online.
Who here has a perfect past and has never said or done cringey stuff in their youth? I certainly have plenty of skeletons in my closet! And what matters is that we learn from it and evolve from it. Lucien certainly has, and he’s still not perfect, and neither am I, but we TRY.
TST has some really amazing people doing some really important work, none of which is discussed or shown in this video. Please don’t buy this hype, find out for yourself. TST is a worldwide community, not just Lucien and Malcom.
To run through this, the excuses go:
“I want my two hours back” — in other words, “This was boring.” You’ll see lots of variations on this such as “Yawn/🥱”, “waste of time”, “this was nothing”. But note that this is almost entirely stated for purposes of framing, not for actually delivering any follow-up.
“This was promoted SO heavy, like it was some new information” — again, this is only for the purposes of framing. As Randall Munroe famously illustrated in XKCD #1053, every day there are 10,000 people in the U.S. who learn something ubiquitous to people by age 30. More generally, the fact that you knew something already doesn’t change anything about its impact on people learning it for the first time.
Everything that is learnt is learnt new by someone sometime. It’s status as already known to you is actually not that relevant. The relevant question is, “What is the impact on someone who is learning something fresh?”
“but it’s just the same old QS BS [QueerSatanic bullshit]” — there is, in some ways, a lot going on here. But in other ways, it’s simple.
Restated it says, “this criticism (in addition to being old) is illegitimate because it echoes that of a source we consider illegitimate.” There’s a shibboleth happening here that works very well on the sycophants of TST, the core members who have been subjected to repeated doses of propaganda and either self-selected to receive more of it or just gotten worn down to the point they don’t understand how this sounds to an uninitiated person.
“that holds no weight and has been refuted. I won’t post links here but they are easy to find online” — this is part of the same sentence above, but it has also transitioned to a different sort of argument. Previously, an apologist for The Satanic Temple has said that this criticism is boring, that it is old, and that it comes from a source that deserves to be ignored, but here we see how it is put forth that even if it were something substantial, it’s all already been dealt with elsewhere. Again, this is only at all convincing for the sort of people who aren’t interested in asking for any specifics or delivery on that promised refutation: “how exactly was it dealt with?”
“Who here has a perfect past and has never said or done cringey stuff in their youth? I certainly have plenty of skeletons in my closet! And what matters is that we learn from it and evolve from it. Lucien certainly has, and he’s still not perfect, and neither am I, but we TRY.” — in contrast with the previous rhetorical tricks being combined into the same sentence, this one is almost all the same trick spread across a few sentences: “People are imperfect, and who among us isn’t perfect and trying to do better than we used to?” It is persuasive on an emotional, empathetic level only insofar as the person does not bother to ask, “What specifically is the imperfection we’re talking about?” as well as “What specific evidence is there that the person has changed versus stayed as they were?”
In the case of Doug Misicko a.ka. “Doug Mesner” a.k.a. “Lucien Greaves”, what you’re being asked to set aside as “cringey stuff in their youth” is a 28- and 29-year-old man expressing and playing straight-man to 40 hours of edgy, ironic, yet still white nationalist content; and Misicko also was specifically arguing seriously for forcible sterilization based on IQ as part of a revived eugenics program and expressing apparently sincere appreciation for literal fascism given that he bought a fascist T-shirt from a fascist kiosk and said of Gabriel D’Annunzio, “He was the godfather of fascism. Italian World War One hero that occupied the promised territories, after the First World War. With the Blackshirts. One of those- One of those hidden heroes. People should look him up.”
But of course, you not only are expect to ignore all of the past specifics that are “so long ago”; you also are expect to ignore the specifics of the recent past, such as Misicko saying in 2016, “fascism legitimately has a place in the discussion upon political philosophies“.
This is the same man who ran a website called “Dysgenics.com” until 2018. This is the same man who has, to our knowledge, never bothered to explain why his past belief in things like forcible sterilization based on IQ, overpopulation hysteria, and rampant ableism, was wrong, specifically wrong. We never have gotten the explanation for why all of these beliefs were wrong, or why it was wrong to buddy up with white nationalist terrorists like Tom Metzger in between playing grotesquely racist songs like “Some N—–s Never Die (They Just Smell That Way)” by Johnny Rebel and white nationalist songs like “White People Awake” by Racial Holy War.
So the only way that the appeal of “We were all young once and said things we’ve come to regret” holds together at all if you aren’t willing to look at the specifics of what happened then and what happened, and didn’t happen, since.
“TST has some really amazing people doing some really important work, none of which is discussed or shown in this video. Please don’t buy this hype, find out for yourself. TST is a worldwide community, not just Lucien and Malcom” — we’ll get into this more in the reply to the next section, but again, this makes sense at first glance is you think The Satanic Temple is a leaderless movement or functions like established religions.
In reality, “Scientology for mall goths” is a strictly hierarichal collection of mainly for-profit and some nonprofit entities owned by the same two men who own and control all the intellectual property, finances, and directing the priorities with the collective resources provided to them.
Speaking of which, there is a belief in some corners that TST is broken and just needs some reform to be fixed. But it’s not broken; everything is working exactly as intended considering how TST was set up and for whose sake it was set up.
@henryperry781
I see a lot of potential for TST. I think that the best course of action would be to attempt large reform within the group, because it is capable of doing a lot of good. Something like a better system to report abuse, and a better structure for local chapters to prevent things being blown out of proportions like at 1:42:28
Indeed, every single time that the abuses of The Satanic Temple have come up over the last decade from former members, without fail, someone will pop in with exactly these sort of suggestions and conciliatory hand-wringing: “well, Lucien is kind of cringe, but TST is fundamentally good”, “Lucien needs to step down, someone needs to force him to retire,” “we can reform this to be good whether or not Lucien is here.” Etc.
We don’t want to pick on this person specifically, but they need to understand how fucking naive this line of thinking is and how fucking sick we former members are of hearing it.
Contrary to what TST loyalists would like to believe, nobody in TST matters to the organization except Doug Misicko a.k.a. “Lucien Greaves” and Cevin Soling a.k.a “Malcolm Jarry”. As legal entities, nothing in TST has anyone else’s name on it except Doug, Cevin, and the sock puppet accounts they use to commit recreational perjury. Doug and Cevin are the ultimate shot-callers here, they are the ones who decide where the money goes and how to lie in court about it, they are the ones who decide when and how to deploy their clown lawyers when it comes to shaking down people who think this is a religion capable of addressing the very basic needs of human communities the way religions usually do. The only person legally capable of shoving Doug out for “being cringe” is Cevin, and it may not even work the other way around.
TST chapters/congregations are franchises that “rent” the TST brand in order to garner profit to be funneled up to Doug and Cevin, period. As far as Doug and Cevin are concerned, the average member is little more than a disposable battery — your creative energy is there to line their pockets. The most you are “entitled” to show for it is being convinced that this is what is “necessary” to fight the Christian right. There is a reason that Dead Domain led with the section on Cevin’s cargo cult fantasies before getting into TST itself.
The Satanic Temple is deliberately built to be unable to be reformed from below and within, and failing to realize that is the mistake that every former member makes before being stabbed in the back by someone higher up the chain who was simply “doing their job” to protect the TST brand. And no, you can’t even ask for a “better system to report abuse” when the abusers are the ones who control what happens to the reports in the first place.
If you follow some of TST’s latest court briefings in their SLAPP action against Newsweek, they’ll even admit that they knew of sexual assault allegations for several years but somehow did not have a formal system in place to address them until 2020. And that’s if you don‘t factor in the very real possibility that retaliating against the victims and witnesses simply got grandfathered into the formal system after being the main course of action locally for years prior.
The Temple cannot be reformed and it actively hates and conspires against the people who try. The only kind of “reform” it will tolerate is one that leaves TST’s public image unchallenged and doesn’t draw attention to what Doug and Cevin actually get up to with all that public goodwill.
You don’t have a choice in this. Nobody even vaguely inclined to be sympathetic to TST as a concept has a choice in this. You need to understand TST the same way that Doug and Cevin do, because this pretense that TST is somehow separate from the interests of these two men is exactly what creates all these victims in the first place.
Speaking of which, this person’s response to the video, in both its loyalty to TST and confirmation of its most personal accusations, is crucial:
- The Following Comment Contains My Personal Experiences And Opinions Only –
The womanizing shit about Lucien is 100 percent true. He cheats on women with each other and lies about it. He did it to me for years. He’ll use your compassion for him and the real difficulties of his situation against you. He actually has the perfect excuse to be secretive, hide you, cancel plans last minute, disappear, and fall out of communication for long stretches of time at the drop of a hat. And you may think to yourself “This is what I need to deal with to support a man in this kind of situation.” Or: “I’m lucky that someone as bright and talented as him has chosen me.”.
What I experienced during that time started out as what seemed to be a genuine deeply caring, and mutually enjoyed relationship. But this alternated with intense experiences of emotional neglect, deception, and ultimately humiliation, when I found out what had actually been going on. I don’t know his motivation for doing this. It could be the pleasure of power or a lack of emotional maturity to communicate honestly.
Women: STAY AWAY from him as a relationship partner for your well-being. If you’re currently dealing with this, you deserve better and your life will improve without him. Set your standards higher than I did. I do take responsibility in the sense that I allowed myself to be treated like garbage way longer than I should have, even while suspecting his dishonesty, due to my own lack of resilience and emotional maturity.
It’s odd because he could have just been openly polyamorous, but does this instead for some reason. A true champion for female bodily autonomy! I’m NOT supporting any of the other claims made in this video, or even validating the source as credible; just the information about his relationship habits. There are a lot of people with real integrity that work within the organization. But in this sense, I can confirm that Lucien is a dedicated and accomplished ass-clown.
u/Sea-Temperature-8685 / @SephofSpring (April 29 / May 6, 2024)
The line “I’m NOT supporting any of the other claims made in this video, or even validating the source as credible; just the information about his relationship habits” is key here because this person still seems to be in the thrall of The Satanic Temple and its mission to at least some degree. And still, they are yet another independent verification of things that were just a missing stair before.
On mobile, that long image may be annoying, and apologies for that, but if you skimmed it, it’s a conversation between some core-TST members and local-level leaders engaging in lots of those formulaic dismissals of criticism of TST. (We did try to obscure the names of any regular people as well as anything that would identify who sent us the screenshot because TST is malicious and litigious.)
In a thread full of people all agreeing with each other that TST and its leaders are imperfect and they welcome valid criticism, there is almost universal agreement that no criticism they ever hear is valid.
But one person, redacted in green, broke from this:
[Green]: All of you were complaining about queer satanic, but none of you have sat down and watch (sic) this two hour video. I’m sure it’s all back up with facts and proof and evidence. … Not in a cult my fucking ass.
Richard Proctor (“The Neurodivergent Satanist”): “I’m sure” <J. Jonah Jameson laughing gif>
Richard Proctor: Like minded folk do not constitute a cult. Even a hive mind wouldn’t constitute a cult. No one is under pressure to be in TST. No one is under pressure to stay in TST. No one has EVER been under pressure to come back to TST. It’s a revolving door system. People leave and join every day. So… that cult comment has aged like fucking milk REAL quick.
[Green]: Sorry Lucien is a predator and nobody fucking cares.
Richard Proctor: You know TST have sued for less lol
The only reason that u/Sea-Temperature-8685 felt empowered to speak up about a situation they went through was because Dead Domain showed so many other examples in their video — something which Newsweek has also placed into the court record — but the response to that is “You know TST have sued for less lol“.
Nor is Proctor alone. Earlier in the same Facebook thread, a Megan said, “Common sense would tell you not to go against an organization that files multiple lawsuits.” We have reached the point where, “Scientology for mall goths” has lost all its humor.
Often times you will hear people say, “Yeah, the leadership is bad. But most of the people in TST are good.” Richard Proctor himself even complains about being “guilty by association.” We would argue that you can’t support an organization like The Satanic Temple knowing all of these things, joking about how they sue people for talking about the owner’s well-attested history of sexual misbehavior with members, and still be considered good.
You are not guilty by association; you’re just guilty.
Bonus: Answering anonymous questions
When TST loyalists are inevitably confronted with Doug Misicko’s infamous “Here’s when I think it’s OK to hate Jews” quote, one of their favorite attempts at a defense is to sputter about how that quote is being taken out of context. Even Laycock’s supposedly authoritative book about the history of the Temple frames this as simply a “moment of cringe,” insisting that you handwave the quote in question as simply an isolated flashpoint for which none of the surrounding context actually matters.
Except, when you actually take the time to look at the context in which that quote occurs — when you listen to Doug upselling eugenics to a KKK Grand Dragon, and waxing nostalgic about his trip to a fascist neighborhood in Italy — the quote looks even worse. And it looks even worse when you look how quickly Doug rushes to give the benefit of the doubt to well-known and even self-identified fascists like Augustus Sol Invictus and Andy Ngo — a habit that extends well past the creation of TST. And as a result, it becomes clear that Temple loyalists are only invoking “context!” as a snarl word – as a veiled threat not to look at the context, and an admission that they don’t actually care what it is or how incriminating that context might actually be to normal people.
A very similar dynamic is playing out in regards to the above question. When TST insists, here and elsewhere, that our Facebook page was “stolen” from TST, the most they can do is point to a single (albeit ill-advised) Facebook comment from one of us — Defendant Nathan Sullivan — saying that “we stole this page from TST.”
Now, cards on the table: it is a fact that that comment exists. But TST wants to pretend that that comment is the only evidence that matters – that there is no surrounding context or evidence to be considered that might contradict their claims. But there is a lot of missing context, and it’s not a coincidence that it all points to the idea that the page never belonged to TST in the first place, let alone in a way that might give them a legally enforceable claim to it.
The fact that TST continues to file knowingly false and even illegal claims — specifically, by inventing new allegations that are well outside the statute of limitations — doesn’t help the validity of their argument either.
Let’s be blunt about this. In order for anyone to believe that the Meme page was stolen from TST, you have to ignore the fact that Defendants Johnson and Powell were administrators over the page for several months beforehand, and that power was specifically given to them by the Chapter Head of TST-WA. You also have to ignore the fact that as far as Facebook is concerned, an “administrator” of a page is absolutely within their rights to use administrator-level page tools as they see fit – up to and including removing other administrators.
In order for anyone to believe that the Meme page was stolen from TST, you have to ignore the fact that not a single one of us have ever signed any kind of agreement with TST regarding social media management; in particular, you have to ignore the fact there has never been any such agreement between us and the plaintiff in question, the for-profit corporation “United Federation of Churches, LLC.” And you would have to ignore the question of whether this is actually important in the eyes of the laws that TST is appealing to with these lawsuits. And you would have to especially ignore the reality that TST has repeatedly been caught around the country lying in court about whose interests, specifically, are supposed to have the power of the state wielded against or in support of them.
And above all, in order for anyone to believe that the Meme page was stolen from TST, you have to ignore the fact that the Chapter Head and Media Liaison of TST-WA explicitly said, in writing and video, that even after Johnson and Powell were kicked out of TST, the Meme page in question would remain Johnson and Powell’s to use “free and clear,” that TST didn’t want it and would not make any future demands to have it back. You have to ignore that this looks exactly like TST actively relinquishing any claim to ownership to the Meme page.
You have to ignore that TST-WA knew those statements existed before this lawsuit was ever filed. You have to ignore the extremely good chances that TST-WA’s chapter head and media liaison deliberately withheld those statements from TST’s own lawyer, hoping that we’d simply disappear instead of being able to fight back and being able to raise these very core issues of factuality and due process.
TST loyalists need you to ignore all of this context because they are lying about our having stolen the Meme page, and that the people in TST closest to the issue — “Lilith Starr”/Holly Blumenthal, “Siri Sanguine”/Leah Garvais, and “Tarkus Claypool”/Paul Case — have known they were lying before any of these lawsuits were ever launched, because at the end of the day, those people were just “doing their job” to protect TST’s brand from its own history of abuse, and specifically the abuse that Blumenthal, Garvais, and Case facilitated and then tried to cover up. The only reason we’re all where we are today is because those three craven predators of TST-WA tried to cover up their own abuse of other former and then-current members by attempting to silence the witnesses in the most incompetent, hamfisted ways possible, and then went running to their idiot lawyer when it backfired a few days later.
Anyone who thinks that TST would have simply dropped a lawsuit that wasn’t even about the Meme page to begin with is simply not paying attention, to be as charitable as possible.