₦airaland Forum

Luke 12:2

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22

For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light

Luke 12:2

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22

For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light

Luke 12:2

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22

For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light

Luke 12:2

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22

For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light

Luke 12:2

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22

For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light

Luke 12:2

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.

Mark 4:22

For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4g-M91WGbI

Dj Akademiks

Dj Akademiks

Dj Akademiks

.

.

MS13

MindHacker9009:
Even Jesus Christ too is pagan worship.

Better to start worshiping The Most High God directly

I do agree 100 percent. I am the bloodline of the woman Queen Mary Magdalene we rode the Eagle to the wilderness of the Last Days. The Eagle is Rome founded by our brother Esau the Black Edomites. It was the Romans who corrupted the teachings of Yeshua the Hamashiach and deified their own version of him. The Romans created Jesus from worship of Zeus then combined it wiith Egyptian worship of Cristos creating Jesus Christ. The Romans made Mary a virgin and said the birth of Jesus Christ was an Immaculate Conception. Then they through the Roman Council of Nicea said God was three, Father, Son and Holy Spirit a substitute for Babylonian, Nimrod, Isthar and Tumaruz.

These are the facts things that were done.

Yeshua means Yah Saves. There is only one God as prophet Muhammad proclaimed.

Revelation 12
New International Version
The Woman and the Dragon
12 A great sign(A) appeared in heavenB) a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars(C) on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain(D) as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heavenE) an enormous red dragon(F) with seven heads(G) and ten horns(H) and seven crowns(I) on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third(J) of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.(K) The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child(L) the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.”[a](M) And her child was snatched up(N) to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pS9w_prltw

hakym619:
[b][/b] good

Nigeria will never get better until....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jecj50J19zQ

Gay is the New World Order

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jecj50J19zQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jecj50J19zQ

Satanism—devil worship in Kenya: the untold story. “My secret life as a satanist but God’s mighty hand saved me”.

Satanism—devil worship in Kenya: the untold story. “My secret life as a satanist but God’s mighty hand saved me”.

Satanism—devil worship in Kenya: the untold story. “My secret life as a satanist but God’s mighty hand saved me”.

Satanism—devil worship in Kenya: the untold story. “My secret life as a satanist but God’s mighty hand saved me”.

.

How the Satanic Temple Became a Queer Haven
The Temple is a haven for smart people with complicated identities that promotes benevolence and empathy.

By Kate Ryan and VICE Staff

Jul 24 2017, 8:39am
ShareTweetSnap

In the early 90s, Ash Blackwood (who goes publicly by his psuedonym, Ash Astaroth) was an openly gay teen looking for community in his tiny Ohio suburb—and he found it when he stumbled upon Satanism.

With his piercings and blue hair, he found empowerment by embracing his own brand of weirdness—something that brought him routine high school bullying, but seemed to be embraced by the Church of Satan. Without a physical church to visit, he said he'd spend a few hours each day at his local library, logging onto online Satanic forums and chatting with like-minded souls. For several years, those virtual chats sufficed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ultimately, however, he became disenchanted by the Church's insincere and aggressive tone, not to mention the bros who infected the scene with outdated machismo.

He nearly ditched Satanism altogether. In 2014, as he prepared for a life explaining away his Lucifer tattoos with a spiel about liking the literary archetype, he discovered the Satanic Temple, an unrelated though similarly-named group. It was actually an anti-Satanic Temple rant that drew him to the organization, posted to YouTube by Brian Werner, a former death metal vocalist in the band Vital Remains. "It's become a very liberal, compassionate, borderline hippie-like outlook on politics and societal issues," said Werner.

"If this guy is leaving the Satanic Temple for those reasons," Astaroth recalls thinking. "That's exactly where I need to be."

A year later, Astaroth established New York City's first Satanic Temple chapter, pulling an online community into a real-life group roughly 80 members strong, the first IRL chapter in the city. The goal: to make it "not just accepting of LGBTQ people, but an enthusiastically accepting atmosphere for LGBTQ people," he said. In other words, the kind of group he'd longed for as a teen in Ohio. To wit, the first question on the New York chapter's membership application asks for one's preferred pronoun, which establishes a communal sense of respect while also acting as a safety net. "If someone takes the opportunity to answer it in a flippant way, they're just not going to be a good fit for our chapter," Astaroth said.

ADVERTISEMENT

He has since moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where he's now the director of the Temple's headquarters and remains an assistant chapter head of the NYC group he founded. The Temple's openness to intersectional identities is just part of what's endeared him so strongly to the group. "Queer is an extra layer on top of being gay just like Satan is an extra layer on top of being an atheist," Astaroth said. "You can be both."

This would have been news to me six months ago. At 26 years old, newly lesbian, and navigating the tail end of a five year relationship with the man I loved, I didn't know what to call myself aside from "confused." Figuring I might as well lean into that untethered panic, I attended a public forum hosted by the Satanic Temple's LA chapter. Held at a biker bar in the suburbs, I showed up wearing mom jeans and fit in seamlessly, and I've since become a member in good standing.

Since then, I've been consumed with all things Satanic Temple. As someone who identifies as both gay and queer—queer in the modern sense of rejecting binary thinking—I feel at home in its embrace of complexity. As it turns out, I'm not alone.

With 60 chapters around the world (many of them online, according to LA chapter head Ali Kellog) and more than 70,000 followers on Facebook, the Temple has gained recent attention thanks to several campaigns meant to challenge the religious right's grip on American policymaking. Take, for example, its fight for reproductive rights, campaign to install a statue of its gender-fluid deity near a Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma State Capitol building and offer to perform same-sex weddings when Michigan state officials wouldn't. VICE has previously covered the Temple's first "Pink Mass," in which spokesman Lucien Greaves trolled the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, by having same-sex couples kiss over his dead mother's grave.

ADVERTISEMENT
But beyond these kinds of stunts, the Temple is an important movement that provides a safe, radically-inclusive space for people who identify in all sorts of ways. Without defining itself as an LGBTQ organization outright, the Satanic Temple has become a haven for queer folks. At the first meeting I attended, nearly everyone I talked to was confidently queer, gay, pansexual, transgender, bi, polyamorous, or something in between.

There's still ample confusion about what it means to be a Satanist. Given society's long history of pegging Satan as the root of all evil, that's fair—though it's worth making some distinctions. Anton LaVey, a then 36-year-old American musician, founded the Church of Satan in 1966 with the mission of creating an organization "openly dedicated to the acceptance of Man's true nature—that of a carnal beast, living in a cosmos that is indifferent to our existence." The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, was created by Lucien Greaves (aka Doug Mesner) and Malcolm Jarry in 2014 to promote humanistic principles of benevolence and empathy.

Greaves is surprised I find the Temple's queerness, well, surprising. "It's not a big deal," he said. "We don't have strict separations or definitions of our gay membership, our trans membership, or anybody else." Though he doesn't have an exact headcount of LGBTQ members, Greaves said he wouldn't be surprised if more than half identify as such (an estimate that conforms with my experience at the LA chapter). The organization as a whole is a platform for LGBTQ members to celebrate their identities.

Throughout the long history of Satanic culture, "there's always been a tenor of tweaking the status quo, tweaking the mainstream," said David E Embree, who teaches religious studies at Missouri State University. That opposition to the status quo, Embree said, is exactly why the Temple has such great appeal to many who have been burned by mainstream religions. What's more interesting, in his mind, is the way Temple Satanists formed a community in the relative safety and privacy of online chat rooms. "The internet is the best friend Satanism ever had," he said—which makes sense, when you consider how dangerous it can be to identify as anything other than cisgendered, straight, and Christian in much of the country.

That origin story—how the Satanic Temple was mostly born online—makes for an almost too-perfect metaphor. The internet operates as both a Pandora's box of vile commentary and a tool for distributing a means of communication and organization to marginalized communities around the world. It obscures as much as it clarifies and blunts loneliness as often as it exacerbates it. Those are modern-day dualities that both queers and Satanists are all too familiar with. "Humans are complex," as Astaroth put it. "I don't understand why you would resist being as many things as you want to be. That idea shouldn't be intimidating, but refreshing."

Follow Kate Ryan on Twitter.

How the Satanic Temple Became a Queer Haven
The Temple is a haven for smart people with complicated identities that promotes benevolence and empathy.

By Kate Ryan and VICE Staff

Jul 24 2017, 8:39am
ShareTweetSnap

In the early 90s, Ash Blackwood (who goes publicly by his psuedonym, Ash Astaroth) was an openly gay teen looking for community in his tiny Ohio suburb—and he found it when he stumbled upon Satanism.

With his piercings and blue hair, he found empowerment by embracing his own brand of weirdness—something that brought him routine high school bullying, but seemed to be embraced by the Church of Satan. Without a physical church to visit, he said he'd spend a few hours each day at his local library, logging onto online Satanic forums and chatting with like-minded souls. For several years, those virtual chats sufficed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ultimately, however, he became disenchanted by the Church's insincere and aggressive tone, not to mention the bros who infected the scene with outdated machismo.

He nearly ditched Satanism altogether. In 2014, as he prepared for a life explaining away his Lucifer tattoos with a spiel about liking the literary archetype, he discovered the Satanic Temple, an unrelated though similarly-named group. It was actually an anti-Satanic Temple rant that drew him to the organization, posted to YouTube by Brian Werner, a former death metal vocalist in the band Vital Remains. "It's become a very liberal, compassionate, borderline hippie-like outlook on politics and societal issues," said Werner.

"If this guy is leaving the Satanic Temple for those reasons," Astaroth recalls thinking. "That's exactly where I need to be."

A year later, Astaroth established New York City's first Satanic Temple chapter, pulling an online community into a real-life group roughly 80 members strong, the first IRL chapter in the city. The goal: to make it "not just accepting of LGBTQ people, but an enthusiastically accepting atmosphere for LGBTQ people," he said. In other words, the kind of group he'd longed for as a teen in Ohio. To wit, the first question on the New York chapter's membership application asks for one's preferred pronoun, which establishes a communal sense of respect while also acting as a safety net. "If someone takes the opportunity to answer it in a flippant way, they're just not going to be a good fit for our chapter," Astaroth said.

ADVERTISEMENT

He has since moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where he's now the director of the Temple's headquarters and remains an assistant chapter head of the NYC group he founded. The Temple's openness to intersectional identities is just part of what's endeared him so strongly to the group. "Queer is an extra layer on top of being gay just like Satan is an extra layer on top of being an atheist," Astaroth said. "You can be both."

This would have been news to me six months ago. At 26 years old, newly lesbian, and navigating the tail end of a five year relationship with the man I loved, I didn't know what to call myself aside from "confused." Figuring I might as well lean into that untethered panic, I attended a public forum hosted by the Satanic Temple's LA chapter. Held at a biker bar in the suburbs, I showed up wearing mom jeans and fit in seamlessly, and I've since become a member in good standing.

Since then, I've been consumed with all things Satanic Temple. As someone who identifies as both gay and queer—queer in the modern sense of rejecting binary thinking—I feel at home in its embrace of complexity. As it turns out, I'm not alone.

With 60 chapters around the world (many of them online, according to LA chapter head Ali Kellog) and more than 70,000 followers on Facebook, the Temple has gained recent attention thanks to several campaigns meant to challenge the religious right's grip on American policymaking. Take, for example, its fight for reproductive rights, campaign to install a statue of its gender-fluid deity near a Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma State Capitol building and offer to perform same-sex weddings when Michigan state officials wouldn't. VICE has previously covered the Temple's first "Pink Mass," in which spokesman Lucien Greaves trolled the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, by having same-sex couples kiss over his dead mother's grave.

ADVERTISEMENT
But beyond these kinds of stunts, the Temple is an important movement that provides a safe, radically-inclusive space for people who identify in all sorts of ways. Without defining itself as an LGBTQ organization outright, the Satanic Temple has become a haven for queer folks. At the first meeting I attended, nearly everyone I talked to was confidently queer, gay, pansexual, transgender, bi, polyamorous, or something in between.

There's still ample confusion about what it means to be a Satanist. Given society's long history of pegging Satan as the root of all evil, that's fair—though it's worth making some distinctions. Anton LaVey, a then 36-year-old American musician, founded the Church of Satan in 1966 with the mission of creating an organization "openly dedicated to the acceptance of Man's true nature—that of a carnal beast, living in a cosmos that is indifferent to our existence." The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, was created by Lucien Greaves (aka Doug Mesner) and Malcolm Jarry in 2014 to promote humanistic principles of benevolence and empathy.

Greaves is surprised I find the Temple's queerness, well, surprising. "It's not a big deal," he said. "We don't have strict separations or definitions of our gay membership, our trans membership, or anybody else." Though he doesn't have an exact headcount of LGBTQ members, Greaves said he wouldn't be surprised if more than half identify as such (an estimate that conforms with my experience at the LA chapter). The organization as a whole is a platform for LGBTQ members to celebrate their identities.

Throughout the long history of Satanic culture, "there's always been a tenor of tweaking the status quo, tweaking the mainstream," said David E Embree, who teaches religious studies at Missouri State University. That opposition to the status quo, Embree said, is exactly why the Temple has such great appeal to many who have been burned by mainstream religions. What's more interesting, in his mind, is the way Temple Satanists formed a community in the relative safety and privacy of online chat rooms. "The internet is the best friend Satanism ever had," he said—which makes sense, when you consider how dangerous it can be to identify as anything other than cisgendered, straight, and Christian in much of the country.

That origin story—how the Satanic Temple was mostly born online—makes for an almost too-perfect metaphor. The internet operates as both a Pandora's box of vile commentary and a tool for distributing a means of communication and organization to marginalized communities around the world. It obscures as much as it clarifies and blunts loneliness as often as it exacerbates it. Those are modern-day dualities that both queers and Satanists are all too familiar with. "Humans are complex," as Astaroth put it. "I don't understand why you would resist being as many things as you want to be. That idea shouldn't be intimidating, but refreshing."

How the Satanic Temple Became a Queer Haven
The Temple is a haven for smart people with complicated identities that promotes benevolence and empathy.

By Kate Ryan and VICE Staff

Jul 24 2017, 8:39am
ShareTweetSnap

In the early 90s, Ash Blackwood (who goes publicly by his psuedonym, Ash Astaroth) was an openly gay teen looking for community in his tiny Ohio suburb—and he found it when he stumbled upon Satanism.

With his piercings and blue hair, he found empowerment by embracing his own brand of weirdness—something that brought him routine high school bullying, but seemed to be embraced by the Church of Satan. Without a physical church to visit, he said he'd spend a few hours each day at his local library, logging onto online Satanic forums and chatting with like-minded souls. For several years, those virtual chats sufficed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ultimately, however, he became disenchanted by the Church's insincere and aggressive tone, not to mention the bros who infected the scene with outdated machismo.

He nearly ditched Satanism altogether. In 2014, as he prepared for a life explaining away his Lucifer tattoos with a spiel about liking the literary archetype, he discovered the Satanic Temple, an unrelated though similarly-named group. It was actually an anti-Satanic Temple rant that drew him to the organization, posted to YouTube by Brian Werner, a former death metal vocalist in the band Vital Remains. "It's become a very liberal, compassionate, borderline hippie-like outlook on politics and societal issues," said Werner.

"If this guy is leaving the Satanic Temple for those reasons," Astaroth recalls thinking. "That's exactly where I need to be."

A year later, Astaroth established New York City's first Satanic Temple chapter, pulling an online community into a real-life group roughly 80 members strong, the first IRL chapter in the city. The goal: to make it "not just accepting of LGBTQ people, but an enthusiastically accepting atmosphere for LGBTQ people," he said. In other words, the kind of group he'd longed for as a teen in Ohio. To wit, the first question on the New York chapter's membership application asks for one's preferred pronoun, which establishes a communal sense of respect while also acting as a safety net. "If someone takes the opportunity to answer it in a flippant way, they're just not going to be a good fit for our chapter," Astaroth said.

ADVERTISEMENT

He has since moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where he's now the director of the Temple's headquarters and remains an assistant chapter head of the NYC group he founded. The Temple's openness to intersectional identities is just part of what's endeared him so strongly to the group. "Queer is an extra layer on top of being gay just like Satan is an extra layer on top of being an atheist," Astaroth said. "You can be both."

This would have been news to me six months ago. At 26 years old, newly lesbian, and navigating the tail end of a five year relationship with the man I loved, I didn't know what to call myself aside from "confused." Figuring I might as well lean into that untethered panic, I attended a public forum hosted by the Satanic Temple's LA chapter. Held at a biker bar in the suburbs, I showed up wearing mom jeans and fit in seamlessly, and I've since become a member in good standing.

Since then, I've been consumed with all things Satanic Temple. As someone who identifies as both gay and queer—queer in the modern sense of rejecting binary thinking—I feel at home in its embrace of complexity. As it turns out, I'm not alone.

With 60 chapters around the world (many of them online, according to LA chapter head Ali Kellog) and more than 70,000 followers on Facebook, the Temple has gained recent attention thanks to several campaigns meant to challenge the religious right's grip on American policymaking. Take, for example, its fight for reproductive rights, campaign to install a statue of its gender-fluid deity near a Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma State Capitol building and offer to perform same-sex weddings when Michigan state officials wouldn't. VICE has previously covered the Temple's first "Pink Mass," in which spokesman Lucien Greaves trolled the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, by having same-sex couples kiss over his dead mother's grave.

ADVERTISEMENT
But beyond these kinds of stunts, the Temple is an important movement that provides a safe, radically-inclusive space for people who identify in all sorts of ways. Without defining itself as an LGBTQ organization outright, the Satanic Temple has become a haven for queer folks. At the first meeting I attended, nearly everyone I talked to was confidently queer, gay, pansexual, transgender, bi, polyamorous, or something in between.

There's still ample confusion about what it means to be a Satanist. Given society's long history of pegging Satan as the root of all evil, that's fair—though it's worth making some distinctions. Anton LaVey, a then 36-year-old American musician, founded the Church of Satan in 1966 with the mission of creating an organization "openly dedicated to the acceptance of Man's true nature—that of a carnal beast, living in a cosmos that is indifferent to our existence." The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, was created by Lucien Greaves (aka Doug Mesner) and Malcolm Jarry in 2014 to promote humanistic principles of benevolence and empathy.

Greaves is surprised I find the Temple's queerness, well, surprising. "It's not a big deal," he said. "We don't have strict separations or definitions of our gay membership, our trans membership, or anybody else." Though he doesn't have an exact headcount of LGBTQ members, Greaves said he wouldn't be surprised if more than half identify as such (an estimate that conforms with my experience at the LA chapter). The organization as a whole is a platform for LGBTQ members to celebrate their identities.

Throughout the long history of Satanic culture, "there's always been a tenor of tweaking the status quo, tweaking the mainstream," said David E Embree, who teaches religious studies at Missouri State University. That opposition to the status quo, Embree said, is exactly why the Temple has such great appeal to many who have been burned by mainstream religions. What's more interesting, in his mind, is the way Temple Satanists formed a community in the relative safety and privacy of online chat rooms. "The internet is the best friend Satanism ever had," he said—which makes sense, when you consider how dangerous it can be to identify as anything other than cisgendered, straight, and Christian in much of the country.

That origin story—how the Satanic Temple was mostly born online—makes for an almost too-perfect metaphor. The internet operates as both a Pandora's box of vile commentary and a tool for distributing a means of communication and organization to marginalized communities around the world. It obscures as much as it clarifies and blunts loneliness as often as it exacerbates it. Those are modern-day dualities that both queers and Satanists are all too familiar with. "Humans are complex," as Astaroth put it. "I don't understand why you would resist being as many things as you want to be. That idea shouldn't be intimidating, but refreshing."

Follow Kate Ryan on Twitter.

How the Satanic Temple Became a Queer Haven
The Temple is a haven for smart people with complicated identities that promotes benevolence and empathy.

By Kate Ryan and VICE Staff

Jul 24 2017, 8:39am
ShareTweetSnap

In the early 90s, Ash Blackwood (who goes publicly by his psuedonym, Ash Astaroth) was an openly gay teen looking for community in his tiny Ohio suburb—and he found it when he stumbled upon Satanism.

With his piercings and blue hair, he found empowerment by embracing his own brand of weirdness—something that brought him routine high school bullying, but seemed to be embraced by the Church of Satan. Without a physical church to visit, he said he'd spend a few hours each day at his local library, logging onto online Satanic forums and chatting with like-minded souls. For several years, those virtual chats sufficed.

ADVERTISEMENT

Ultimately, however, he became disenchanted by the Church's insincere and aggressive tone, not to mention the bros who infected the scene with outdated machismo.

He nearly ditched Satanism altogether. In 2014, as he prepared for a life explaining away his Lucifer tattoos with a spiel about liking the literary archetype, he discovered the Satanic Temple, an unrelated though similarly-named group. It was actually an anti-Satanic Temple rant that drew him to the organization, posted to YouTube by Brian Werner, a former death metal vocalist in the band Vital Remains. "It's become a very liberal, compassionate, borderline hippie-like outlook on politics and societal issues," said Werner.

"If this guy is leaving the Satanic Temple for those reasons," Astaroth recalls thinking. "That's exactly where I need to be."

A year later, Astaroth established New York City's first Satanic Temple chapter, pulling an online community into a real-life group roughly 80 members strong, the first IRL chapter in the city. The goal: to make it "not just accepting of LGBTQ people, but an enthusiastically accepting atmosphere for LGBTQ people," he said. In other words, the kind of group he'd longed for as a teen in Ohio. To wit, the first question on the New York chapter's membership application asks for one's preferred pronoun, which establishes a communal sense of respect while also acting as a safety net. "If someone takes the opportunity to answer it in a flippant way, they're just not going to be a good fit for our chapter," Astaroth said.

ADVERTISEMENT

He has since moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where he's now the director of the Temple's headquarters and remains an assistant chapter head of the NYC group he founded. The Temple's openness to intersectional identities is just part of what's endeared him so strongly to the group. "Queer is an extra layer on top of being gay just like Satan is an extra layer on top of being an atheist," Astaroth said. "You can be both."

This would have been news to me six months ago. At 26 years old, newly lesbian, and navigating the tail end of a five year relationship with the man I loved, I didn't know what to call myself aside from "confused." Figuring I might as well lean into that untethered panic, I attended a public forum hosted by the Satanic Temple's LA chapter. Held at a biker bar in the suburbs, I showed up wearing mom jeans and fit in seamlessly, and I've since become a member in good standing.

Since then, I've been consumed with all things Satanic Temple. As someone who identifies as both gay and queer—queer in the modern sense of rejecting binary thinking—I feel at home in its embrace of complexity. As it turns out, I'm not alone.

With 60 chapters around the world (many of them online, according to LA chapter head Ali Kellog) and more than 70,000 followers on Facebook, the Temple has gained recent attention thanks to several campaigns meant to challenge the religious right's grip on American policymaking. Take, for example, its fight for reproductive rights, campaign to install a statue of its gender-fluid deity near a Ten Commandments monument outside the Oklahoma State Capitol building and offer to perform same-sex weddings when Michigan state officials wouldn't. VICE has previously covered the Temple's first "Pink Mass," in which spokesman Lucien Greaves trolled the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, by having same-sex couples kiss over his dead mother's grave.

ADVERTISEMENT
But beyond these kinds of stunts, the Temple is an important movement that provides a safe, radically-inclusive space for people who identify in all sorts of ways. Without defining itself as an LGBTQ organization outright, the Satanic Temple has become a haven for queer folks. At the first meeting I attended, nearly everyone I talked to was confidently queer, gay, pansexual, transgender, bi, polyamorous, or something in between.

There's still ample confusion about what it means to be a Satanist. Given society's long history of pegging Satan as the root of all evil, that's fair—though it's worth making some distinctions. Anton LaVey, a then 36-year-old American musician, founded the Church of Satan in 1966 with the mission of creating an organization "openly dedicated to the acceptance of Man's true nature—that of a carnal beast, living in a cosmos that is indifferent to our existence." The Satanic Temple, on the other hand, was created by Lucien Greaves (aka Doug Mesner) and Malcolm Jarry in 2014 to promote humanistic principles of benevolence and empathy.

Greaves is surprised I find the Temple's queerness, well, surprising. "It's not a big deal," he said. "We don't have strict separations or definitions of our gay membership, our trans membership, or anybody else." Though he doesn't have an exact headcount of LGBTQ members, Greaves said he wouldn't be surprised if more than half identify as such (an estimate that conforms with my experience at the LA chapter). The organization as a whole is a platform for LGBTQ members to celebrate their identities.

Throughout the long history of Satanic culture, "there's always been a tenor of tweaking the status quo, tweaking the mainstream," said David E Embree, who teaches religious studies at Missouri State University. That opposition to the status quo, Embree said, is exactly why the Temple has such great appeal to many who have been burned by mainstream religions. What's more interesting, in his mind, is the way Temple Satanists formed a community in the relative safety and privacy of online chat rooms. "The internet is the best friend Satanism ever had," he said—which makes sense, when you consider how dangerous it can be to identify as anything other than cisgendered, straight, and Christian in much of the country.

That origin story—how the Satanic Temple was mostly born online—makes for an almost too-perfect metaphor. The internet operates as both a Pandora's box of vile commentary and a tool for distributing a means of communication and organization to marginalized communities around the world. It obscures as much as it clarifies and blunts loneliness as often as it exacerbates it. Those are modern-day dualities that both queers and Satanists are all too familiar with. "Humans are complex," as Astaroth put it. "I don't understand why you would resist being as many things as you want to be. That idea shouldn't be intimidating, but refreshing."

Follow Kate Ryan on Twitter.

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3CTXOINP74

tuesday april 26 2022

Gay people are controlled by the devil, say pastors
A pastor at Winners’ Chapel church in Dartford, London, claims homosexuality had been “carefully scripted” by the Devil
A pastor at Winners’ Chapel church in Dartford, London, claims homosexuality had been “carefully scripted” by the Devil
Kaya Burgess
Tuesday November 13 2018, 12.01am GMT, The Times
A large Pentecostal church in London has been accused of offering so-called “gay cure” therapy, allegedly telling homosexual worshippers that they are “under the control of Satan”.