The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled a week ago that the state must remove a 6-foot tall granite monument of the Ten Commandments from its capitol saying that it violated Oklahoma’s constitutional ban against the use of either public funds or property to benefit a single religion. Wile I suspect this case could have made it to the Oklahoma Supreme Court without the interference of Satanists, I don’t imagine it hurt that the Satanic Temple launched a successful Indiegogo campaign last year, raising $28,000 to construct a statue to stand alongside the Ten Commandments monument in Oklahoma… a statue (seen below) of two adorable children gazing upon the goat-headed deity Baphomet with adoration in their young, adoring eyes.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen with the Satanic statue now that Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin has said that the Ten Commandments monument isn’t going anywhere, in spite of the ruling by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, but, last week, when news of the high court’s decision came out, and everyone assumed that the Ten Commandments monument would be removed from the grounds of the state capitol, Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Graves said that he’d find another home for the Baphomet statue.
“The whole point of the statue was to complement the monument and reaffirm that we live in a pluralistic nation that respects diversity and religious liberty.” – Lucien Graves
For what it’s worth, it appears as though this man who calls himself Lucien Graves is really more interested in serving our founding fathers than he is in promoting Satanism.
When a friend of his interviewed him for Vice a while back, Graves was essentially asked if he’d just chosen Satanism because he knew it would serve as good platform from which to launch Yes Men-like attacks. “Yes,” he responded. “Just as the Yes Men use very catching theatrical ploys to draw attention to a progressive agenda, we play upon people’s irrational fears in a way that hopefully causes them to reevaluate what they think they know, redefine arbitrary labels, and judge people for their concrete actions. I believe that where reason fails to persuade, satire and mockery prevail. Whereas many religious groups seem to eschew humor, we embrace it.”
Graves went on to share the following background. “The Satanic Temple was actually conceived of independent from me by a friend and one of his colleagues,” he said. “They envisioned it more as a ‘poison pill’ in the Church/State debate. The idea was that Satanists, asserting their rights and privileges where religious agendas have been successful in imposing themselves upon public affairs, could serve as a poignant reminder that such privileges are for everybody, and can be used to serve an agenda beyond the current narrow understanding of what “the” religious agenda is. So at the inception, the political message was primary, though it was understood that there are, in fact, self-identified Satanists who live productive lives within the boundaries of the law, and that they do deserve just as much consideration as any other religious group. I was brought in originally as a consultant due to my expertise in the history of witch hunts and my understanding regarding conceptions of Satanism. While the original thinking was that the Satanic Temple needed to hold to some belief in a supernatural entity known as ‘Satan,’ none of us truly believed that. I helped develop us into something we all do truly believe in and wholeheartedly embrace: an atheistic philosophical framework that views ‘Satan’ as a metaphorical construct by which we contextualize our works. We’ve moved well beyond being a simple political ploy and into being a very sincere movement that seeks to separate religion from superstition and to contribute positively to our cultural dialogue. To this end, I am very much an activist.”
Who wold have imagined, back at the founding of our country, that it would be Satanists on the front lines, fighting to protect our rights as enumerated in the constitution?
By way of context, for those of you who many not be aware of the reasoning behind our long held belief that church and state should be separate, is a from Thomas Jefferson, taken from a letter he’d written to the Danbury Baptists in 1802.
…Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State…
So, the next time you see a Satanist, be sure to give them a big hug and thank them for their work to safeguard our constitution, OK?
A weekend of intense spring cleaning yielded a mason jar full of coins. I’d put the jar by the door last night, thinking that I’d see it this morning on my way to work, take it with me, and cash it in at the bank. Arlo got to it before I did, though. When I reached the bottom of the stairs this morning, he was waiting for me with the jar and the following question.
[If you’ve got a few extra minutes, be sure to check out our Totally Quotable Arlo archive.]
Yesterday the folks at the Huffington Post released a gut-wrenching expose on the treatment of kids sentenced to adult prison in Michigan. The report, titled Cruel and All-Too-Usual, begins with a graphic video accompanied by the following warning.
Warning: The following video, obtained by The Huffington Post, shows the rough treatment of a minor by correctional officers and may be disturbing to some viewers. If you are in a public place, headphones are advisable.
The footage, which can be seen below, would be disturbing even if I didn’t know the young man being held down by half a dozen officers. But, according to a message I received earlier this evening, I do know the man. Or at least I know of him. He’s someone we’ve talked about here over the past several years, since he was arrested the age of 14 for the murder of four people in a Detroit drug house. His name is Davontae Sanford.
At least that’s what his mom, Taminko Sanford, just told me. He’s not identified in the video, and his face is blurred, but she says it’s Davontae in the video, being held down by the officers, and then softly singing to himself. And I have no reason not be believer her.
According to the documentation accompanying the footage, it was shot of a 16-year-old inmate with learning disabilities at the Thumb Correctional facility in 2009, so I suspect it is Davontae, who was arrested at 14 years old in 2007. This video, we’re told, came shortly after he threatened to hang himself.
Following, by way of background, is something that I wrote about Davontae’s case several years ago.
…Davontae, who read at a third-grade level at the time of his arrest, signed and initialed a typewritten confession given to him by a detective. No video of his questioning, which took place without the presence of his mother or legal council, exists. And, in his signed confession, Davontae claimed that he’d committed the murders with a different weapon than the one which was actually used by the killer. In spite of this, however, Davontae was convicted and sent to prison, where he’s been sentenced to serve from thirty-seven to ninety years. And, that’s not the worst of it. Just months after being sent to prison, an imprisoned hit man by the name of Vincent Smothers confessed to having committed the drug-related killings. Furthermore, he says Davontae had nothing to do with it… Everyone, it would seem, knows that this young man is innocent, and yet he remains in prison…
And I should add that Davontae is still in prison today.
[The above image was taken from the Huffington Post feature referenced above.]
I know it’s unlikely that many readers of this site have Confederate flags just laying around, but, if you should happen to have one, and if you should want to burn it, like minded people will be gathering at Water Street Commons tomorrow night with everything one might need to set offensive flags ablaze. So, if you inherited one from a grandfather down south, had one given to you by an uncle during the heyday of the Dukes of Hazard, or maybe used to be a racist who has since had a change of heart, come on down and join your Ypsi Arbor neighbors who, like you, feel as though it’s time to officially bring the Civil War to an end and move on as a nation.
For those of you unfamiliar with the history of the Confederate flag, you should know that, despite claims to the contrary, it was never just a symbol of “southern heritage”. The following comes from The Week.
…(H)istory is clear: There is no revolutionary cause associated with the flag, other than the right for Southern states to determine how best to subjugate black people and to perpetuate slavery.
First sewn in 1861 — there were about 120 created for the war — the flag was flown by the cavalry of P.G.T. Beauregard, the Confederacy’s first duly appointed general, after he took Manassas, Virginia, in the first Battle of Bull Run.
After the Civil War, the flag saw limited (and quite appropriate) use at first: It commemorated the sons of the South who died during the war. We can easily forgive the families of those who died for grieving. No account of the Civil War can be complete without noting how vicious the Union army could be, and how destructive its strategy toward the end of the war had become. That the cause of the war, once the damned Union army actually invaded the South and started destroying it, came to be associated with an actual, guns-out defense of real property and liberties — mainly, the liberty not to die during a war — is not controversial. That’s what happens during wars.
But never did the flag represent some amorphous concept of Southern heritage, or Southern pride, or a legacy that somehow includes everything good anyone ever did south of the Mason-Dixon line, slavery excluded.
Fast-forward about 100 years, past thousands of lynchings in the South, past Jim Crow and Plessy v. Ferguson, past the state-sanctioned economic and political subjugation of black people, and beyond the New Deal that all too often gave privileges to the white working class to the specific exclusion of black people.
In 1948, Strom Thurmond’s States’ Rights Party adopted the Battle Flag of Northern Virginia as a symbol of defiance against the federal government. What precisely required such defiance? The president’s powers to enforce civil rights laws in the South, as represented by the Democratic Party’s somewhat progressive platform on civil rights.
Georgia adopted its version of the flag design in 1956 to protest the Supreme Court’s ruling against segregated schools, in Brown v. Board of Education.
The flag first flew over the state capitol in South Carolina in 1962, a year after George Wallace raised it over the grounds of the legislature in Alabama, quite specifically to link more aggressive efforts to integrate the South with the trigger of secession 100 years before — namely, the storming of occupied Fort Sumter by federal troops. Fort Sumter, you might recall, is located at the mouth of Charleston Harbor.
Opposition to civil rights legislation, to integration, to miscegenation, to social equality for black people — these are the major plot points that make up the flag’s recent history. Not Vietnam. Not opposition to Northern culture or values. Not tourism. Not ObamaCare. Not anything else…
For those of you who still aren’t convinced, I’d suggest reading our last conversation about the Confederate flag, and the essay “It’s Time to Burn the Confederate Flag.” And, if, after that, you still don’t feel compelled to carry your flag to Ypsi and set fire to it, maybe consider just coming out anyway, and listening to what others have to say about the flag and what it says to them. What could it hurt, right?
