this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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The Satanic Temple
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I noticed there wasn't a TST Lemmy community. The Satanic Temple is a modern satanic religion that aims to promote human rights and compassion. Check out their about page on their official website at https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us. Note that this community is not an official affiliation. TST is also separate and not affiliated with the Church of Satan, who have a slightly different viewpoint of what satanism truly is. Dunno what to post in here, but maybe some will search for this and take part. Hello!
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Because it's the compromise that means the Christians can have their display.
Two wrongs
Yes. That's the point.
The Baphomet display is essentially a protest of those displays being allowed. Christians want their display at the capital, so they allow religious displays. But now a Satanic display is put up next to theirs, which is also allowed by the exact same rules.
So they either have to put up with it, just like non-Christians have to put up with theirs, disallow all of them, or just go mask-off Christian state and start getting specific about which religions are acceptable in their laws.
It's also important to note the group that put the Baphomet there isn't a theological one, it's the Athiest Satanists, so to them this is purely about trolling Churches that try to influence the state.
It's about equal representation. We are as much of a religion as they are.
When you put it like that, it is absolutely brilliant.
It's equality. If the people in charge say, "We're playing chess", you can't just sit in the corner and sulk and say "I want to play checkers!" You'll be left out of the chess game then.
So, you go play chess, and you see that one side has all of their pieces, but you only have pawns. You can point that out and show how the system is being rigged against you. It's obvious to outsiders how it's unfair and needs to change.
The whole point. To avoid violating 1A, they can't discriminate regarding religion, so if they permit religious displays they have to permit them for any religion that wants one, and grant them equal treatment.
So if some Jews and a Wiccan group wanted to join in and have a Chanukah display and a Yule display those would have to be permitted as well. Given choice I'd rather instead of TST showing up ot piss off Christians that every minority religious group in the state demand a display because that would make it easier to kill the whole program when instead of two displays it becomes an unreasonable number to deal with.