You have got to hand it to the Satanists, they are quick on the ball. They came up promptly with their own statue to be placed on the grounds of the Oklahoma state legislature and now, following Monday’s US Supreme Court ruling allowing ceremonial opening prayers at government meetings, Chaz Stevens has written to the city of Deerfield Beach saying that he wants to offer up an prayer at their meetings
Stevens has told them that he is a Satanist but this was not always the case. Last December he petitioned successfully to have a Festivus pole installed in the rotunda of the Florida State Capitol because at that time his religion was Pabstfestidianism of which he said, “It’s legitimate — it’s based in as much reality as the Catholics. But unlike Catholic priests, we don’t rape little boys.” There is no word whether this year the rival sects of Coorism and Heinekenism will want their own poles as well because you can’t very well expect hem to worship the god Pabst. That would be the greatest heresy.
Asked about his reasons for converting to his new religion, he said “Satan is a cool dude. Think of all the people he’s in charge of. Do you want to be stuck listening to harp music in the afterlife? Hell no. I want to drink beer and hang with hookers.”
That sounds like a pretty good reason. Here is the full text of his letter:
Dear City of Deerfield Beach;
With the recent US Supreme Court ruling allowing “prayer before Commission meetings” and seeking the rights granted to others, I hereby am requesting I be allowed to open a Commission meeting praying for my God, my divine spirit, my Dude in Charge.
Be advised, I am a Satanist.
Let me know when this is good for you.
Besties
Chaz Stevens, Calling in from Ring 6 of Dante’s Inferno
This should be fun.
Yep, best way to get christians in government annoyed is to remind them every other religion has the same rights they do.
How delightful! I hope his opening prayer is covered by reporters. That should be good.
I want to open up my town board meetings with a ceremonial pagan orgy now.
I think it is a little too obvious he isn’t seriously a Satanist, so they might turn him down on those grounds.
From what I gathered of the ruling, the majority said it was not appropriate for the government to judge the prayers for content, and this would probably extend to them deciding if it was sincere or not, so I don’t kno if they could be justified in refusing
As a neo-Aztec would I be allowed to open a meeting by cutting open the chest of the mayor of Deerfield Beach and tearing out their beating heart?
I worship Exxon-Mobil. I would like to do the invocation. I”ll try to keep it from sounding like an advertisement, but that’s pretty much what our holy book sounds like.
I worked at a company with people from a different department whose boss “welcomed” his people to come in early for a daily multi-denominational prayer service. These people we really hush hush about how pissed they were about what it took to stay on the good side of their boss.
They showed me all of the religious books available, and I told them I do animal sacrifice in the morning, and asked them to inquire for me if it would be OK if I killed a chicken for god in this repurposed conference room.
Anything to sow a little discontent among the submissively adapted.
I worship Ritchie Blackmore, Guitar God (and I can prove it). Can I offer a 18+ minute live version of Catch the Rainbow iso a prayer? Volume will be turned up to 11 of course, with loudspeakers of at least 100 W each.
Anyone who wants to voluntarily undergo this highly spiritual experience, here is the YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EiIt7rI24
The higher the volume the more spiritual the experience.
@ mnb0 # 8
amen!!
Sorry, i meant ! AMEN !
thank you mnb0.
That! was a spiritual experience.
gshelly@4: But that’s kinda the point. SCOTUS has explicitly said that they can not judge the merit of belief or dogma, otherwise, it definitely runs afoul of the 1st amendment. The ruling is atrocious in that they’ve put themselves in a Catch-22 of their own making, so I hope they get enough applications like this that they can’t pretend to be impartial anymore. It’s only a matter of time before some of the godbots (see, e.g. Roanoke, Virginia) open their pieholes and explicitly state that they are only accepting xian prayers.
Then the whole process will have to start again, and hopefully, there will be a different SCOTUS in place by then.
BTW, has anyone seen outrageous howls of ‘judicial activism’ from the usual rightwing blowhards? Because of all the cases that might qualify (this one pretty much stands precedent on its head, and gives it a swirly….), this is one.