Barbara Boland reports at the Washington Examiner:
Satan worshipers launched a counter-protest against pro-lifers outside the Detriot and Ferndale, Michigan, Planned Parenthood locations Saturday.
Clad in black robes, members of the Satanic Temple of Detriot drenched bound women with milk, simulating water-boarding to "illustrate the theocratic agenda imposed upon female bodies." The milk symbolized breast milk, one of the protest organizers explained on Facebook.
The group attached a symbol of their temple to the American flag and held up a sign that read, "America is not a theocracy. End forced motherhood."
Unfortunately for this Satanic propaganda campaign, the fact is that America is a nation rooted in a verifiable, knowable Creator who welcomes questions ("test everything") and has endowed human beings with "unalienable rights," among them the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," the anti-Satanist Declaration of Independence states.
"Members of the Satanic Temple drew inspiration for their 'political theatre' from the nationwide anti-Planned Parenthood protests Saturday," the Examiner reports. "Tens of thousands showed up to protest Planned Parenthood at over 300 locations across the country after a series of undercover videos revealed the abortion giant was harvesting and selling fetal organs and tissue," according to the Examiner.
"The pro-life protesters hope to end Federal taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, which currently receives over half a billion dollars per year. Michigan state senators, some of whom appeared at the protests Saturday, have launched their own bill to defund the organization," the Examiner reports.
"The Satanic Temple strongly opposes the promotion of misinformation and believes that all people are entitled to make informed decisions about their health, family and future without coercion," the Examiner quotes the group's website as as saying.
Satanists "consider our action a form of worship; the rejection of tyranny is an affirmation of selfhood. So long as perverted theocratic systems of power attempt to manipulate our communities and distort truths for political gain, we will rebel," the Satanist website also states, according to the Examiner.
"Satan worshipers believe that 'Satan is representative of the eternal rebel, enlightened inquiry and personal freedom,' proclaims the Satanic Temple's web site," the Examiner reports.
The Satanist position faces several difficulties, let us say. "Eternal rebel"? Not quite, because Satan is a creature and therefore is not the "eternal" anything.
"Rebel"? OK, but against what? Well, against what truly is enlightened inquiry -- to be more precise, enlightened inquiry into the inhumanity of Planned Parenthood's murdering of pre-born human beings and harvesting their body parts for profit.
Actually, these Satanist folks are reactionaries -- relying on ignorance and sloganeering to deny, among other things, the "personal freedom" of innocent human life. After, one cannot practice "personal freedom" if one is killed in the womb.
Instead of anti-science Satanism and its reactionary superstitions, far better to embrace knowledge, wisdom, ethics, and humanity living in liberating community with God and neighbor. That is a vision for humanness and freedom.
By the way, I'm all for "eternal rebellion" if that means resisting and overcoming any dehumanizing idol (like Satan, for example) that rises up in opposition to the good, the true, and the beautiful.
As I have written elsewhere: "There is a sense in which" human beings are in fact "hardwired to rebel -- not against good, but against evil. Not against life in community with our Creator and our neighbor, but agains that which, if not resisted, alienates us from the good, the true, and the beautiful -- including freedom. So of course a creature destine for freedom is a creature of resistance against tyranny, and so the founders in the Declaration affirm the 'right' and 'duty' to 'throw off' a government has as it 'direct object . . . the establishment of an absolute tyranny'."
And while we're at, let's throw off the unenlightened reactionary superstitions of Satanic propaganda. Saving the "least of these" from an experience far worse than water-boarding is on the right side both history and humanity. If the Satanists are upset, you might be doing something right.
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