A Mississippi man accused of destroying a statue of a pagan idol at Iowa’s state Capitol is now being charged with a hate crime.
Take note dumb shits.
Good. If I ever drive across the country to destroy a statue for any religion I should be charged the same way.
Hail Satan. May justice be done in accordance with law.
Second bit seems risky. I’d flip it around: May the law be done in accordance with justice.
Our world has seen some pretty horrific things done in accordance with some pretty horrific laws.
So very true! Law and justice rarely meet
Agree. I’m operating on an assumption that we enable justice through laws. Definitely not fool proof.
Hail Satan!
Hail satan!
she has accused the Satanic Temple of making filings that “are only meant to evoke strong emotions and incite others.”
Uh yeah, it isn’t a secret or anything.
What’s next? Is she going to say “I don’t think they actually believe in Baphomet either!”
As a Satanist myself, I honestly think that would/should be their lawyers case.
We are atheists and the argument that we’re not really a religion is something conservative courts might believe.
I haven’t looked into any filings for religious exemption/status, etc so I’m not sure how we’ve made our case in the past. I think we should be prepared to advocate that our mutual belief in the seven tenets is our religion.
Here in Germany religions and world-views have equal status, and if Baphomet is a symbol of your specific brand of atheism and its values then desecrating it is, well, desecration: An insult of those values.
Zen folks also aren’t religious in the western understanding, the whole distinction is a western construct, yet I don’t doubt burning down a Zen temple would be considered a hate crime even by Christians.
From what I understand the legal situation in the US is actually similar. When people started the Sudburry school they had a look at the options and went straight-ahead for making it a denominational school as it offered the best conditions and flexibility. They specifically created a humanist creed just for that founding.
Push come to shove, lessons to learn? More architecture, more fancy robes and chants.
That’s really interesting that religions and world-views are given equal credence. Excuse my ignorance, but are they covered under the same word? Or what would the translations be?
Different words. Quoth Article 137(7) of the Weimar constitution (one of the paragraphs that are part of the current constitution):
Den Religionsgesellschaften werden die Vereinigungen gleichgestellt, die sich die gemeinschaftliche Pflege einer Weltanschauung zur Aufgabe machen.
Associations whose purpose is the communal cultivation of a world view shall be treated in the same way as religious societies.
Meaning they’re seen as different in some sense, but as they’re 100% equal under the law courts never bother to make judgements on whether something is the one or the other. Courts are really good at avoiding deciding something if they don’t absolutely have to. In laws you always see them mentioned side by side, e.g. §166 StGB:
(1) Anyone who publicly insults the content of a religious or world-view conviction of others or disseminates such content (Section 11 (3)) in a way that is likely to disturb public peace shall be liable to a custodial sentence not exceeding three years or to a monetary penalty.
(2) Likewise, anyone who publicly or by disseminating content (Section 11 (3)) insults a church or other religious or world-view association existing in Germany, its institutions or customs in a manner that is likely to disturb public peace shall be liable to a custodial sentence of up to three years or a monetary penalty.
That law is age-old, dating back to after the 30 year war to keep Lutherans and Catholics from inciting wars against each other. And just for the record yes you can call the Catholic Church a child fucker cult: Courts ruled that it’s not that kind of statement which disturbs the public peace, priests fucking children and the church sweeping it under the carpet is what disturbs it. The statement may be pointed but it’s still a statement of fact, not an insult.
OTOH you won’t see Churches over here saying things like “atheists are inherently amoral”, that very much is an insult. Or the good ole Lutheran line of “Catholics are Idolaters” – Lutheran theology still says that they are, but, hey, you don’t have to say it out loud, least of all using fighting words.
The term “world view” itself has quite precise philosophical meaning, English wikipedia does a half-assed job of explaining it. The German article has a way better opening definition:
Today, a world view is primarily understood to be the totality of personal values, ideas and perspectives based on knowledge, tradition, experience and feelings, which relate to the interpretation of the world, the role of the individual in it, the view of society and, to some extent, the meaning of life.
So philosophically speaking religions are actually a subset of world-views and the question of “is this a religion” is rather meaningless to the philosopher – they’d rather use terms such as “theological world-view” or such. For the established religions, though, the term is very important and noone wants to rock a boat that doesn’t need rocking.
Thank you for the detailed and insightful response. That’s such a fair and egalitarian stance. I wonder why other countries haven’t adopted similar? Or if it’s that the church in Germany doesn’t hold as much political power as other places.
Germany isn’t even secular as such, there’s a gazillion state churches and world view organisation, organised under public law and having privileges such as sitting on the public TV councils, and even writing their own employment laws. You do have to be compatible with humanism, though, and not in opposition to the free and democratic basic order.
From the reformation to the age of the enlightenment there were first wars, then people could be cast out of a lord’s territory if they were of the “wrong” creed – which was a huge win in terms of religious freedom, before that they often had to face some sort of inquisition.
Catholic areas were of course catholic, in Protestant areas multiple new creeds developed, some accepted by the state, some not so much. Actual religious freedom was introduced 1848, simultaneously the authority to marry was taken away from the churches and put into state hands. Same thing with schools, though confessions still can (and do) have private schools, but it’s all under state oversight.
That whole approach then got firmed up a bit in the Weimar constitution, put into its current organisational form, then the Nazis happened, and then it got firmed up even more in the sense that the state now is now not neutral but actively humanist. (Even if it’s often outsourced to specifically the EKD as they are very good at not arguing from theological principles but speak plain ethics. In practice no law concerning say stem cell research passes without their ok as their reasoning always demands respect) And this humanist orientation of the state also leads to decisions that I think look rather strange from an outside POV, such as at-will abortions not being legal, but decriminalised. The constitutional court really was shouting “you can’t just willy-nilly declare a developing human to not be human” from the rooftops, reminding politicians of the state’s duty to protect life, while also saying “you don’t have to implement that protection with criminal punishment that’d probably be counter-productive anyway, use social and welfare means”.
This is so so interesting! Especially the concept of religions and world views needing to be compatible with humanism, and that the Protestant Church is able to provide ethical insight that’s not pure religiosity but properly reasoned and considered. My biggest question mark of this morning was what would happen if someone tried to found a religion based on hatred, or organize a group sharing the same hateful world view, by tossing around “facts” (the statistics that are often cherry picked, removed from context, and thrown around to justify racism for example). I imagined that Germany would be particularly sensitive to that possibility but wasn’t sure how it might be handled- you cleared it up beautifully.
Are you in a line of work or study surrounding this history and principles? Or is the average German citizen this knowledgable on the subject?
“How dare you sue me for the crimes you passively goaded me into committing in your attempt to prove the value of the law”
So. Fucking. Based.
My guess is somebody clued them in that if they didn’t hit this guy with a hate crime then there would be precedent to protect people from hate crime status for crimes against Christian property.
That’s not really how precedent works. Not choosing to charge him with a hate crime would be a matter of prosecutorial discretion, and wouldn’t affect other prosecutors’ charging decisions. You better believe if you took a shit on whatever jeebus monument they have at the Mississippi Capitol they’d put you under the jail with every imaginable charge.
As he should.
Triggered into entering the felon list by some pool noodles and some lights 😂
my conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted
You know what is going to be held captive by bureaucratic decree? Your felon status, fucker!
Can I have your AR-15 once you’re convicted? Because you won’t be allowed to own it after! And j/k about your rifle, I bet it’s a PSA p p piece of shit (dumbasses like this guy tend to be poor whiskey tango).
The fuck is wrong with PSA? I’ve got multiple of their lowers and they are just as rugged as the Gucci lowers from other companies. Hell the main utv ar I have for farm duty is a PSA.
Owners are right wing dick bags iirc
Find me a gun manufacturer that isn’t?
Lol this is what I was thinking, like 99% of them are voting red no matter who’s on the ballot. Satan could show up and be like “Jesus is a bitch, Im a die hard Republican, vote Satan 2024” and they’d vote for him.
Ok Mario
No need to hate on a poverty pony. Everyone deserves to be able to arm themselves.
a tad bit too aggressive, but i like the spirit of your Comment.
So if he dies in prison he goes to heaven???
Or maybe he goes to hell but he gets to enjoy pleasures rather than suffer torture.
Personally I like the idea that there is an afterlife but it’s just another level of existence and nothing supernatural. And all these idiots are just really bored and have to come to terms with the fact that they died without ever really having a personality or opinions of their own. Everything they believed was just pointless and they would have been better off leaving everyone else alone.
Now they’re dead and no one on earth cares.
We’ve long since come full circle. The satanists embody virtue and the christians evil.
That’s always been the case. The only people who think that Satanists actually worship satan are idiots.
Every single Satanist i’ve ever met, and I haven’t met a lot I admit, are just nice people who don’t understand why the church is so powerful considering all the crimes they’ve covered up over the years. Especially considering that practically every single “Christian” democracy claims to separate church and state.
Funny the satanists I knew were all about manipulation of everyone they encountered. Even gave me a book on it.
idiots
You aren’t going to find a bunch of geniuses praying to a dead jew on a stick to come back from the dead.
Good opportunity to spread the word:
Hail Satan? Is a great documentary about TST, highly encouraged to watch.
Girlfriend and I have been members for years, haven’t seen this yet. Will check it out tonight.
This should be reposted to upliftingnews lol
Don’t you guys get it? He HAD to destroy it to make sky daddy happy smh
Haters gonna hate it doesn’t matter which side they are…
TST generally follows the rules, meanwhile in the USA christofascism has been on the rise.
