Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

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   “The curriculum had already drawn tensions among the county’s religious parents, with some worrying about appropriateness and arguing the material…

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   As someone who produced dozens of nativity plays as a teacher and a Sunday School leader, that title ‘A Gay…

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   The defence of a Christian view never seems to be settled by debate: exchange of facts, reference to historical events.…

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   But …… Rwanda is a safe place: Parliament says so.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/8/contentsSafety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 S 2 Safety…

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IN an op-ed published today, Fox News excoriates The Satanic Temple for naming its on-line reproductive rights clinic after Sam Alito, above, who wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, finding no right to abortion in the Constitution.

Recognised by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a religion in 2019, The Satanic Temple features T-shirts and a cartoon, inset above.

The cartoon outraged Fox which its says it suggests that Alito’s mother should have aborted him.

TST explains on its website that its first telehealth clinic will:

Provide medication for safe abortions through the mail for members and for those who wish to perform TST’s Abortion Ritual. The goal of this first clinic is to allow our members to have access to safe and legal abortions, no matter where they live or what their financial situation may be.

Describing the TST’s decision to open its chemical abortion facility in New Mexico as “tasteless and threatening”, Fox News said:

This sinister charade is also an assault on religious freedom. The Satanic Temple threatens everyone’s religious liberty protections with its ill-advised plan linking its pro-abortion propaganda with alleged religious practices.

It added:

The Satanic Temple disdains those who believe in God, religion and the supernatural, taunting those believers with its Satanic imagery. The organization’s approach to religious freedom mirrors its approach to religion: It doesn’t actually support religious freedom for anyone but will invoke religious freedom for itself if it can denigrate that same freedom in the process.

It concluded:

The Satanic Temple should drop this religious pretense and just advocate its pro-abortion views. The group’s masquerade as a religious group cloaks its disdain for religion and its efforts to disrupt legal protections for religious believers. That erodes the First Amendment rights that protect us all.

Explaining its decision to name its new clinic after Alito, TST says:

TST Health has named the facility “The Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic.” Prior to 1973, doctors who performed abortions could lose their licenses and go to jail.

In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother did not have options. The clinic’s name serves to remind people just how important it is to have the right to control one’s body and the potential ramifications of losing that right.

Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic is an online clinic that provides religious medication abortion care. The clinic provides abortion medication via mail to those in New Mexico who wish to perform The Satanic Temple’s Religious Abortion Ritual.

While access to reproductive healthcare and abortion has been abruptly blocked in many parts of the country in the wake of the Dobbs decision, this initiative helps ensure that TST Members have a means to obtain the care they need.

Image via YouTube

In 2021, eight years after the Temple was co-founded by Lucien Greaves, above, The Conversation, pointed out that:

Although The Satanic Temple does not believe in or worship a literal Satan, they revere Satan as described in the works of English poet John Milton and the Romantic movement, an intellectual movement that originated in late 18th-century Europe, as a powerful symbol of rebellion against authority.

The Satanic Temple’s seven tenets include the belief that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” It interprets state restrictions on abortion access as a burden on this sincerely held religious belief.

According to Wikipedia, Greaves and his colleagues envisioned The Satanic Temple as a “poison pill” in the Church/State debate.

Their idea was that Satanists, asserting their rights and privileges where religious agendas have been successful in imposing themselves upon public affairs, could serve as a reminder that such privileges are for everybody, and can be used to serve an agenda beyond the current narrow understanding of a religious agenda.

Greaves does not worship Satan, nor do followers of The Satanic Temple; rather contemporary Satanic beliefs focus on personal sovereignty, independence, and freedom of will.

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