When the GOP forces religion into schools, the Satanic Temple complies

As the saying goes, what’s good for the goose is good for the, erm, satanic goose, and one group of faux satanists is vowing to prove once again that theocracy is incompatible with the Constitution.

The Satanic Temple—the winsome wags who brought you Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic—are now fixing to test the limits of a new Florida law that opens schools to “additional counseling and support to students” from outside organizations. 

That sounds innocuous enough, because who doesn’t want to support students? But the law is really just another in a recent spate of measures intended to beer-bong specific religious flavors down the throats of nondrinkers, Zima partisans, and wine cooler aficionados alike. (Forgive the dated references, but some of us remain nostalgic for the days when wearing a goofy tank helmet could sink your campaign, and proposing a migrant fight league or claiming electric planes crash when the sun goes down would get you ostracized from polite society and/or kicked out of Supercuts.)

The Guardian:

Although HB 931 leaves the implementation of chaplain programs to individual school districts, and only requires schools to list a volunteer’s religion “if any”, [Gov. Ron] DeSantis has made clear its intent is to restore the tenets of Christianity to public education.

Without the bill, DeSantis said at its signing in April: “You’re basically saying that God has no place [on campus]. That’s wrong.”

Is it wrong, though? Would it really be that awful if religious people confined their rites and rhetoric to the vast majority of the American landmass that isn’t school property? If parents want to take their kids to the Grand Canyon and tell them Noah’s flood made that ditch, that’s their right. But why should members of the marginally cognizant community be forced to hear it?

So as they’ve done numerous times before, satanists are coming to the rescue.

Members of the Satanic Temple say they’re poised to act as volunteer chaplains under Florida’s new law, which took effect on July 1.

The temple is really more secular than satanic, and uses the dark threat of “Satan” to make a point about religious pluralism. Its leaders see the new law as an entree—not for satanism, per se, but for reason and fairness. Satanic Temple members are ready to bring the good news of Satan and all his fictional works—as well as the Founding Fathers’ very real work product—to Sunshine State schoolchildren from the Panhandle to the Keys. 

But this isn’t a joke or a prank. It’s a serious effort to wake America up to the theocratic cancer that’s currently metastasizing across the country.

“You have theocrats pushing further and further, signing unconstitutional bills into law, and they realize there’s no consequence,” Lucien Graves, co-founder of The Satanic Temple, told The Guardian. “And they also realize that when people see these laws passed, and the outrage comes, they’re not even necessarily going to recognize or realize when those laws are later overturned by the courts.

“They’re giving everybody the impression that these types of things are legal, this is just the environment we’re living in,” Graves said. “And in that way they’re really numbing people to when these things actually do take effect, or when they are upheld by a corrupt judge who’s just playing partisan politics.”

Of course, Florida’s new law isn’t the only recent example of theocratic creep.

Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, recently announced teachers will be required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments into their curricula, citing their supposed historical importance. And now he plans to overhaul the state’s social studies curriculum with the help of a coterie of Christofascist kookaburras. These include Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts, whose organization created Project 2025, the fascist kill-America outline whose architects Donald Trump never heard of, even though several of them were members of his administration. (Though, to be fair, they probably gave him too few horsey rides around the Resolute Desk to really stick in his memory.)

Meanwhile, Louisiana passed a law in June requiring all schools receiving state funding to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom. No doubt the Supreme Court will review this blatantly unconstitutional law, decide it’s just fine, and further order that Jewish, Muslim, and atheist kids be forced to eat a bug in front of the class.

In addition, several other states are currently allowing a Christian outfit known as LifeWise to bus kids to Christian celebrations and Bible studies during school hours. The off-campus sessions are legal under two Supreme Court rulings issued in 1948 and 1952, but the program has raised eyebrows among school officials and parents who think it puts undue peer pressure on non-Christian kids.

“Whether it’s happening on campus or not, this program is bringing religion into the school,” Demrie Alonzo, an English tutor who works at several Ohio schools with LifeWise programs, told NBC News. “It’s not fair to the kids of different religions.”

Of course, given that Supreme Court robes now reliably double as choir frocks, quaint throwbacks like the Constitution and stare decisis are unlikely to help us repair our crumbling wall of church-state separation. Democrats and other students of actual American history need to take back statehouses in order to do that. 

Which means we need to fill out our entire ballots every time, and not simply vote for Democrats in the most high-profile races.

As the Sister District Project points out, “ballot roll-off,” which occurs when voters fill out the top of the ballot but stop there, is a bigger problem among Democrats than Republicans. And the difference is by no means minor. 

According to SDP, “across 10 battleground states over 8 years, contested down-ballot Democrats experienced ballot roll-off 80% of the time, compared to only 37% for their Republican counterparts.” 

As a result of this yawning discrepancy, Democratic voters are unwittingly giving theocrats the green light all across the country—allowing venerable American values to go the way of the Supreme Court’s credibility. 

“State legislative races and chambers hinge on razor-thin margins,” writes the SDP. “In prior work, we found that Democrats would have gained control of 14 more chambers in 9 states in 2020 if they had only been able to increase their down-ballot votes by 2% or less. And, those votes could have come from people who were already voting for Democrats at the top of the ticket.”

In other words, you already showed up to vote. Finish the job!

To paraphrase Smokey Bear, only you can stop out-of-control theocracy. And, happily, you don’t even have to rake the forests to do it.

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