Last week, a federal judge ruled in favor of forcing a Pennsylvania middle school to host an After School Satan Club (ASSC), being just the latest example of a disturbing trend that’s spreading through K-12 campuses across the country. The American Civil Liberties Union and a local Satanist temple filed a lawsuit against the district after school administrators rescinded permission for the club to meet on school grounds. The Satanists argued that the club deserved the same protections as any other religious club, and the judge evidently agreed with this, reasoning that “the record indicates the District engaged in viewpoint discrimination by rescinding approval.”
There are two major problems with this argument, or indeed any argument in favor of establishing Satanist clubs. First and foremost is the idea of classifying Satanism as a religion in the same way Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are religions. Rather, it’s an anti-religion, repudiating the beliefs and rituals of actual religions, particularly Roman Catholicism. Satanists will host “black masses” and have “sacraments” that are all gross inversions of what they are in Catholicism. The whole idea is to mock Christians and the God in whom they believe.
Of course, Satanists will respond to this by claiming that it is no such thing. Rather, it is an affirmative philosophy that extols the individual and prioritizes reason. As the ASSC website states, their clubs “focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us.” If parents
