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Lawsuits The Satanic Temple

“Wait, why is The Satanic Temple suing you?”

Three people stand beside each other, each wearing black masks with a pentagram and three arrows logo. The background behind them is psychedelic.

Part IV

TST’s “competitor organizations” conspiracy fantasy

The initial complaint was catalyzed specifically by the so-called “hacking” of the TST-WA Facebook page (a.k.a. “the Chapter page”).

TST has never been able to show the involvement of any of the other three people it sued, and conspicuously, repeatedly refused to even try to do so, but it still needed something to point at to make it sound more plausible that this wasn’t just a case of TST retaliating for direct and substantive criticism against itself by one person.

And so, presumably in order to a.) justify targeting other people with a theoretically endless number of allegations, b.) make that targeting harder and more expensive to defend against, and c.) maximize the hypothetical damages they might be awarded, TST decided that the most convenient rationale was to argue that we had all conspired to form a “competitor organization” with the purpose of harming TST and diverting its profit to this theoretical organization instead.

Now, this is bullshit spun out of whole cloth. The Satanic Temple was given multiple opportunities over more than three years to submit even a shred of evidence that would plausibly suggest that the court should believe such an organization exists at all, and yet TST has never done so.

Similarly, there is not a shred of evidence to support the idea that we colluded to form such an organization because no such agreement was ever made. The burden of proof is on the Temple to demonstrate this, and they have never risen to meet it. But TST needs it there in order to connect every otherwise disconnected allegation and defendant that TST has decided to include in its filings over the last three years.

There are probably dozens of Satanist groups around the United States. As far as we know, none of them have ever been sued for being founded or sustained by ex-TST members. None of them have ever had a dollar value put on the head of each person in its membership, and then had the sum of those dollars held up as a legally-actionable “loss” by virtue of their not being members of TST instead.

TST never even attempted to substantiate the allegation of a “competitor organization” until it filed its amended complaint in March 2021. In other words, TST waited until after each side had written multiple briefs and after the judge had issued his first ruling, to even pretend that it had a factual basis for a “competitor organization.”

As part of their revised complaint, one of their exhibits is defendant Nathan Sullivan’s own Facebook post trying to process his removal as he understood it. Because from his end, he — a founding member of TST Seattle — had just had his religious community of nearly six years ripped away without warning, notice, or any real chance to speak on his behalf within it. He even said as much in the post they included as evidence.

As an aside, we can’t overstate how bitterly amusing it is to see a “religious organization” voluntarily include a post where we accuse it of repeatedly mishandling sexual abuse reports at the local level, reports that we only discovered in the aftermath, by other ex-members coming forward.

Nathan Von Sullivan osSopedtnr3t10a119hug7g11i28hr20taa08M8 5cc1a50690c9 gc,f50m · Well, apparently I'm no longer affiliated with TST-WA. I always knew that there was an expiration date on my membership, of course, but somehow I kinda expected it to go out with something better than being accused as a co-conspirator of attacking leadership, on the basis of conversations I was no part of and hadn't even seen until after they had resolved (and of course, cannot see any records of now); on the basis of investigations that never contacted me to even attempt to verify either my knowledge, intent, investment, or participation; on the basis of the idea that being CC'd as a witness to a formal complaint, relating to interpersonal conflicts during the proceeding of said conversations, is the same as being party to an intent to cause an internal schism via targeted bullying of particular members (something that can barely be reasonably concluded of the formal complaint itself). There will be probably be more posts as I process this, but for right now I'm speaking solely for myself. All of this has been decided and executed in the possibly-conscious absence of any kind of opportunity made for me to speak in my own defense. I've been on hiatus from TST-WA operations for the last few months while I get some mental health and personal affairs in order - there's nothing like getting into a sleep-deprived fender bender to make you question what your long-term goals are - and so I'd had basically all of our internal comms muted short of being directly tagged. I wouldn't even have known about my removal were it not for one of the other "conspirators" messaging me to ask if I'd *also* been kicked out, prompting me to check and find out that of course I've been removed from said communications, groups, and emails. I understand that there was a town hall meeting where the leadership "discussed" the issue with the rest of the general membership, smoothing over a purge as the necessary handling of a "rogue faction." Personally, I'm curious as to how multiple people can just go rogue without ever realizing it, but I'm sure the Official Message clarified things in a way that suggests that everything will be fine as long as you accept the official TST-WA theory of leadership that "we are a democracy, but to a point."
If there is a central tension these events and conflicts revolve around, it is in the question, "What do we owe to our former members? And what do we owe to our current members such that they don't become former members?" And the official answer to that keeps consistently being, "Nothing, because we didn't do anything wrong and you just need to trust that we have the best intentions on the basis of our mission against religious overreach, even as our internal culture increasingly fosters an environment where people are afraid to make systemic critiques and cannot trust that their reports won't be immediately castigated as proof of malicious intent and punished unilaterally." Don't complain, don't speak up, don't "give the right more ammunition," don't be one more example of how ThE LeFt Is EaTiNg ItSeLf, and for the love of Cthulhu don't ever suggest that the call is coming from inside the house, via people whose primary models for organization seem to be the same authoritarian structures that we are all forced to survive in under late capitalism. If you cannot be reaped for social capital then you are chaff - but never question the morality of the scythe, which is merely being pragmatic. I've been fielding messages from the general membership for the last day or so, asking what the fuck is going on. You know what the fucking gross thing is? There are multiple people who have since come forward, telling me about reports they've made of sexual harassment within TST-WA. They didn't report them to me, a glorified middle-manager, and that is absolutely both their right and the right decision. They entrusted it directly to the top leadership, leadership who is empowered by our national coordinators to act quickly and unilaterally in a crisis - leadership who then did nothing with those reports, even as they came in repeatedly, and who sat by as the perpetrators continued to attend meetings in, as far as the rest of us knew, good standing. Leadership who is even now telling the remaining members to trust them as they purge the calls to do better, because TST-WA is "a democracy, but to a point." These people WERE members in good standing – up until the point they realized their reports would never be taken seriously, at which point they became former members to whom TST-WA defaults to owing nothing: not the empathy in the First Tenet, not the struggle for justice of the Second, nor the nobility of action and thought of the Seventh.
TST-WA is and has always been a volunteer organization, but that means leadership must be MORE sensitive to the morale and the lived experience of both its current and former membership, more willing to err on the side of making amends - not less. Which of the tenets, exactly, would be violated by doing so? How is the grand mission against arbitrary authority compromised by an internal culture that gives the benefit of the doubt to someone who is already marginalized by society in so many other contexts? One of the guiding principles of Satanism is that religion and morality do not occur in a vacuum that only opens from the top – you will forget this at your peril. I will not be appealing my removal. I will not aid in facilitating a half-assed coverup that has the end result of normalizing a power structure that has made a habit of shooting first and then telling the victims that they’re free to ask questions later, maybe. This purge was not a mistake whose harm needs to merely be resolved. This was a statement of intent, a statement of what social arrangement is considered normal by those in power, and what will be done to defend it – and what will be ignored in the process of defending it. And supposing that I “won” the appeal and cleared my name, we all know exactly that the price of returning would be the expectation of silence about what happened, how it happened, and most importantly, whether the environment that exists might cause it to happen again. Another of the guiding principles that drives Satanic activism is the idea that silence is consent. And I, being a Satanist, do not consent. “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to beat him temporarily at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” – Audre Lorde

I’ve been fielding messages from the general membership for the last day or so, asking what the fuck is going on.

You know what the fucking gross thing is?

There are multiple people who have since come forward, telling me about reports they’ve made of sexual harassment within TST-WA. They didn’t report them to me, a glorified middle-manager, and that is absolutely both their right and the right decision. They entrusted it directly to the top leadership, leadership who is empowered by our national coordinators to act quickly and unilaterally in a crisis…who sat by as the perpetrators continued to attend meetings in, as far as the rest of us knew, good standing. … These people WERE members in good standing — up until the point they realized their reports would never be taken seriously, at which point they became former members to whom TST-WA defaults to owing nothing: not the empathy in the First Tenet, not the struggle for justice of the Second, nor the nobility of action and thought of the Seventh.

Excerpt from Nathan Sullivan Facebook post, March 15, 2020

But ultimately, The Satanic Temple focuses on this exchange to support their allegation of a rival organization — again, in an actual federal court document:

[redacted name] But the question is, will you found an actual organization The Satanic Temple 2: Electric Boogaloo? The Satanic Temple 2: The Second one? S2: The Mighty Satanists? Nathan Von Sullivan: Satanism Reloaded actually

The Temple talks a lot about how it values beliefs being informed by available evidence, but that comment is the sole basis for the idea that “TST 2: Electric Boogaloo” actually exists and harms them: a throwaway comment by someone 1400 miles away, who isn’t even a defendant, who has never been involved with TST in the first place, being contradicted directly by that defendant.

78. Defendants were aware that the social media accounts had an economic value to TST. The social media accounts were the primary means for TST to communicate with the general public and TST’s supporters and Defendants personally used those social media accounts for the purpose of assisting TST in creating the kind of communications that help to foster the kind of relationship which results in charitable donations to support TST’s organizational purposes. By depriving TST of its social media accounts, Defendants intended to diminish those donations and divert donations to their competitor organization, provisionally named “The Satanic Temple 2: Electric Boogaloo.” Exhibit 5 at p. 4.

If anything makes it clear that this is a SLAPP suit where merits don’t matter, it should be a religion claiming to be threatened by a nigh-40-year-old movie reference.

They put this on the federal record, right next to their tenets about how great they think reason and evidence are.

111. Defendants’ competitor organization, which was provisionally entitled “The Satanic Temple 2: Electric Boogaloo” and “Satanic Washington — Archived Temple Chapter” had a likelihood of impairing the distinctiveness of TST as a famous mark. To-wit:
(1) “The Satanic Temple 2: Electric Boogaloo” directly copies “The Satanic Temple;” and “Satanic Washington — Archived Temple Chapter” (emphasis added) directly suggests that the Washington Chapter has been replaced by Defendants’ competitor organization.
(2) TST has an inherently distinctive mark because there is only one “The Satanic Temple,” Plaintiff, which has acquired distinctiveness as a mark through years of effort.
(3) There is only one “The Satanic Temple” because TST jealously guards its intellectual property rights

As of April 2023, TST is now also suing us in state court, and still insists that there is a competitor organization called “The Satanic Temple 2: Electric Boogaloo” running around collecting imaginary profits that TST supposedly had dibs on. Absolutely pathetic.

By the way, keep that last clause in mind — their claim that there is “only one The Satanic Temple” — because it’s not really true.

And we’re going to come back to why towards the end.

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