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It looks like the Templars of the Ivory Labyrinth have been pretty busy lately.
The Satanic Temple, a religious group based in New York City, on Monday unveiled their design for a monument they hope to erect at the Oklahoma Statehouse.
The 7-foot-tall monument would include a goat-headed Baphomet figure sitting cross-legged on a stone slab, flanked by two smiling children. The monument would also include quotes from poets Lord Byron and William Blake.
“The monument has been designed to reflect the views of Satanists in Oklahoma City and beyond. The statue will serve as a beacon calling for compassion and empathy among all living creatures. The statue will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of all ages may sit on the lap of Satan for inspiration and contemplation,” spokesman Lucien Greaves explained.
The group offered to donate a monument last month, after State Rep. Mike Ritze (R-Broken Arrow) and conservative Christians were allowed to erect a Ten Commandments monument on the statehouse grounds.
Lawmakers in Oklahoma, however, have insisted that the Satanists should not be given the same treatment as Christians.
“This is a faith-based nation and a faith-based state,” Rep. Earl Sears (R-Bartlesville) said. “I think it is very offensive they would contemplate or even have this kind of conversation.”
After other groups — including PETA and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster — asked for their own displays, the Oklahoma City Capitol Preservation Commission placed a moratorium on new monuments at the statehouse.
But the Satanic Temple insists erecting a monument of their own is within their constitutional rights.
“Our monument celebrates an unwavering respect for the Constitutional values of religious freedom and free expression,” Greaves explained. “Satanism is a fundamental component at the genesis of American liberty. Medieval witch-hunts taught us to adopt presumption of innocence, secular law, and a more substantive burden of proof.
“Today, we are rightly offended by the notion of blasphemy laws and divine fiats. Acknowledging wrongful persecutions has helped shape the legal system that preserves the sovereignty of our skeptics, heretics, and the misunderstood. It has shaped a proud culture of tolerance and free inquiry. This is to be a historical marker commemorating the scapegoats, the marginalized, the demonized minority, and the unjustly outcast.”
The group hopes to raise $20,000 by January 17 to build the monument.
“We trust that this unique monument will also prove a favorite tourist attraction to Oklahoma’s Capitol for years to come,” Greaves remarked
Oh boy, Queen Galfrey is NOT going to be happy when she hears about this. I can just imagine Lucien Greaves (CE male human cleric of Baphomet 15) taking orders from Hepzamirah via a scrying orb.
I wonder if the statue is affixed with an Unhallow spell like the other ones in the Ivory Sanctum.
I supported this on KillStarter™ and am a pledge backer at the "9th Circle of Hell" tier.
I believe in you guys!
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I can chainsaw carve one for a 10th of that...
I can chainsaw carve one for a 10th of that...
I suspect so can they. The legal fees are expected to be substantial.
I suspect so can they. The legal fees are expected to be substantial.I can chainsaw carve one for a 10th of that...
I can chainsaw carve through red tape too! (even if it starts as white tape...)
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We need a statue of Calistria or Cayden Cailean to put there too.
So what kind of beer comes out of our fountain to Cayden Cailean?
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The 14 year old metalhead in me says:
\oo/ \oo/
Hail Satan!
I laughed aloud. LAL.
Wait...this isn't the onion?
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Wait...this isn't the onion?
Nope. It's for real. A christian group fought to have the ten commandments on the courthouse steps. They were too shortsighted to see the importance of the separation of church and state. So congrats to them. They got what they wanted. Last I read there was a Hindu group, Church of FSM, and others petitioning to put up religious iconography. SO either the state removes all iconography, allows the other religious groups to put stuff up, or opens itself up to a rather hysterical lawsuit. Regardless of which the state picks, it's going to be awesome.
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Taking religion out of it, the 10 commandments are at least law-related.
But I'm with Penn on this one. Public property is no place for this stuff. You want to display? But some land and put it there.
One of my favorite fun "facts" (at least, to the extent that anything on wikipedia is a "fact"):
"Hundreds of these monuments—including some of those causing dispute—were originally placed by director Cecil B. DeMille as a publicity stunt to promote his 1956 film The Ten Commandments."
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Hail Eris!
Or don't, if you like.
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So when can I expect my statue of the great and almighty Bruce Campbell to be erected in Oklahoma.
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Taking religion out of it, the 10 commandments are at least law-related.
Which actually makes matters worse, by attempting to give civil law some kind of patronage from religious sources. It's a not-so-subtle hint that the government is associating itself with a particular religion - which is undemocratic.
That aside, the flying spaghetti monster also has commandments, I believe .
It's not undemocratic, unless it's been voted against, and done anyway.
Unconstitutional would be more true.
So no public momuments from any past set of laws in history, lest they be associated (intentionally or not) with whatever religion was present at the time and region.
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It's not undemocratic, unless it's been voted against, and done anyway.
Unconstitutional would be more true.So no public momuments from any past set of laws in history, lest they be associated (intentionally or not) with whatever religion was present at the time and region.
Separation of religion from state is a strong, inherent part of democracy. Democracy is composed of two equally important parts - the formal democracy (laws, the composition of the government and other state funded public institutions, etc.) and the ideological democracy (principles, guiding rules, philosophical backbone, etc.). Out of these, the ideas that all men are born free of religion and are not forced to adhere to any religion in their state is a strong one.
So it's not "undemocratic" because it's illegal or was authorized in an unbecoming way, but rather because the mere idea of associating your judicial system with any religion is undemocratic.
So no public momuments from any past set of laws in history, lest they be associated (intentionally or not) with whatever religion was present at the time and region.
Nope. Nothing wrong, legally, with secular monuments to secular law. If you want to put up a monument to the Code of Justinian or the Magna Carta, that's fine. If a "reasonable person" would not associate the statue as sending a message endorsing religion, you're in the clear.
That's not the case with the OK ten commandments statue. The chief sponsor explicitly intended it to be associated with religion, as a symbol of the important of religion to the moral foundation of Oklahoma.
I love how apologists for theocracy will claim, on the one hand, that God demands they do something to show explicitly how the entire state loves Jesus, but on the other hand, when the secularists point out that they're not allowed to do that, complain that they're being misinterpreted.
What if you had a series of monuments for Magna Carta, Code of Justinian, Code of Hammurabi, and the 10 Commandents as a greater display of laws of the past in general?
Separation of religion from state is a strong, inherent part of democracy.
I'm afraid not. Democracy simply means that the people are self-ruling. Lots of democracies have strong associations between religion and the government, chosen by the various people via the democratic process. Ancient Athens was the original democracy but still had a state religion in the form of the ancient Greek pantheon, and similarly for the Roman republic. In 1000 AD, the Icelandic confederation was a democracy with state-sponsored Christianity. Today, Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Denmark, Norway, and United Kingdom are generally recognized as democratic, but have various forms of Christianity as a state religion. On the Islamic side of the hourse, Bangladesh and Malaysia sponsor Islam. Israel, of course, is a Jewish democracy by law, and Bhutan is actually a democracy with Buddhism as a state religion.
One of the chief weaknesses of a democracy is the oft-cited risk of "tyranny of the majority"; the idea that 51% of the population can enforce their views on the minority --- or even fewer if voter turnout is low. The US dealt with this problem by formalizing the notion of fundamental rights, rights that the government could not abridge, even with near-universal support. The UK still doesn't have the notion of such rights; under the principle of parliamentary supremacy, nothing keeps Parliament from acting to abolish the House of Commons, outlaw Judaism and Islam, and and reduce everyone without a knighthood to serfdom.
(Read up on the history of the Canadian Charter of Rights if you want to see just how scary Parliament can be. Basically, Canada wanted to pass the equivalent of the bill of rights, but found that it had no authority to do so -- whatever one Parliament approved, another could simply undo. They had to go back to the mothership -- the UK -- and have another country's parliament impose a new government structure on them.)
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Or "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
What if you had a series of monuments for Magna Carta, Code of Justinian, Code of Hammurabi, and the 10 Commandents as a greater display of laws of the past in general?
that would be cool, I think.
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Prediction for the future: Satanists raise the money, get prepared to build the statue. Oklahoma legislature pouts and passes legislation to take its ball and go home / forbid any religious expressions on public grounds. Ten Commandments taken down, Baphomet statue never built. Secularists and religionists both get a moral victory (Religious get to claim this as one more data point about how they are excluded from public life / beset by enemies visible and invisible).
That is how this is going to go down, right?
Prediction for the far future: Every courthouse has Baphomet statue. Right next to L Ron Hubbard.
It's not undemocratic, unless it's been voted against, and done anyway.
Unconstitutional would be more true.So no public momuments from any past set of laws in history, lest they be associated (intentionally or not) with whatever religion was present at the time and region.
Separation of religion from state is a strong, inherent part of democracy. Democracy is composed of two equally important parts - the formal democracy (laws, the composition of the government and other state funded public institutions, etc.) and the ideological democracy (principles, guiding rules, philosophical backbone, etc.). Out of these, the ideas that all men are born free of religion and are not forced to adhere to any religion in their state is a strong one.
So it's not "undemocratic" because it's illegal or was authorized in an unbecoming way, but rather because the mere idea of associating your judicial system with any religion is undemocratic.
That's an interesting take on it. It's the part that's codified that matters most, though.
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What if you had a series of monuments for Magna Carta, Code of Justinian, Code of Hammurabi, and the 10 Commandents as a greater display of laws of the past in general?
Read up on the Lemon test. It's not a simple question -- few matters of law are.
The basic idea is that, to be constitutional, 1) an act must have a secular purpose, 2) it must not have the effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, and 3) it must not result in "excessive entanglement" with religion.
So the Ten Commandments statue fails because the act explicitly (we have quotes from the sponsors) does not have a secular purpose, but a religious one. If your reason for creating the rest of the monuments is simply chaff to disguise your real purpose of supporting Christianity, then your proposed series would be illegal.
Assuming you're acting in good faith, the court would then look to see how the monuments were actually received (which of course would depend upon the exact design) to see if people believed them to be a monument to law, or to religion. (And similarly, they'd evaluate how "a reasonable person" would interpret them. A lone nut case crying in the wilderness would be justly ignored.)
But, yes, such displays have been made and have been challenged. IIRC, there's one in my home town that's more or less exactly as you describe, but more extensive (it included the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence as well as others). It was fine.
One feature that might be important: In my town's collection, the focal piece of the collection was the Constitution which had pride of place and of size. If the ten commandments was in the center of the display and five times the size of everything else, you might have a problem. If the center of your display is Solon the Lawgiver, probably less so.
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I'd rather a series of monuments to other Charlton Heston flicks. Say, one each for Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, Major Dundee and The Omega Man. Maybe Ben-Hur.
My intent would not be to sneak a 10 commandments statue past anyone.
I just wondered how far the seperation had to be, and if there was any rationale to it, or just a flat "No not ever".
Thank whatever gods may be for posts like Orfamay Quest's.
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Separation of religion from state is a strong, inherent part of democracy.I'm afraid not. Democracy simply means that the people are self-ruling. Lots of democracies have strong associations between religion and the government, chosen by the various people via the democratic process. Ancient Athens was the original democracy but still had a state religion in the form of the ancient Greek pantheon, and similarly for the Roman republic. In 1000 AD, the Icelandic confederation was a democracy with state-sponsored Christianity. Today, Greece, Argentina, Bolivia, Denmark, Norway, and United Kingdom are generally recognized as democratic, but have various forms of Christianity as a state religion. On the Islamic side of the hourse, Bangladesh and Malaysia sponsor Islam. Israel, of course, is a Jewish democracy by law, and Bhutan is actually a democracy with Buddhism as a state religion.
One of the chief weaknesses of a democracy is the oft-cited risk of "tyranny of the majority"; the idea that 51% of the population can enforce their views on the minority --- or even fewer if voter turnout is low. The US dealt with this problem by formalizing the notion of fundamental rights, rights that the government could not abridge, even with near-universal support. The UK still doesn't have the notion of such rights; under the principle of parliamentary supremacy, nothing keeps Parliament from acting to abolish the House of Commons, outlaw Judaism and Islam, and and reduce everyone without a knighthood to serfdom.
(Read up on the history of the Canadian Charter of Rights if you want to see just how scary Parliament can be. Basically, Canada wanted to pass the equivalent of the bill of rights, but found that it had no authority to do so -- whatever one Parliament approved, another could simply undo. They had to go back to the mothership -- the UK -- and have another country's parliament impose a new government structure on them.)
Alright, if you insist on getting technical:
The prevailing type of democracy to be found today in the western world is liberal democracy, which is a variant on the principle of "rule of the people" that includes principals such as human rights and freedoms in it's ideology. When referring to a modern democracy, the meaning is nearly always liberal democracy - and indeed, liberal democracy is the kind practiced in the U.S. I found it pointless to make the distinction since the Greek Polis are long gone, and 99% of people wouldn't be able to call me out on the technical difference. Now, to avoid further dancing around semantics - I know that the U.S is not officially called a liberal democracy, but it's displaying so many of the relevant characteristics that I feel confident in calling it that.Suffice to say that in the U.S, democracy is of the kind that is meant to support and perpetuate basic human rights and freedoms (at least on paper).
Several countries in the world are "democratic and X", such as the examples you mentioned. I live in Israel and let me tell you - the conflict between "democratic" and "Jewish" rages here constantly, and nobody for a moment confuses the two. The democratic aspect calls to separate any and all religious symbols from the government while the Jewish aspect would have us ruled by a bible-writing king elected by God if it was up to them (sadly, I'm not even exaggerating here).
Erecting a statue bearing the ten commandments is undemocratic in respect to liberal democracy. That was my intention.
My intent would not be to sneak a 10 commandments statue past anyone.
I just wondered how far the seperation had to be, and if there was any rationale to it, or just a flat "No not ever".
Basically, the government can do almost anything as long as it's doing sensible, secular stuff and is relatively even-handed about it. For example, building codes apply generally, including to churches. If some wingnut pastor wanted to complain that the government didn't have the right to insist he had fire escapes from his church, or that the wiring in the new rectory was up-to-code, the courts would laugh at him.
Somehow, I don't see a lack of statuary in front of the government offices as a serious social need that can only be fixed with religious artwork.
Heh, me neither.
Actually the Crown gives final approval to everything that Parliament does. In the modern world this is almost always a rubber stamp, but refusing to dissolve parliament is one of powers the Queen has specifically said is within her prerogative. Similarly I can't imagine Elizabeth II, Charles, or William granting consent to outlawing Judaism or Islam and restoring the manor system.It's theoretically possible, but in England's case it depends on the Crown's Assent.
At least that's my understanding, I'm sure there's some brit out there ready to tell me I'm wrong.
The official view of the British legal system on this point is that it's complicated. The last time this actually happened was under Queen Anne; it came up for discussion again in 1914 and the advice given to the king at the time was "don't push it, we don't know which way it will go."
Prediction for the future: Satanists raise the money, get prepared to build the statue. Oklahoma legislature pouts and passes legislation to take its ball and go home / forbid any religious expressions on public grounds. Ten Commandments taken down, Baphomet statue never built. Secularists and religionists both get a moral victory (Religious get to claim this as one more data point about how they are excluded from public life / beset by enemies visible and invisible).
That is how this is going to go down, right?
Obviously you aren't from the deep south. Oklahoma is Bible Belt. "If you ain't Christian you are wrong." The Satanists may make a fuss when their statue is refused, but the majority of the state is Christian of one flavor or another, and the 10 commandments will stay. Is it right? Probably not. But it is probably what will happen.
Obviously you aren't from the deep south. Oklahoma is Bible Belt. "If you ain't Christian you are wrong." The Satanists may make a fuss when their statue is refused, but the majority of the state is Christian of one flavor or another, and the 10 commandments will stay. Is it right? Probably not. But it is probably what will happen.Prediction for the future: Satanists raise the money, get prepared to build the statue. Oklahoma legislature pouts and passes legislation to take its ball and go home / forbid any religious expressions on public grounds. Ten Commandments taken down, Baphomet statue never built. Secularists and religionists both get a moral victory (Religious get to claim this as one more data point about how they are excluded from public life / beset by enemies visible and invisible).
That is how this is going to go down, right?
Depends. Oklahoma won't be making the decision; it will be made by a Federal court. Alabama tried something similar a number of years ago. A Federal judge ordered the statue removed. When the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court defied the order, he was overruled unanimously by order of the other justices on that court, and Chief Justice Moore was later disbarred for willful contempt of a federal court order.
I would be very surprised if the SCOTUS allowed this monument to continue to stand.
So when can I expect my statue of the great and almighty Bruce Campbell to be erected in Oklahoma.
I'd prefer Morgan Freeman.
Oklahomian could also consider making statue of Argaron.
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Taking religion out of it, the 10 commandments are at least law-related.
Not all of them are laws you really want implemented at your local courthouse.
You're under arrest for aggravated coveting.
Which 10 commandments are in the courthouse? By even displaying them you are favoring 1 variety of christianity over annother, since they can't agree on what they are.