tis the season

[japhy]

....to be aggrieved!

https://www.thegazette.com/state-govern ... ch-debate/

We are driving up to Fargo for a special Christmas in the psych ward. We are looking at routes that would allow a stop in Des Moines to take photos with Baphomet.

DC flew/drove all the way to a remote cabin in Maine to get his photo op with the antichrist. Driving a couple of hours out of the way next Friday seems like a small thing comparatively.

[japhy]

In a holiday display of Christo-fascist values, a "conservative patriot" came up from Mississippi to destroy the Baphomet statue. Because christmas is about grievance and destruction of things you don't like.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story ... 925404007/

But fear not good christo-fascist patriots! A number of your most fervent leaders and white supremacists have raised money to help get this wannabe outta jail!

https://www.newsweek.com/who-michael-ca ... ed-1852749

Sure this might jeopardize his position in the Naval Reserve but its should land him an interview on Fox and OAN so prolly worth it. Cuz defending the Constitution is demonstrably not his true calling.

[japhy]

Ruh roh....et tu Johnson County?

An Olathe Northwest High School student’s attempt to start a Satan club has ignited a firestorm in Johnson County, with parents and students petitioning to stop it.

An 18-year-old senior has been collecting signatures and filling out paperwork to start the club, affiliated with The Satanic Temple, a non-theistic religious organization that does not support supernatural explanations, but instead promotes humanism. Members say they don’t actually believe in Lucifer, but instead use Satan as a metaphorical figure for rejecting tyranny and grounding beliefs in rationalism and science.

Before the Olathe club has even gained approval, it’s already causing an uproar, with many students and parents protesting it. As of Friday, more than 6,000 people had signed a Change.org petition titled, “Stop The Satan Worship Club At Olathe Northwest.”

“This deeply troubles me and many others in our community as we believe that schools should be places of education and growth, not platforms for satanic indoctrination or controversial practices,” the petition reads.

June Everett, a campaign director with The Satanic Temple, said it would be the organization’s first such club led by students at a high school. After School Satan Clubs have been cropping up in elementary and middle schools across the country, bringing outrage from community members with them.

“A lot of people think we’re devil worshipers. We’re clearly not,” Everett said. “People are very upset when they hear the big ‘S’ word. But anyone who takes a minute to look into what we are will see we are atheists. We do not believe in God or Satan, and those who align with The Satanic Temple don’t worship any deity.”

The student starting the club, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of the public backlash, said the Satan club is needed because of “the lack of representation for non-majority religious beliefs” at Northwest.

Christianity is by far the most popular religion in Kansas, representing 76% of adults in the state, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center. In its survey, 20% of Kansans said they were not affiliated with any religion.

“There is currently a Christian club on campus called AWAKE Student Ministry that posts their flyers around the schools, and were advertising their club with ‘free donuts,’ which felt like a bribe, to me,” the student said in an email. “Since many students on campus don’t align with the beliefs of Christianity, I was inspired to start a student-led club for those students and myself.”

About 20 students have signed on in support of creating the club, the teen said.

Leaders of The Satanic Temple say they do not believe in bringing religion into public schools, and will only open a student club if other religious groups are already present.

The organization has been known to stir controversy as it promotes secularism in government by highlighting the presence of religious symbols in public spaces.

[ousdahl]

Raven pride!







(Tho, to be fair, free donuts might be enough to convert me too)

[japhy]

Zelensky is sending you a dozen donuts.

[japhy]

This is a pretty sound plan.

Frank Cerabino, Palm Beach Post
Updated Tue, December 19, 2023 at 10:34 AM CST·

It’s Christmas time, and we know what that means: the reappearance of pagan and Satanic displays in the public square.

It happens every year. It’s because a foundational idea of our free society is that we’re not a theocracy with one sanctioned religion but a country that prohibits the establishment of any religion at all.

So, when a government entity permits the display of a particular religious holiday display in a public place, it must also take a viewpoint-neutral stance of making room for other displays that purport to represent a religious belief – even if that “belief” seems to be marginally genuine.

For example, in previous years an atheist from Deerfield Beach was given room in Tallahassee’s Capitol Rotunda to display a 6-foot-tall pole of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans, a reference to the invented holiday of Festivus, which was a bit on the Seinfeld TV show.

And in Boca Raton’s Sanborn Square, a repeatedly vandalized 10-foot pentagram with the phrase “In Satan We Trust” was erected between a nativity scene and a menorah in that public park.

Some observant religious groups get offended by having to look at manger scenes containing the Bill of Rights, instead of the Baby Jesus, inside of them, or tributes to pagan gods.

But it’s part of maintaining the Constitutional separation of church and state.

One group, The Satanic Temple, even got tax exempt status in 2019 from the IRS, by calling itself a “nontheistic religious organization.”

The Satanic Temple website said its mission was “to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will.”

It’s a message that seems increasingly relevant as Republican leaders flirt openly with Christian nationalism.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claims to receive personal messages from God, and maintains that we live in a “biblical republic”, not a democracy.

Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president, said that if he’s re-elected he will turn away immigrants who “don’t like our religion.”

The words “our religion” ought to sound alarm bells.

To make matters worse, Trump has repeatedly praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a toxic Christian nationalist who rails against global Jews and immigrant “race mixing.”

Meanwhile, Florida lawmakers have proposed abandoning established standardized testing to adopt a “classical and Christian” exam alternative to the SAT.

And here’s the topper: Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis landed on a new target, Satan.

Yes, his floundering presidential campaign is literally going to hell.

“Satan has no place in our society and should not be recognized as a religion by the federal government,” DeSantis wrote on X.

DeSantis’s remarks were about the vandalism to a Satanic Temple display inside Iowa’s Capitol building. An unsuccessful political candidate from Mississippi traveled to Iowa and decapitated a figure of the goat-headed Baphomet at the Iowa building.

DeSantis quickly jumped to support the vandal, saying he would help pay the man’s legal fees.

“Good prevails over evil – that’s the American spirit.”

I guess DeSantis imagines that he is part of Team Good.

But I would counter that the “American spirit” is that we generally don’t support people who resort to beheadings. And that we support the benefits of living in a country that not only offers the freedom of religion but also the freedom from religion.

DeSantis is just pandering to Iowa’s evangelical Christians, even if it means turning his back on the Constitution.

Another warning bell.

It’s also surreal. Being pro-vandalism to statues you don’t like is an odd position for DeSantis to take.

Because while DeSantis is brandishing himself as an ally of a statue destroyer in Iowa, he’s got nothing to say about his party lawmakers in Florida advancing a bill that calls for local elected officials to be fined $5,000 and be subject to removal from office if they remove a Confederate statue.

We’re not talking about beheading the Confederate statue. Just moving it.

So, on one hand DeSantis is a beheading cheerleader when it comes to statues that offend on the basis of religion, but an enabler of strict preservationists when it comes to statues that offend on the basis of race.

Which brings me to my advice to the Satanic Temple.

If you’re planning to put the head back on Baphomet and renew your display in the Iowa Capitol, you might want to consider a new outfit.

If you dress the Satanic statue in a Confederate soldier’s uniform, you won’t hear a peep from DeSantis.

[ousdahl]

Zelensky is sending you a dozen donuts.

If you want me to suspend critical thinking and butt chug the WMDs-in-Iraq-style rhetoric about yet another “no matter how long it takes” sort of perpetual war, we’re gonna need an awful lot more than a dozen.