The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the Saucon Valley School District had agreed to pay $200,000 in attorney’s fees and to provide The Satanic Temple and the After School Satan Club it sponsors the same access to school facilities as is provided to other organizations.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in March after the district rescinded its earlier approval to allow the club to meet following criticism. The After School Satan Club, with the motto “Educatin’ with Satan,” had drawn protests and even a threat in February that prompted closure of district schools for a day and the later arrest of a person in another state.
Saucon Valley school district attorney Mark Fitzgerald told reporters in a statement that the district denies having discriminated against The Satanic Temple, its club or “the approximately four students” who attended its meetings. He said the district’s priorities were education and the safety of students and staff.
I don’t think it’s ironic, I think it’s fighting fire with fire. People see that religion is afforded a lot of leeway that isn’t afforded to other similar organizations, and they want to use that for a good cause of a change.
Exactly that’s why it can work, the system by design requires this appeal to religion, so religious causes are manufactured ad-hoc like this to fulfill political goals. The idea of religion being a political influence is accepted by people who are against religion if it’s a good cause, as long as it’s in the context of being against a bad religious cause. The irony is they hold secularism as a tenant of the religion yet function the same as a traditional religion does in the political sense, and they’re required to do this because of how the system works.
Yeah well, since the government and society is unfortunately infested by religion, you have two choices: you either do some actual good by pretending to be a religion, or you whine about it online.
One of those actually help people.
by pretending to be a religion
You don’t think TST is a real religion… what would a real religion be then? I criticize this whole context of how religion operates in government and the absurdity of religions needing to be purpose-built like this, but I definitely wouldn’t go so far to call them a pretend religion. I suspect a lot of TST members sincerely believe in the tenants, it’s no less manufactured than other religions really. It’s just manufactured in this post-political postmodern neoliberal context vs something like Mormonism or the Adventists that were manufactured in a different context. I think that’s why you’re calling it a pretend religion, but I would say this is maybe more like genuine pretending. To call it pretend like you have is way harsher than anything I’ve said about it, you’re basically saying it’s all a ruse and the adherents are all just knowingly faking it for show, which would mean they couldn’t legitimately challenge laws as a religion. Like you’ve invalidated the whole church by saying that, at least I recognize it’s a legitimate religion.
