The Death Of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Pushed Me To Join The Satanic Temple
Huffington Post ^
Posted on 9/24/2020, 1:14:26 PM by TigerClaws
I am a 40-something attorney and mother who lives in a quiet neighborhood with a yard and a garage full of scooters and soccer balls. I often walk with my children to get ice cream and spend weekends hiking through a national park. I am not the type of person who would normally consider becoming a Satanist, but these are not normal times.
Like so many other women in the United States, when I learned of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing, my first reaction was not grief but fear. I fear that American citizens are inching closer to living in a theocracy or dictatorship and that the checks meant to prevent this from happening are close to eroding beyond repair.
When Justice Ginsburg died, I knew immediately that action was needed on a scale we have not seen before. Our democracy has become so fragile that the loss of one of the last guardians of common sense and decency in government less than two months before a pivotal election has put our civil and reproductive rights in danger like never before. And, so, I have turned to Satanism.
Members of the Satanic Temple do not believe in the supernatural or superstition. In the same way that some Unitarians and some Jews do not believe in God, Satanic Temple members do not worship Satan and most are atheists. They are not affiliated in any way with the Church of Satan. Instead, the Satanic Temple uses the devil as a symbol of rebellion.
Just like other faiths, the Satanic Temple has a code that their members believe in deeply and use to guide their lives. These Seven Fundamental Tenets include that “one should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason,” that “the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions,” and that “one’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.”
Reading through the Seven Tenets, I was struck by how closely they aligned with the unwritten code I had used to try to guide my own life for several years. I realized, happily, that these were my people and that I had been a Satanist for several years without even knowing it. When Justice Ginsburg’s death suddenly made combating the threats to reproductive rights and a government free from religious interference more urgent, I knew it was time to join them and support their conceptual and legal battles.
Even before Ginsburg’s death, the Supreme Court was unwilling to provide adequate protection for a woman’s right to choose and to control her body. The court was unwilling to keep church and state separate. Now, without her voice of reason on the court ― let alone her vote ― Roe v. Wade is in imminent danger of being overturned not based on legal arguments or scientific reasoning, but because of religious objections to what is a safe and necessary procedure for the women who seek it out after discussion with their physician. Ginsburg’s replacement is all but certain to be vehemently anti-choice, with one of the top contenders belonging to a sect that actually used the term “handmaid” to refer to some women until the popularity of the TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale” gave the term negative connotations.
