Protesting against religious liberty, the Satan clubs really are evil

The First Amendment is so broad, in fact, that it protects those who hate the First Amendment.

Strident atheists, for generations, have fought to curtail the free exercise of religion. Oddly enough, the same article of the Bill of Rights they are attacking — the very first one — protects their speech in many cases.

But we shouldn’t let them pretend they are up to anything else. They are not flexing their free exercise of religion. They are protesting against the free exercise of religion. They are trying to curb civil liberties. They are trying to trim the First Amendment.

Supposed Satanists have been in the news lately, as an organization called the “Satanic Temple” has been sponsoring after-school clubs at public schools.

The New Republic ran an article recently on these clubs, and it was telling in a few ways. The New Republic didn’t argue for satanism. It argued against religious liberty and portrayed the satanism clubs as a worthy troll of those who try to exercise Christianity, Judaism, or Islam in public.

Begin with the New Republic’s headline: “Angry About Your Kid’s After-School Satan Club? Blame Clarence Thomas.”

What did Clarence Thomas do to earn your ire? He ruled 20 years ago that public schools may not discriminate against religious clubs — whatever accommodations a school district gives to the Social Justice Club or the Chess Club it should also give to the Koran Club or the Christian Fellowship.

Since then, especially since Neil Gorsuch came to the Supreme Court, state and local governments have been less free to discriminate against religious organizations. If you give free mulch to neighborhood playgrounds on private property, you can’t exclude Lutheran-owned playgrounds. If you give state scholarships to students attending secular private schools, you can’t discriminate against students attending the local parochial school.

This is a problem in the eyes of a certain sort of secular liberal. Some people believe that we have too many civil liberties in this country. Specifically, they believe that the exercise of religion deserves less accommodation than any other sort of activity.

That’s the motive of the pretend satanists. They want to curtail the exercise of religion, and the New Republic admitted as much: “June Everett, director of the Satanic Temple’s After School Satan Club program, insists the clubs are not teaching children to worship Satan. Their point, rather, is to protest the use of public schools by Christian organizations.”

This has always been the case. Most atheist liberals who try to gain accommodation of their non-religion are doing so not because they really want the accommodation, but because they are protesting the accommodation of others, whom they dislike.

You may recall last decade that a handful of white European atheists formed a parody religion called “pastafarianism” that pretended to worship a spaghetti god and that claimed colanders as their religious head garb.

When atheist Austrian politician and commentator Niko Alm fought for the right to wear a cheap plastic spaghetti strainer on his head in his driver’s license photo, he was, in fact, protesting against the right of Muslim women to wear headscarves and Jewish men to wear yarmulkes.

Think about how illiberal that is. He was protesting the rights of religious minorities to wear their religious headgear — and he considers himself a liberal.

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A final note: These are not only protesters against civil liberties, they are would-be enforcers of uniformity. They want to live their lives as if there is no God, which is their right. But they are upset that other people are openly living their lives differently. They want to drive religion into the shadows and denude the public square of difference.

While seeing themselves as the forces of enlightenment, these folks who use the prince of darkness as their mascot are really intolerant dogmatists.