WHEN SATAN SPEAKS

Devil worshippers give politicians another harsh lesson in Constitutional law.


The folks at the Satanic Temple have engineered a cage fight against the political establishment once again. We wrote about how they made a group of Oklahoma lawmakers look like idiots a couple of years ago. The politicians had decided to use a legal loophole to allow a Ten Commandments monument to be placed on state property, despite the fact that it violated the federal separation of church and state requirement. But the problem with loopholes is that anyone can use them if they have the time and money. Which is exactly what the Satanic Temple did when it designed a Satanist monument for the same plot of land. Needless to say, chagrined lawmakers were left with no choice but ignominious retreat and removed their religious monument.

The Satanic Temple has now taken aim at Christian prayer clubs in public schools. The organization contacted nine school districts across the country this week seeking to launch after school Satanist prayer programs. Their reasoning is the same as before—if Christian clubs are okay on state property, then by extension Satanist clubs must be fine. After all, trenchcoated loners need a place to congregate too. With the Constitution’s supremacy clause giving it legal authority over states in the matter, lawmakers have to either allow all religions, including Satanists, equal access to schools after hours, or admit that they are enforcing an unconstitutional preference for Christianity.

We get that it’s disconcerting to imagine Luciferian chanting in public schools at night—we’ve seen our share of horror movies, after all—but even so, these politicians never learn. A charitable interpretation of their folly might be that they’re so blinded by belief they’ve forgotten their religion is just one of many in the country, and one of thousands that have existed across time, but the truth is they’re worse than blind—they’re deluded. Rather than accept the undeniable fact that the country’s founding fathers wanted state and religion kept separate, they’ve convinced themselves that Jefferson, Madison, et al simply forgot to write special standing for the Christian church into the Constitution. This despite the fact that they amended the document more than ten times, and the very first of those amendments explicitly denied Christianity and all other religions special rights.

When asked for comment, Satanic Church leader Lucien Greaves took time from etching pentagrams and deflowering virgins long enough to suggest that children being threatened with eternal hellfire need the healthy alternative belief system Satanism provides. He’s being disingenuous, of course—the Satanists are really just atheists with a finely honed sense of humor. The confrontation promises to be political theater of a uniquely American sort, but it will inevitably end in judicial defeat for Christian clubs. At least until they manage to write Christianity into the U.S. Constitution—not so farfetched, considering there are politicians like Arizona’s Sylvia Allen publicly pondering whether her state can force citizens to attend church. Maybe the founding fathers should have taken a tip from Satan and written the Constitution in blood. That way breaking the deal would cost politicians their souls. 

Before you charge in here, maybe I should tell you I got to be a eunuch by doing exactly what you’re about to.

Above, an April 1959 cover of Man’s Conquest, featuring a man about to risk life and limb to obtain a harem of girls. It’s actually a fitting theme, because inside the issue there’s an article about the infamous Short Creek raid of 1953, in which Arizona police and National Guardsmen stormed a fundamentalist Mormon compound where thirty-six men were living with their eighty-six wives and more than 250 children. Afterward, Arizona governor John Howard Pyle claimed that Short Creek inhabitants were engaged in a conspiracy to produce “white slaves”, but the public wasn’t buying it, and the fallout from the raid cost him his job when the next election rolled around. In an interesting twist, though, the LDS church, through its official newspaper the Deseret News, originally applauded the raid on the grounds that polygamy had been stricken from Mormon doctrine decades earlier.

Oh my, I don't know whether to call a lifeguard, the police, or British Petroleum.

This Master Detective from July 1960 has cover art that incorporates two elements millions of people dream about every night—a beautiful girl and a dead BP executive. Inside is a grisly story on housewife Nancy Haas, who was murdered by nineteen year-old Robert Elton Edwards in March 1960. Edwards’ MO was to knock on the doors of houses with For Sale signs in the yards, then rob the people inside. In this case, he tried to chain Haas to a bed but when she struggled he shot her dead with a .22 pistol. She was the first woman Edwards had killed, and the last, because Haas’s daughter, who was only three, told police, “A bad man hurt mommy and drove away in a white car.” That simple description led to police arresting Edwards three days later in Arizona, driving a stolen white 1959 Plymouth Fury. Edwards pleaded guilty to murder and at his sentencing the judge said he’d contemplated sending Edwards to the gas chamber, but changed his mind. The judge explained: “I’m not doing you any favors.” Then he sentenced Edwards to life in prison. 

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1937—Hitler Reveals His Plans for Lebensraum

Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting with Nazi officials and states his intention to acquire “lebensraum,” or living space for Germany. An old German concept that dated from 1901, Hitler had written of it in Mein Kampf, and now possessed the power to implement it. Basically the idea, as Hitler saw it, was for the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Russian and other Slavic populations to the east, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate those lands with a Germanic upper class.

1991—Fred MacMurray Dies

American actor Fred MacMurray dies of pneumonia related to leukemia. While most remember him as a television actor, earlier in his career he starred in 1944’s Double Indemnity, one of the greatest films noir ever made.

1955—Cy Young Dies

American baseball player Cy Young, who had amassed 511 wins pitching for five different teams from 1890 to 1911, dies at the age of 88. Today Major League Baseball’s yearly award given to the best pitcher of each season is named after Young.

1970—Feral Child Found in Los Angeles

A thirteen year-old child who had been kept locked in a room for her entire life is found in the Los Angeles house of her parents. The child, named Genie, could only speak twenty words and was not able even to walk normally because she had spent her life strapped to a potty chair during the day and bound in a sleeping bag at night. Genie ended up in a series of foster homes and was given language training but after years of effort by various benefactors never reached a point where she could interact normally in society.

1957—Soviets Launch Dog into Space

The Soviet Union launches the first ever living creature into the cosmos when it blasts a stray dog named Laika into orbit aboard the capsule Sputnik II. Laika is fitted with various monitoring devices that provide information about the effects of launch and weightlessness on a living creature. Urban myth has it that Laika starved to death after a few days in space, but she actually died of heat stress just a few hours into the journey.

1989—Los Angeles Herald-Examiner Folds

William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, which had gained notoriety for its crime and scandal focus, including coverage of the Black Dahlia murder and Charles Manson trials, goes out of business after eighty-six years. Its departure leaves the Los Angeles Times as the sole city-wide daily newspaper in L.A.

Uncredited cover art for Lesbian Gym by Peggy Swenson, who was in reality Richard Geis.
T’as triché marquise by George Maxwell, published in 1953 with art by Jacques Thibésart, also known as Nik.

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