Toleration
over Common Sense?
Like most
Neopagans, I believe that toleration in general is A Good Thing.
Unlike some, however, I also think it can be foolish, when exercised
too much towards those who would like to destroy us. For example,
when I go to a Pagan festival, I don’t mind Buddhists, agnostics,
or liberal monotheists showing up to check us out. Yet I feel
violated when Christian fundamentalists arrive with intent to
spy upon us, to convert us, or to interfere with our activities.
I have much the same reaction when I see Satanists at our festivals
or in “our” bookstores trying to recruit new members.
Some Satanists/Setanists
(or “Setians”) will claim from time to time that, like
Neopagans, they are an “oppressed” religion, that they
are “misunderstood,” that they are the victims of the
Christian press. They will quote the old saying, “the enemy
of my enemy is my friend,” and argue that we should become
their allies. All of which makes sense only if you are ignorant
about both Satanism on one hand and Paleo-,
Meso- and Neopaganism on the other.
Varieties
of Satanic Belief and Practice
As I have
written elsewhere, there are several kinds of Satanist: One type
is the Liberal Heterodox or hippie/punk/gothic Satanist.
These are the anarchist sorts, generally young, who stress the
revolutionary or Luciferian side of the Satan myth. They are essentially
rebelling against subservience to the Christian God, the sickness
of Christian morality, and their parents. A sizable proportion
of them might have become Neopagans if they had heard of us first,
and some of them do so later on. Some of them alternate between
calling themselves Satanists or Pagans, depending on whom they
are addressing, much to the annoyance of real, adult Pagans. As
far as I can tell, they seem to grow out of being Satanists when
they finish adolescence (which can, alas, take decades for some).
Another type
of Satanist is the Conservative Orthodox or fascist sort:
generally middle-aged, uneducated, and unsuccessful (the basic
vigilantee or militia type), though their leaders can be quite
clever and successful. These are the right wing Satanists who
like to stress the might-makes-right, dictatorial side of the
Satan image. Major denominations would include the Church of Satan
(“COS”) and the Temple of Set (“TOS”), both
of whom are careful to distinguish themselves from the other types.
Note that right wingers (whether Satanic or other Christian sorts)
often present themselves under more appealing terminology, such
as by calling themselves “Libertarians.“
A third kind
of Satanist is the sincere sociopath or crazy kind. These
folks are obsessed with the death, torture, rape, and madness
parts of the Christian Satan archetype. Usually from extremely
dysfunctional families, these people have grown up being told
that they are evil, so they try to fulfill everyone’s expectations.
They tend to commit various horrible crimes in Satan’s name,
and sometimes belong to one of the other sorts of Satanism as
well. Right wing Satanic leaders, when speaking for the public
record, always deny that the sincere sociopaths are “real”
Satanists, much as other Christians disown criminal behavior by
people calling themselves Christian.
A fourth
kind of Satanist is the smooth-talking (or sometimes just whiney)
Internet Satanist, of which there are a couple of dozen or
so (posting under multiple psuedonyms) in the world. This sort
relies on the short memories of Internet surfers and the ignorance
of beginning Neopagans to slip into their minds a wide variety
of shallow, ingenuous arguments (usually based on deliberately
blurring the distinctions between Mesopaganism and Neopaganism)
that “Satanism and Paganism are really the same thing.”
This is usually combined with declarations of personal and group
innocence, pious denunciations of criminal behavior by “psuedo-Satanists,”
and sanctimonious appeals to their freedom of religion —
none of which has anything to do with Neopagan polytheology. If
you don’t fall for their nonsense, or even worse, argue with
them, their veneer of civility vanishes swiftly in a firestorm
of invective, slander, and occasional email bombing.
Of course,
being the Christian Dualists that they are, most Satanists of
the four sorts I’ve mentioned so far insist that, “There
are no categories of Satanists — there are Satanists and
nuts” (Tony Levy, aka “Anton Szandor LaVey”). In
other words, “us real ones” vs. “all those other
fake ones.” Sound familiar? Each Satanic organization and
individual insists that it and it alone is the arbiter of who
is or is not among the elect and actively despises all
the others. That “all” is important, for while members
of any religion may want to know who is or isn’t a fellow
religionist, and may even have a low opinion of some other faiths,
the wholesale dismissal of all other paths as evil or
inferior is perhaps the defining characteristic of a Christian
(or Islamic or Zoroastrian) Dualist. Keep this in mind, especially
when reading the Aquino quotes below.
Imaginary
Satanists and Ritual Abuse Accusations
Another category
of Satanists is the imaginary global conspiracy of child-molesting, kidnapping, human sacrificing, cannibalistic,
multigenerational criminals who haunt the dreams of fundamentalist
Christians and third-rate tabloid journalists — I’ve
even been accused of being one myself! The primary evidence for
this conspiracy comes from people who believe themselves to be
“ritual abuse survivors” and from Christian preachers
who claim to be ex-leaders in the Conspiracy. Of course, the accusations
of incestuous orgies, human sacrifice, and cannibalism come from
an ancient
urban legend and have been falsely laid against
many minority religions over the centuries, including the early
Christians, Jews, “witches,” and various heretical groups.
These claims have always served to whip up public hysteria against
the chosen target groups (see Satanic
Panic by Jeffrey Victor). Today the targets are modern
Neopagans, New Agers, and Satanists, all of whom are deliberately
equated with each other by fundamentalist preachers.
Some of the
people who call themselves “survivors” do appear to
have been through some kind of horrible experiences that
their minds have chosen (perhaps with help, see next paragraph)
to interpret as Satanic rituals, just as others with similar stories
have interpreted their experiences as encounters with UFOs. However,
verifiable evidence of organized Satanic abuse activities has
yet to be found. Some, of course, will insist that the
inability of law enforcement agencies — from the FBI and
Scotland Yard down to the smallest local constabulary — to
ever discover tangible evidence of the Global Satanic Conspiracy
just “proves” how powerful the Conspiracy really is!
It doesn’t. The conspiracy can’t be found because
it is imaginary!
According
to those who believe in the “False Memory Syndrome”
explanation, claimed abuse survivors of fantastic events may be
“Therapeutic Abuse Survivors” — having been misled
by therapists and/or hypnotists accidentally or deliberately implanting
false memories, sometimes on top of accurate or imagined events
of abuse happening to oneself or one’s friends. Recent brain
research supposedly indicates that false memories are fairly easy
to create, since even true memories consist of tiny fragments
of perception (an eyelid shape here, a nose dimple there) routinely
combined by our minds into the full images we think we “remember.”
Indeed, a growing number of people who were formerly claiming
to have been ritual abuse survivors have in recent years recanted
their claims and sued their former therapists for the damages
such claims have caused to their families, friends and communities.
Visit the Satanic
Ritual Abuse Page for details on all the arguments.
One reason
the “False Memory Syndrome” theory, which is also invoked
in discussions of non-fantastic claims of abuse, is so controversial
is that it’s all too easily cited by both the innocent and
the (presumed) guilty. Indeed, the sorts of crimes suspected of
being committed by “Satanists” are, in fact, well within
the “might-makes-right” and “do as thou whim”
attitudes that many modern Satanists do have and promote. I’m
sure that more than a few Satanists over the years have taken
advantage of their “moral freedom” to commit crimes,
even against their own children. I just don’t believe that
these jerks and psychos constitute an organized conspiracy. Considering
how much difficulty the Satanists who post on the Net have agreeing
or cooperating with each other about even the most trivial issues,
the odds of Satanists ever having a successful conspiracy to
order a pizza, let alone to “rule the world”
as they and others fantasize, are slim to none.
As for the
professional “ex-Satanic High Priests,” they seem to
be short on evidence of their claims too. Oddly enough, although
some of these preachers have confessed to multiple felonies on
widely broadcast radio and television shows, and in “best
selling” Christian books, it seems that none of them has
ever been arrested, nor have any of them gone to local police
and confessed their crimes. Subsequently, none has ever served
prison time for deeds that would normally put them away for the
rest of their lives. Apparently, if you claim to have reformed
yourself and become a good Christian, you no longer need to pay
your debt to society, no matter how terrible the crimes you’ve
admitted committing. Any of you attending public lectures by supposed
“ex-Satanists” might want to bring this up with local
law enforcement officers and insist that they be arrested —
I for one would love to see such liars forced to testify under
oath in a court of law. At this point, all of the major
“ex-Satanists” and “ex-baby-breeders”
have been exposed by Evangelical Christian journalists as frauds,
in such books as Selling
Satan (about Mike Warnke) and The Todd Phenomenon
(about John Todd aka Lance Collins). Unfortunately, little
matters like facts don’t stop the fearmongers from repeating
their lies.
This brings
us to the last, and by far the largest, category of Satanists:
the fundamentalist Christians themselves, who spend all
their time inflating the image of Satan, feeding psychic energy
into the archetype, and publishing detailed descriptions of the
sorts of evil acts that devil worshippers are supposed to engage
in — descriptions that some other sorts of Satanist are only
too eager to imitate. Ironically, the attribution of godlike power
(as in, for example, the supposed ability to perform “counterfeit
miracles”) to their Satan by fundamentalists, who pride themselves
on being so orthodox, is historically a sign of Christian heresy
— monotheists are not supposed to admit that their Evil God
is as powerful (or even nearly as powerful) as their Good God.
The Unwisdom
of Welcoming Satanists
Neopagans
are constantly having to explain to the general public that Satan
is a figure in Christian and Islamic (and Zoroastrian) mythology,
that our deities are far older and more powerful than their Satan/Shaitan,
and that you have to be a Christian, a Moslem, or a Zoroastrian
in order to worship or even respect the Devil because nobody else
believes in him. We know full well that many Christians actively
try to blur the distinctions between Satanism and Paganism in
the public mind, and we should know that having a cozy relationship
with Satanists is going to play right into such Christian smear
campaigns.
So why are
some Neopagans tolerant of obnoxious, unethical, or nasty behavior
when the people involved are calling themselves “Satanists”
when we wouldn’t cut other fundamentalist Christians engaging
in the same kind of behavior so much slack? Granted, Satanism
is a part of the occult community — being the “occult”
or hidden side of Christianity — and many Satanists do practice
various sorts of ceremonial magic. As we know, however, the occult/magical/metaphysical
community comprises a wide variety of organizations and individuals
— good, bad, ugly, and just plain weird. We don’t have
to be friendly to all of them, nor do we have to accept them all
as equals or allies. Neopagans have enough trouble interacting
with Mesopagans (such as the Thelemites, Odinists, and
Voodooists), many of whom engage in activities of which many Neopagans
disapprove, without allying ourselves with and defending a bunch
of jerks, fascists, and psychopaths who have publicly and proudly
announced their allegiance to the supreme figure of Evil in Western
mainstream culture.
I don’t
care if it’s possible to come up with superficial arguments
that the Devil “isn’t really such a bad fellow,”
or to claim that you’re really worshipping the Norse deity
Loki, or the Egyptian god Set (who supposedly was “originally”
a Not-Completely-Bad Guy 4,000 years ago), or various Lovecraftian
critters, and that all these spirits were “victims of bad
public relations.” Such arguments don’t change the
subconscious images that most people (including the Satanists
themselves) have of these entities, nor the nature of the psychic
energies that they tap into. Nor does it matter that public
representatives of Satanic organizations are frequently charming
and charismatic indviduals — most con-artists are. If some
Satanists are really “proto-Pagans,” we can give them
the information they need to mature without having to pretend
that their juvenile sophistries deserve respect.
Speaking
of juvenile sophistries, lets review the facts about the origins,
philosophy, and character of Satanism and its practitioners…
The Origins
of Satan and His -isms
Satan as
a demigod was created by the early Christians to slander the Paleopagan
horned gods and to fulfill the necessary role of the Evil God
who fights their Good God. They took the ancient Jewish prosecuting
attorney of Yahweh’s royal court, made this “tester”
a metaphor for the Jews who didn’t accept Jesus as their
Messiah, then for the secular authorities of the Roman Empire
who considered the Christians to be “atheists,” then
still later for differing Christian sects opposed to the forces
of orthodoxy. See The
Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels, and Satan:
The Early Christian Tradition by Jeffrey Burton Russell
for details (though Russell willingly plays the theologians’
ingenuous games as described below).
In order
to explain why the early Christians were being successfully perscuted
by the traditional Jews and those few Roman Paleopagans who considered
them treasonous threats to the Empire, Satan’s nature and
power had to be continually inflated until he essentially became
the Evil God. This mythic role was one of several ideas “borrowed”
from Zoroastrianism’s dualism via the cult of Mithra, Christianity’s
primary competitor for political control of the Empire, and that
dualism’s influence on Jewish (Essene) and Paleopagan Gnosticism.
Although early Church theologians were careful to never call
Satan a deity, and indeed to insure that those who more honestly
considered him one got labled as “heretics” (the most
famous of whom were the Manichaeans and later the Cathars), they
nonetheless treated Satan (as they did the Virgin Mary) as divine
in all but official title.
A deity of
absolute evil makes no sense in a polytheistic system, only in
a dualistic
one — which is why all the other ancient Zoroastrian deities
had been reduced to subordinate status to the Big Two, and why
the Christians tried to turn all the Paleopagan deities they encountered
into either “saints” or “demons.” Indeed,
that Evil God is critical to the Christian worldview. As Alan
Watts put it in Myth
and Ritual in Christianity, “A Christianity without
the Devil is, then, lacking in something which is of the essence
of the Christian consciousness.”
Two important
polytheological principles need to be mentioned in passing here:
(1) don’t confuse “dualism” with “polarity”
— the former assumes hostility between opposed principles,
the latter assumes harmony and mutual dependence — and (2)
don’t assume that dangerous or tricky deities and spirits
in Paleopagan religions were viewed by their peoples as being
cosmically Evil or in any other way similar to how Christians
and Moslems view their Satan/Shaitan.
All
the different forms of Satanism now active in the West are branches
of conservative Christianity, whether they will admit it or not.
“Satanism” as an organized concept (an “-ism”)
was created by the Roman Catholic Church as an inverted version
of itself, with a little help from leftover Gnostic heretics (see
Jeffrey Burton Russell’s A
History of Witchcraft, for details), in the process of
justifying the European Crusades against the Albigensians and
Cathars, and later the Witchhunts. It was the Roman Catholic Christians
who defined the symbols and beliefs of Satanism in the first place,
and who invented rituals for them to be supposedly performing,
based on the ancient urban rumours mentioned earlier. Christian
ceremonial magicians then elaborated these into actual rituals,
mostly for the purpose of entertaining wealthy and jaded nobility
with “depraved Satanic orgies,” rather like people today
who run “S&M supper clubs.” The writings of modern
Satanists have merely given a “blackwash” to the fundamentally
Christian worldview involved — they are still allowing
the most repressive forms of Christianity to define the universe
of discourse! The Temple of Set and its doctrines were created
to give Satanists another name (Set) to use in public, while still
calling their deity Satan in private. The many “independent
Satanists” who post on the Net that they don’t actually
believe in Satan as a real spirit, nonetheless show that their
atheism/agnosticism/existentialism, like that of their fellow
Secular Humanists, is saturated with Scientism
and Social Darwinism — both of which are offshoots of Christian
Dualism. Which leads us to…
Satanic/Setanic
“Philosophy” vs. Neopaganism
Satanists/Setanists
are obsessed with forcing everyone into simplistic Christian/Islamic
Dualism, just as other fundamentalists are. That’s why they
insist on lumping the “White Witches” (Wiccans) and
Neopagans in with their official enemies, the Christians —
that is, whenever they’re not trying to recruit us as allies.
In The
Church of Satan, supposedly by “authorized biographer”
Blanche Barton, Tony Levy actually went so far as to denounce
several well known Neopagans (including yours truly) by name in
the same paragraph with the “ex-Satanic High Priest”
fundamentalist Michael Warnke and Setanic competitor Michael Aquino
(who had stolen much of LaVey’s membership).
As for Aquino
himself, not too many years ago he was denouncing Neopagans and
other Goddess worshippers as being worthy only of his contempt.
Here are some exemplary excerpts from Nevill Drury’s book,
The
Occult Experience (NY: Avery, 1989):
However,
where [Aquino] differs from Christians, mystics and Pagans —
whom for this purpose he lumps together — is in his belief
that the psychic dimension separates mankind [sic] from the
rest of Nature. Mystics and occultists alike are content to
subsume their individual self-hood in a wash of cosmic consciousness
— a type of surrender to a higher force. Christians, he
feels, are bogged down with feelings of guilt and hypocrisy,
endorsing “hackneyed moral standards” in an effort
to appease God…” (p112).
“Other
religions,” says the Temple’s introductory screed,
are “erroneous in principle and therefore unworthy
of peer status.” If this seems arrogant, Aquino has
his reasons: “All conventional religions, including the
Pagan ones, are simply a variation on the theme of reunion and
submergence of the self within the natural universe. So from
our point of view it really makes no difference whether you
pray to a father god or to a mother goddess — or to an
entire gaggle of gods and goddesses! You’re still wishing
for their acceptance. You’re waiting for them to put their
arms around you and say, ’You belong. You are a part of
us. You can relax. We will take care of you. We approve of you.
We endorse you…’ The Satanist or black magician
does not seek that kind of submergence of the self. We do not
seek to have our decisions and our morality approved or validated
by any higher god or being. We take responsibility unto ourselves.”
(p112-113).
“We
consider Set to be our activating force and the entire notion
of good and evil is something which is determined by human beings
themselves. We cannot pass the responsibility to any god, whether
it is a so-called benevolent god or a so-called evil god”
(p113).
Now, these
are Aquino’s own words, captured in print and on videotape.
They make it very clear that, however erroneous and shallow his
understanding of Paganism might be, (1) he clearly does not
consider Satanism and Paganism to be “the same”
and (2) that he considers “Setians” to
be Satanists — as he also states directly in quite a
few internal TOS documents — and so I will refer to them
for the rest of this essay. Among the references cited by Drury
are: Aquino’s own “The Crystal Tablet of Set,”
p. 23; “Runes,” Vol. II: 6, 1984; “Runes,”
Vol. I:2, 1983; and Aquino’s monograph, “The Church
of Satan,” 1983, p. 193.
Of course,
when Satanists want to ingratiate themselves with (or just annoy)
the Neopagan community, they publish letters or newsgroup posts
that deliberately ignore the important distinctions between Paleo-,
Meso-, and Neopaganism, so they can show how much “like”
Paleopaganism or Mesopaganism their versions of Satanism supposedly
are. The similarities to Mesopaganism shouldn’t be surprising
— most Mesopaganism is Christianity mixed with Paganism.
The fact that Paleopagans often had customs that modern Neopagans
would consider bad ideas, doesn’t mean that ancient Pagans
were “proto-Satanists” worshipping Forces of Evil —
and only a fundamentalist Christian would believe they were. These
deliberately deceptive Christian Dualist arguments lead some Satanists
to claim that Neopaganism “should” include Satanists
in their ranks, “because we’re really the same.“
Long-time
members of the Norse Pagan community may remember when Stephen
Flowers (aka “Edred Thorson,” author of several books
on runes), acting as Aquino’s second-in-command (head of
the “Order of the Trapazoid,” yet another idea stolen
from Anton LaVey), tried to convince them that Odin was “really”
just another name for Set, and so they should all join the Temple
of Set and do Nazi rituals with him (I have copies in my files
of the letters he sent out). This opinion got the Satanic Runemaster
thoroughly (and rightly) rejected by the majority of the Norse
Mesopagan community; rightwing and racist as they were, this was
too much for them to swallow. (Supposedly, Flowers is no longer
making these claims and is now calling himself an “Odian,”
though he is still within the Temple of Set.) Today, it’s
Loki rather than Odin who gets pointed to, along with other trickster
deities, as “evidence” that our Paleopagan ancestors
supposedly worshipped Satan under other names. This, of course,
entirely ignores the fact that trickster deities are “good,
weird, horny, whimsical and/or confusing” as often as they
are “evil,” and shows once again the Christian Dualist
habit of shoving all spirits into airtight Good and Evil pigeonholes
while ignoring ambiguity and complexity in non-Christian systems.
What about
people who call themselves “Pagan Satanists“? Well,
they may exist, just as other “Christo-Pagans” do. But
these Mesopagans no more represent the mainstream of Neopaganism
(or Paleopaganism, for that matter) than the Jews for Jesus represent
Judaism or the Theosophists represent Buddhism. We wouldn’t
accept arguments that Christianity is the spiritually superior
fulfillment, or even a logical variation of, either Taoism or
Buddhism, so why should we accept that the “flip side”
of Christianity — Setanism — is somehow just another
kind of Paganism? For that matter, do these “Satanic Pagans”
even exist outside of the Net? Or are they just another set of
masks for old-fashioned Christian Satanists to wear when talking
to Neopagans?
Lately, Setanists
have taken to misquoting Jung and other modern psychologists about
the “shadow side” of human nature, erroneously equating
it and what they call “Dark Side” deities and impulses
(based on the words of that famous theologian, Darth Vader) with
Evil. Then they claim that we are supposed to “embrace it”
(rather than understand and calmly control it), and all become
Satanists.
Most other
Satanic “philosophy” simply consists of turning Catholicism
or other forms of conservative Christianity upside-down and inside-out
(as if that’s going to be an improvement), advocating hedonism,
and adding some warmed-over quotes from Hitler and misquotes from
Crowley, Nietzsche, Darwin, etc. and a dash of Scientism
to the mix. Way down deep inside, it’s shallow.
The “Heroic”
Character of Satanists
Blanche Barton,
in the Introduction to The
Secret Life of a Satanist, described Levy as “cynical,
bitterly misanthropic, and violently determined in his role as
founder” of the COS, as “a frighteningly deceptive man,”
with a “seething, brutal side,” and “at times,
an almost unbearable oppressiveness to his intolerance and anger.”
While the rest of the book consists of fawning admiration and
total acceptance of Levy’s biographical claims, he hardly
comes off as a noble or heroic person. Aquino, on the other tentacle,
who is the brains and money behind the TOS, is an ex-Military
Intelligence officer (so you know just how much you can trust
anything he says) who brags about the ritual he did in a Nazi
ceremonial chamber in Germany.
Face it,
most Satanists actively approve of various types of behavior,
both magical and mundane, that Neopagans consider to be unethical
and immoral. A few Satanists are just as evil — at least
in their own imaginations — as the members of the Inquisition,
Hitler’s stormtroopers, Stalin’s secret police, or Central
American death squads. Most, of course, are no more evil than
the average street corner con-artist, though they try to impress
us as being far more dangerous. However, it’s important to
remember that there is nothing in Setanic doctrine (left wing,
right wing, or sociopathic) to separate the genuinely evil from
the merely obnoxious, for anything you can get away with is approved
of by their God of (“Beyond Good and”) Evil, on the
grand old theological principle of “might makes right.“
Neopaganism
is only fourty years old. We can add another twenty years, if
we count the early Mesopagan Wiccans. Many of us have consciously
identified ourselves with historical victims of Christian persecution
(witches, magicians, heretics, and heathens) as a way, among other
reasons, to extend our psychic history. So it’s a tempting
argument to say that we also should identify with every other
group that gets denounced by fundamentalists. After all, they
frequently target members of other minority groups that many Neopagans
belong to, approve of, or at least have learned to tolerate, such
as gay men, lesbians, transgendered people, polyamorous triads,
feminists, science teachers, Planned Parenthood counselors, yoga
teachers, crystal healers, psychics, astrologers, etc. Of course,
Christian fundamentalists also denounce gamblers, drug dealers,
thieves, murderers, rapists… whoops! Do we really want
to defend anyone and everyone whom fundamentalists have ever denounced?
Should we, going right to the heart of the Satanist toleration
issue, offer support to individuals and organizations who advocate
ideas and actions we consider evil, just because we have no legal
proof that they have yet acted on their proclaimed beliefs?
Over the
years, I have met scores of people who called themselves Satanists
— I even called myself one for eight months when I was a
teenager (see My
Satanic Adventure elsewhere on this website). I learned back
then, and subsequent experience has reiterated the lesson, that
most people who practice Satanism are Christian fundamentalists
in drag. Once in a while I would meet a genuinely nice, if
confused, person in a Satanist group, but they usually wound up
dropping out and joining some other path. The overwhelming majority
of Satanists I have known were sleazy, manipulative, parisitic
and unethical. I can’t think of a single reason why we should
make them feel welcome in our community, or why we should make
their activities any easier, or why we should help their groups
to grow and prosper. If the Setanists were ever to conquer the
world (Goddess forbid!), they would herd us into ovens just as
quickly as the other fundamentalists would.
The Religious
Freedom Issues
Now, I firmly
believe that people are entitled to have whatever religious beliefs
they wish, no matter how wrong or foolish I might consider those
beliefs, because I want other folks to extend the same freedom
to me and supporting religious freedom is more important to me
than living in a world where everyone practices a religion I like.
Therefore, I don’t believe that members of any faith have
a right to enshrine their religious beliefs into civil law or
to force religious minorities to live according to the majority’s
theological opinions. Nor, however, do members of any religion
or quasi-religion have a right to use their beliefs as a cover
for committing what criminologists refer to as “crimes with
victims,” such as murder, rape, stealing, and polluting,
for example (as distinct from “victimless crimes” covered
by most sex, drug, and gambling laws). The basic “don’t
kill, rape, steal, pollute,” etc., sort of moral code, necessary
for the physical welfare of any group of humans (and the Earth)
is not a specifically religious one but is (or should be) a universally
agreed-upon set of survival principles for post-barbarian cultures.
After some
long, emotional discussions with a former spouse (who is a fervent
civil libertarian) I’m forced to reluctantly admit that exactly
the same reasoning holds whether we’re dealing with Satanists
or other Christian fundamentalists. We don’t have the right
to exclude them from our public events, nor to prevent them from
shopping in our stores, nor to keep them from talking to the media,
much as we might like to. We must honor their constitutional
rights to practice their religion. But we don’t have to be
helpful to them in the process.
If a Satanic
group or individual is being discriminated against in such a way
as to make legal action appropriate, they can ask the American
Civil Liberties Union for help. If they are just having a
public relations problem, on the other hand, they can bloody well
hire their own advertising agency to explain that up is down and
Evil is “really kinda Good.” Either way, there is no
reason for us to spend our limited funds on defending them.
How exactly
can we make it clear to Setanists that they are not wanted in
our community? As Deborah Lipp puts it, “How do we express
our disapproval, and give it clout, without violating their rights?”
Her solution: “We do it just as our Pagan ancestors did —
by shunning. We don’t have to be respectful or friendly to
Satanists. Shunning is ethical and legal, and no one has a
civil right to be liked.“
What does
shunning as a tactic mean? Here’s an example, one that drives
the more mercenary members of our community wild: Neopagans who
own occult shops should not sell copies of Satanic literature,
provide tools that can normally only be used for Satanic purposes
(granted, a tricky judgement sometimes), nor allow local Setanists
to use our stores to teach classes or to recruit new members.
Of course, we can’t keep Satanists completely out of Neopagan
shops. We have to allow them to come in and buy other books and
products, just as we would allow Christians, Jews, or Buddhists
to do so, because to discriminate against them economically would
violate their constitutional rights (besides, some of those proto-Pagans
might be among them). But we don’t have to make the practice
of Setanism easier for them. Satanists are perfectly capable of
opening their own shops, and shopkeepers who insist on selling
Setanic materials can justly be asked where their loyalties lie.
Will this policy cost Neopagan owners who take an anti-Satanist
stand money? Yep. Which means that the Neopagan public has
a moral obligation to support anti-Satanist occult shops, even
if less ethical stores have lower prices.
Unfortunately,
we can’t simply exclude Satanists from attending public Pagan
festivals, for reasons both constitutional and practical. As Ms.
Lipp puts it, “What are you going to do, have attendees all
sign oaths that they aren’t Satanists?” Setanists would
hardly be bothered about taking a false oath, now would they?
But we don’t have to go out of our way to make Satanists
feel comfortable or respected, and we don’t have to give
them space on our program schedules. If a group of Setanists want
to set up a recruiting table at a Neopagan festival, an anti-Satanist
table should be set up right next to it, with large signs indicating
that the festival organizers do not approve of Satanism. Knowledgeable
people should talk to anyone who seems taken in by the Setanists.
The same procedures would hold for other conservative Christians
showing up at public Pagan festivals. (As I understand it, the
only way in the United States that you can legally prevent attendance
at an event on the grounds of religion is when that event is a
private, invitation-only party. Those of you with a background
in civil rights legislation may be able to determine if there
really is any way to exclude fundamentalists from Pagan festivals
in your country.)
Those
of us who interact with the mainstream media can and should refuse
to ever defend Satanism. We can and should publicly take the stand that Satanism
is stupid, unimaginative, ugly, banal, and often evil — and
that just like the Christian fundamentalism of which it is an
integral part, Satanism is the enemy of the Goddesses and Gods
we worship.
We sure as
Hades shouldn’t join in public relations or civil
liberties coalitions with Satanists any more than we would with
the Inquisition or the Ku Klux Klan. Such coalitions can only
benefit (1) the Setanists who will cheerfully hide behind the
(very slightly) superior public image that years of hard work
have won us, and (2) other fundamentalist Christians who will
point to such coalitions as further “proof” that Neopagans
and Satanists are identical. We have absolutely nothing to
gain from letting the Satanists ride on our coattails, and much
to lose.
The
enemies of our enemies are our enemies’ enemies
— not our friends. It’s time the Neopagan
community closed our ranks against them. As pluralists, we’re
usually willing to let our members, friends, and even our clergy,
belong to a wide variety of other religions. But Christian fundamentalists,
whether they are wearing crosses or goat heads, are simply not
welcome, and never will be. |