Amerika

Let me blog to praise The Satanic Temple. In building The Samuel Alito Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic, they have asked questions of anyone’s defense of democracy as a moral force, rather than a soul-sucking management algorithm. The Satanic Temple claims abortion as a sacrament. Seriously. As such, its sanctity is presumed under the great Amerikan tradition of separation of church and state.

This is an interesting legal discussion. I begin my discussion of this from the perspective of remembering what happened to Saint Bartholomew towards the end of the initial exodus of the apostles. He journeyed far, he journeyed wide. He regrettably took a road trip to some place in what is now in modern India.

Here he delivered a real clunker of a sermon. The locals hated his message. The locals hated him. They weren’t satisfied with chasing him out of town. He was placed on a crucifix and flayed. It took him four days to achieve the ascension of martyrdom. Maybe it would have been easier for the poor guy if he had spent less time toughening up in the gym.

Let’s imagine the KKK had taken a page from L. Ron Hubbard and invented their own corporate religion. Let’s say the whole Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew informed a sacrament of how they dealt with African-American males who felt like taking a few liberties with lighter skinned women. Guys, its speech, not sadism. Can you imagine how much easier it would be to stay awake in your workplace’s Black History Month diversity training if Emmitt Till had been peeled like an Idaho Spud.

Then there are all those challenges we face with delivering less carbon-intensive green energy. The Satanic Temple could run their pipeline straight from the medical waste bin to an Exxon refinery. “You’ve got to tell them… Solyent Diesel is peeeeople…..!” The environmental policy tax breaks would totally kill it.

Yeah, I know. The USA Patriot Act has greatly expanded the compelling interest statutes that allow Big Brother to stifle unwanted speech. Also, two Native Amerikan activists got fired in Oregon for coming up hot on a drug test. They claimed the peyote was sacramental. The US Supreme Court told them to go work for ANTIFA if they wanted peyote use to be a standard part of their work procedures.

Scalia wrote that there have been two types of free exercise cases, hybrid and pure. In hybrid cases, the Supreme Court used the strict scrutiny standard, in which the state must show that it has a compelling governmental interest and uses the least restrictive means of fulfilling that interest. Hybrid cases involve a constitutional right coupled with another fundamental right; for example, parental rights plus a First Amendment right, as in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972).

In purely religious cases, the Court used the valid secular policy test, in which the state has a lighter burden in demonstrating that the law has a legitimate governmental interest and is neutrally applied. The Court held that Smith was a purely religious case, because it only involved violating a criminal statute. Using the valid secular policy test, the Court held that combating a national drug problem was a legitimate governmental interest and that the law was neutrally applied to all citizens of Oregon.

And here I was hoping The Sammy Alito Temple would bring in Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler to play as a lounge act at the abortuary waiting room. No, Dumb Old Dad will hitch up that Bible belt one notch tighter than fashion or physical comfort would otherwise dictate. The Sammy is going to be shut down and the dear, dear ladies on The View will tell us that calling The Satanic Temple evil is just repressive, Right-wing hate speech.

So we now get to the nub of how democracy fails. It never gets practiced within a potential well, centered in equipoise, about a logical Aristotelian Mean. People have to always pick and pry at the edges. In a democracy, the law is just a vehicle to get your leg over someone else’s fence. You can’t separate church from state without also eventually separating morality from the state. Once you’ve separated morality and state, stochastic probability just about guarantees you will also eventually separate the state from class and human decency as well.

Democracy sends you down the demotic ladder until you reach a depth after many further depths. It deracinates the people. It removes any guardrail that protects the decent from the very worst. It promotes equality between all the people. It ignores the fact that any semi-serious scholar of any well-described religion could tell you. It ignores the fact that most people just aren’t going to be good by accident. Make everyone equal to the evil, and the evil will always have the upper hand.

There is a place where evil will always have the upper hand. There is a place where worst are always in equality with everyone else in near proximity. Perhaps you cannot legalize abortion without making it a sacrament of faith amongst the basest and the most despicable. In a democracy, you are nobody to question the sacraments of the basest and the most despicable.

So I credit The Satanic Temple for screwing up and telling us the unmentionable truth. They have shown us where the elephant in the room has smeared its dung all over the drawing room furniture of democratic illusion. The Samuel Alito Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic tells you just how valuable your existence as a human being truly remains under a modern democracy. It shows us the ineffable damnation that is the ultimate result of democracy taken at either infinite limit. It shows us that democracy sends us all clean to Hell.

Tags: abort, church of satan, democracy