Man accused of destroying Satanic Temple display at Iowa Capitol is now charged with hate crime
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social to 
apnews.com
A Mississippi man accused of destroying a statue of a pagan idol at Iowa’s state Capitol is now being charged with a hate crime.
As he fucking should. He explicitly destroyed an approved religious statue on government property because it didn’t fit his religious beliefs. He* committed violence against the ST for religious reasons.
In tiers of ‘hate crime’ I wouldn’t put it up there with setting a cross on fire (which has other religious connotations) or fire bombing a church… but, fuck. We should all just respect each others’ equal rights to worship as we see fit, and if the government is going to permit one ideology to put up religious iconography on their grounds, then they must include the other religions.
At the moment, SCOTUS treats no belief as a separate religion. In our life times we are going to have to aim for the more achievable “all religions matter”.
SCOTUS gets something wrong, what a shocker. You set your goals for how much progress you want to see in a lifetime and I'll set mine.
I’ll delete this response when you let me know, but the quoted format looks odd. I respect your position from what I can gather from the weird format, so please take a moment to edit and let me know when it’s done. I’d really like other viewers to see what you’re trying to articulate properly.
For reference, this is what it looks like for me (desktop firefox):
So, looks fine to me formatting-wise. I read the intent to be that (1) they're quoting you, and (2) they're conveying a government building should not be a place for religious iconography, at all.
I'd be happier if there would be no religious presence in government buildings too, but alas, the SC has ruled for what we've got. So I suppose it's nice at least that we've got TST to help ensure our governments aren't playing favorites
It must be the app, Memmy, that I’m using. It doesn’t show any formatting for me, just double spaces where they began and ended their formatting. I still gathered that was what they were sort of going for.
...stop and take those down.
Out of curiosity, does the earlier post's strikethrough for the part I've now removed show up for you? I've heard that some apps don't handle all of the formatting options particularly well.
It must be the app, Memmy, that I’m using. It doesn’t show any formatting for me, just double spaces where you began and ended your formatting.
What is the formatting used to denote strikethrough on lemmy? On Kbin it looks like it's ignoring it, but it has
double tildeas a supported strikethrough formatter.It's the double-tilde over here too, not sure why kbin would ignore it.
Strike!FWIW, I'm reading this thread in a Firefox browser on a PC and only the bolding works for me. I see the double-tildes at either end of what should be struck out text.
I’d put it on par with trespassing into a church and breaking the crosses. It’s destruction of other people’s shit because of the religion it represents but with no additional implications
Christians demand that acceptance while refusing it (literally to the point of violence) to anyone else.
The story of the last 2000 years.
Ain’t it a bitch when OTHERS use the right you thought only you’d be able to use? What a dumbass.
Many Christians probably believe that these laws were made for everyone except them. If you go to more conservative sites discussing the matter, they would probably be asking why people aren't charged for hate crimes against Christians. It's part of their persecution complex.
"Charged with a hate crime for what?"
"For saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas! Starbucks changed to just a red cup so that's a hate crime too! Schools are trying to stop coaches from making kids on their teams pray! And trans people exist! Hate crimes!!"
If the ghouls completely take over it will be only them who use these laws
Uh yeah, it isn't a secret or anything.
What's next? Is she going to say "I don't think they actually believe in Baphomet either!"
“How dare you sue me for the crimes you passively goaded me into committing in your attempt to prove the value of the law”
As a Satanist myself, I honestly think that would/should be their lawyers case.
We are atheists and the argument that we're not really a religion is something conservative courts might believe.
I haven’t looked into any filings for religious exemption/status, etc so I’m not sure how we've made our case in the past. I think we should be prepared to advocate that our mutual belief in the seven tenets is our religion.
Here in Germany religions and world-views have equal status, and if Baphomet is a symbol of your specific brand of atheism and its values then desecrating it is, well, desecration: An insult of those values.
Zen folks also aren't religious in the western understanding, the whole distinction is a western construct, yet I don't doubt burning down a Zen temple would be considered a hate crime even by Christians.
From what I understand the legal situation in the US is actually similar. When people started the Sudburry school they had a look at the options and went straight-ahead for making it a denominational school as it offered the best conditions and flexibility. They specifically created a humanist creed just for that founding.
Push come to shove, lessons to learn? More architecture, more fancy robes and chants.
That's really interesting that religions and world-views are given equal credence. Excuse my ignorance, but are they covered under the same word? Or what would the translations be?
Different words. Quoth Article 137(7) of the Weimar constitution (one of the paragraphs that are part of the current constitution):
Meaning they're seen as different in some sense, but as they're 100% equal under the law courts never bother to make judgements on whether something is the one or the other. Courts are really good at avoiding deciding something if they don't absolutely have to. In laws you always see them mentioned side by side, e.g. §166 StGB:
That law is age-old, dating back to after the 30 year war to keep Lutherans and Catholics from inciting wars against each other. And just for the record yes you can call the Catholic Church a child fucker cult: Courts ruled that it's not that kind of statement which disturbs the public peace, priests fucking children and the church sweeping it under the carpet is what disturbs it. The statement may be pointed but it's still a statement of fact, not an insult.
OTOH you won't see Churches over here saying things like "atheists are inherently amoral", that very much is an insult. Or the good ole Lutheran line of "Catholics are Idolaters" -- Lutheran theology still says that they are, but, hey, you don't have to say it out loud, least of all using fighting words.
The term "world view" itself has quite precise philosophical meaning, English wikipedia does a half-assed job of explaining it. The German article has a way better opening definition:
So philosophically speaking religions are actually a subset of world-views and the question of "is this a religion" is rather meaningless to the philosopher -- they'd rather use terms such as "theological world-view" or such. For the established religions, though, the term is very important and noone wants to rock a boat that doesn't need rocking.
Thank you for the detailed and insightful response. That's such a fair and egalitarian stance. I wonder why other countries haven't adopted similar? Or if it's that the church in Germany doesn't hold as much political power as other places.
Germany isn't even secular as such, there's a gazillion state churches and world view organisation, organised under public law and having privileges such as sitting on the public TV councils, and even writing their own employment laws. You do have to be compatible with humanism, though, and not in opposition to the free and democratic basic order.
From the reformation to the age of the enlightenment there were first wars, then people could be cast out of a lord's territory if they were of the "wrong" creed -- which was a huge win in terms of religious freedom, before that they often had to face some sort of inquisition.
Catholic areas were of course catholic, in Protestant areas multiple new creeds developed, some accepted by the state, some not so much. Actual religious freedom was introduced 1848, simultaneously the authority to marry was taken away from the churches and put into state hands. Same thing with schools, though confessions still can (and do) have private schools, but it's all under state oversight.
That whole approach then got firmed up a bit in the Weimar constitution, put into its current organisational form, then the Nazis happened, and then it got firmed up even more in the sense that the state now is now not neutral but actively humanist. (Even if it's often outsourced to specifically the EKD as they are very good at not arguing from theological principles but speak plain ethics. In practice no law concerning say stem cell research passes without their ok as their reasoning always demands respect) And this humanist orientation of the state also leads to decisions that I think look rather strange from an outside POV, such as at-will abortions not being legal, but decriminalised. The constitutional court really was shouting "you can't just willy-nilly declare a developing human to not be human" from the rooftops, reminding politicians of the state's duty to protect life, while also saying "you don't have to implement that protection with criminal punishment that'd probably be counter-productive anyway, use social and welfare means".
This is so so interesting! Especially the concept of religions and world views needing to be compatible with humanism, and that the Protestant Church is able to provide ethical insight that's not pure religiosity but properly reasoned and considered. My biggest question mark of this morning was what would happen if someone tried to found a religion based on hatred, or organize a group sharing the same hateful world view, by tossing around "facts" (the statistics that are often cherry picked, removed from context, and thrown around to justify racism for example). I imagined that Germany would be particularly sensitive to that possibility but wasn't sure how it might be handled- you cleared it up beautifully.
Are you in a line of work or study surrounding this history and principles? Or is the average German citizen this knowledgable on the subject?
No and no. Our level of civics education all in all isn't terrible but I do have more of an interest than most, I'd say.
Triggered into entering the felon list by some pool noodles and some lights 😂
And the Cristian wack jobs are in full force donating to his legal defense. Already at 116.000 usd, with completely normal and not at all fanatic comments, like "_ May God punish the foul souls bringing charges against you! There is a higher law than man made law, and you are upon that law. God bless you and keep you._". Abhorrent behavior...
God damn, I wish I didn't have morals and a conscience... With my knowledge of religion and the scriptures I could be making BANK milking the gullible.
This is my same struggle every day having been raised in a preacher's home.
Reading the Bible is what turned me into an atheist
Loving the bible makes you christian.
reading the bible makes you athiest.
Same.
FYI: Israelites are a branch of Canaanites, El is a Canaanitic god, and The Exodus lacks evidence from ever happening.
That was absolutely wild to learn as ex-Christian. Also, the social hole you fall into as you leave Christianity is pretty terrifying, but you'll eventually learn to deal with it.
Psalms 137:9 is my favorite verse.
Hmm I looked it up and apparently one has to be careful with interpreting this. It's not really about being happy to dash infants against rocks. It's simply a call for the destruction of the entire nation of people. It's really about justice! And that's a good thing! /s
Those babies deserved it, and if they didn't they're going to heaven anyway, so really it's a mercykill.
Anway, love thy neighbors!
Same. And the ultimate irony is that the values I used to determine that the Bible is a fucked up book that I want nothing to do with, are the same values that my uber-Christian parents instilled in me, and then lost at some point along the way.
YOU MADE ME LIKE THIS
Yep. I have had these same thoughts. Start a business. Any business. Slap "Christian" in the name. Profit.
I really liked the one where somebody was prepared to buy people's worldly goods and look after them in the event of the rapture.
It's a great scam because it literally cannot go wrong. If it turns out they were right and the rapture happens you still don't have to deal with all the junk and otherwise you can sell it back to them for a profit.
I like the after rapture pet insurance.
Pay me today, and I'll totally feed your dog after you've ascended to heaven.
Peter 2:13-17
Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
Sooo yeah "God is a higher authority you need not heed" is more like government is the official middle management. Obey the management.
They can't even write a coherent sentence. "You are upon that law"? The fuck?
Is 116.00 supposed to be like 116,000? Must have shot up since the article was published then?
French people switch
.and,for whatever reason.Lots of the world does. It's ok as long as we all put the correct number of digits after the period or comma.
The correct number of zeros was my question tbh
In parts of (most of?) Europe they use commas where we in the US use decimals in numbers.
https://www.smartick.com/blog/other-contents/curiosities/decimal-separators/
Christians are immune to irony.
Reads "thou shalt not kill" commandment.
Declares holy war on indigenous people.
This goes beyond irony blindness, this is straight cherry picking for convenience.
The commandment is actually "you shall not murder". There's a distinct difference between killing and murdering; murder can be categorised as only a small subset of killing. I could be misled but I'm under the impression that to old testament era Jews killing a non-jew was never murder.
That kind of makes it worse...
What a loving religion.
1 Samuel 15:2-4
2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. 3 Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’
No killing! Not without permission from your governors.
They simply adjust their definition of "people" as needed.
Unlike their zombie boy, very irony
There might be a certain stigmata about what you said, but I think you nailed it.
Some would say my statement might... strike a nerve (or two).
Ba dum tiss
He wasn't a zombie he was a lynch. An immortal soul bound to a mortal body.
I challenge any Christian to come up with a better description.
Lich.
A lynch would be something a bit... different. A lot of wingnuts would be into that, too, mind you.
They're not immune to it. They're just irony deficient. Their body can't process it. It goes into violent spasms.
Low IQ be like that sometimes.
Hail Satan. May justice be done in accordance with law.
Second bit seems risky. I'd flip it around: May the law be done in accordance with justice.
Our world has seen some pretty horrific things done in accordance with some pretty horrific laws.
Agree. I'm operating on an assumption that we enable justice through laws. Definitely not fool proof.
So very true! Law and justice rarely meet
Hail Satan!
Hail satan!
Wait, who?
The "religious freedom" crowd are the ones who want the freedom to grift and sow divisiveness among their brain-dead sheep, I mean pawns, I mean congregants.
This should be reposted to upliftingnews lol
You know what is going to be held captive by bureaucratic decree? Your felon status, fucker!
Can I have your AR-15 once you're convicted? Because you won't be allowed to own it after! And j/k about your rifle, I bet it's a PSA p p piece of shit (dumbasses like this guy tend to be poor whiskey tango).
The fuck is wrong with PSA? I've got multiple of their lowers and they are just as rugged as the Gucci lowers from other companies. Hell the main utv ar I have for farm duty is a PSA.
My child's fire control group will be one big sponge
Owners are right wing dick bags iirc
Find me a gun manufacturer that isn't?
Lol this is what I was thinking, like 99% of them are voting red no matter who's on the ballot. Satan could show up and be like "Jesus is a bitch, Im a die hard Republican, vote Satan 2024" and they'd vote for him.
Ok Mario
a tad bit too aggressive, but i like the spirit of your Comment.
No need to hate on a poverty pony. Everyone deserves to be able to arm themselves.
FAFO...mess with the goat and you get the horns.
Are you familiar with PAGANism? We offer goat leggings, discrete occult rituals and the virgin Connie Swail.
I thought the sign said pegganism, guess all that prep work and lubrication was for nothing.
Now there's a religion I'd join.
Check around for a local affiliate, they have tons of sects. For some variants, you might have a hard time getting out without a flared base though so be careful.
Giggity...
Lmfao
Good drugs and bad sex, you say?
Now you listen here, mister...
The display is working as intended then.
I'm sure the intent is acceptance, not anger.
The intent is to force feed some of their own medicine back down their throats, I believe
I believe this is the method, not the intended effect.
I think the intend was definitely to protest and demand "Separation of church and state". So problem wasn't the nutjob destroying the idol, it was the nutjobs allowing religious displays in the Capitol building.
Ah the beauty of TST... Laid a trap and some moron took the bait. I'm sure they had to do it because "persecution" or something like that.
Trapping christians is like shooting fish in a barrel. Since childhood they've been punished for critical thinking and rewarded for public displays of religious intolerance and ignorance.
Watch the wannabe theocrats praise this man as a "hero doing Sky Daddy's work!"
TBH, Baphomet is a honey trap for religious nuts to go after.
It would not be a surprise to see one hold Baphomet's decapitated head up in triumph and proclaim himself leader of God's army. I wish that I was kidding.
They believe the absolute most insane things, like there's an invisible war going that they're somehow the protagonists in. A story written just for them.
Unfortunately , we're all just npcs to them and they are willing to let everyone on earth suffer and die, if that's what they think their imaginary friends in their heads wants.
Straight from St. Paul. Maybe they shouldn't have picked to follow a man with narrasistic personality disorder.
That's the whole point of this religion, to trigger religious people. There no other reason to pick the satanic symbolism.
It's like "oh yeha, you want freedom to believe whatever insane thing you want and push it into the secular state? We can do that too, bitch" kinda thing.
Which is good, the only problem I see is that some people seem like they are starting to get attached to the religion.
If you look at what the religion actually has as its tenets, it is more mainstream and mentally healthier than a number of Christian religions. I still am not a member, tho, just looking in from the outside. The triggering is not the point of the religion, but is an activism to defend a separation of church and state. I grew up in a cult religion, and REALLY do not want any religion to be part of government.
I think that the tenets of any religion are worthless, and we have all the other religions as evidence. You can have any set of tenets, people will do whatever they want as long as it is convenient.
Your last point may well be true; but have you checked out the TST tenets?
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
II
The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
III
One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
IV
The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own.
V
Beliefs should conform to one's best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one's beliefs.
VI
People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one's best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
VII
Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Yeha, I can see someone totally ignoring these when convenient. These would be even easier to ignore because they have complex and subjective concepts like "justice", "scientific understanding" and "compassion", as opposed to "do not kill" and "do not steal". If people ignore such objective rules, they'd have no issue ignoring subjective ones.
Anyways, I've never liked religions, I honestly don't agree with creating a religion because I feel it won't end well... but well, please prove me wrong. There's no way to tell what will happen.
Maybe. But you gotta admit that the statue is dope as fuck.
Good.
I’m gonna nitpick: Satanism is not Paganism. This was a satanic idol and not a pagan idol.
And not even satanic in the Christian theology.
Baphomet and Baal were actually gods alongside Yahweh
Yes, but it isn’t a pagan depiction because it’s being put up as an act of atheistic Satanism.
Also pre modern baphomet worship looks to be something that may have happened in Europe in the Middle Ages and seems to completely lack evidences (according to Wikipedia) of being more ancient.
There is absolutely a thing where Satanists will claim pagan deities though. I’m both annoyed and flummoxed by the infernal names in Laveyan Satanism as an Ishtar worshipper. First of all she’s the queen of heaven, not infernal and no lust isn’t evil you dipshits, and secondly Erishkagal isn’t on the list despite her having every reason to.
I can't imagine historical accuracy is high on the list of priorities when creating an ironic religion.
Yeah that’s kinda my point though for my first two paragraphs. Neopaganism and TST are very different religions. Even when they share depictions of similar things, but in this case it’s not. Baphomet has basically always been a symbol of opposition to Christianity. First as used by christians then claimed by those opposing them.
For my third paragraph, yeah Lavey didn’t know much about much and didn’t seem to care to learn. He also clearly didn’t care about misrepresenting religions that are still in constant practice from before the Roman Empire to now.
Time to worship Anu and the Anunnaki gang
They're not even theistic.
We’ve long since come full circle (well, I guess half circle). The satanists embody virtue and the christians evil.
That's always been the case. The only people who think that Satanists actually worship satan are idiots.
Every single Satanist i've ever met, and I haven't met a lot I admit, are just nice people who don't understand why the church is so powerful considering all the crimes they've covered up over the years. Especially considering that practically every single "Christian" democracy claims to separate church and state.
You aren't going to find a bunch of geniuses praying to a dead jew on a stick to come back from the dead.
Funny the satanists I knew were all about manipulation of everyone they encountered. Even gave me a book on it.
He travelled halfway across the country just to do it.
What a piece of shit
Good. If I ever drive across the country to destroy a statue for any religion I should be charged the same way.
And they continue to let themselves get trolled lol
My guess is somebody clued them in that if they didn't hit this guy with a hate crime then there would be precedent to protect people from hate crime status for crimes against Christian property.
That's not really how precedent works. Not choosing to charge him with a hate crime would be a matter of prosecutorial discretion, and wouldn't affect other prosecutors' charging decisions. You better believe if you took a shit on whatever jeebus monument they have at the Mississippi Capitol they'd put you under the jail with every imaginable charge.
Excellent.
I strongly suspect this guy has a room temperature iq (celcius) and will probably be wondering why he was charged with destroying a baphomet statue rather than one of satan (he spells it Santa though when he gets crayons).
Red, white, and black! Check. Pagan origins? Check. Older than Josh? Check. Keeps a list of good & naughty people based on someone else's notion of such? Check. Makes kiddos curious about the truth and adults wary? Checkity check. Same guy, it seems. 🤷🏼♂️
The fires of hell or the Arctic Wastes. I mean is there really a difference. After all there's such a thing as frostbite which is basically burning cold.
Dante's interpretation had ol' Scratch encased in ice, though. There's precedent.
Good opportunity to spread the word:
Hail Satan? Is a great documentary about TST, highly encouraged to watch.
Girlfriend and I have been members for years, haven't seen this yet. Will check it out tonight.
Don't you guys get it? He HAD to destroy it to make sky daddy happy smh
As he should.
My god is way cooler than your god
It's charged as a felony. I believe someone said there was minimum jail time of around two years.
Reminder to donate to the Satanic Temple. They fight christian idiots with things like holiday decorations of Baphomet on state land. Fund them enough and we'll get another one or more of these insecure god-thumpers locked up next year.
Hail Satan!
Hail yourself!
So. Fucking. Based.
So if he dies in prison he goes to heaven???
Or maybe he goes to hell but he gets to enjoy pleasures rather than suffer torture.
Personally I like the idea that there is an afterlife but it's just another level of existence and nothing supernatural. And all these idiots are just really bored and have to come to terms with the fact that they died without ever really having a personality or opinions of their own. Everything they believed was just pointless and they would have been better off leaving everyone else alone.
Now they're dead and no one on earth cares.
Take note dumb shits.
🗿 based