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Posted on 04/19/2022 9:12:39 PM PDT by lightman
A near-unanimous school board vote Tuesday night struck down a proposal to create an “After School Satan Club” at the Northern York Elementary School.
The proposal was initiated by Samantha Groome, a resident of the district. Every board member except Thomas Welch voted against allowing the club to form.
“Someone voted in favor, eh?” was the first reaction of Lucien Greaves, the cofounder of the Temple of Satan that created the national After School Satan Club. “It is indicative of a school board that has no idea what its limits are and its function is.”
At least 300 people gathered to share viewpoints that ranged from emphatic support to vehement opposition of the proposal to form the club. The vast majority of voices, however, voiced dissent.
Many parents cited scripture to reinforce their points of belief. Some heckled opposition speakers. And some rose to the microphone to tell Christians to show Christian love to all.
Jodie Osborne of Wellsville delivered an impassioned speech citing scripture.
“I’m sad all we are talking about is Satan. It’s not about Satan, it’s about God,” Osborne said. “Wrongs will be righted, and if we don’t start standing now, we’re going to lose our nation.”
Paul Miller took to the microphone and told the community to cast those in favor of the After School Satanic Club out of town.
“You shouldn’t be here. There’s no room for you here. If this freaking group does get voted in, let’s do something about it,” Miller told the crowd.
One Northern York County High School junior took to the microphone as well.
“I am a religious person myself, however, I’ve often found myself at the teeth-end of Christian love,” the junior, who declined to give his full name, said. “I find they can be quite intolerant at times. They can push people away easily.”
The After School Satan Club could provide a place for kids who know they are different to go without being asked demeaning questions or having to explain themselves, the junior said.
Jackie Bieber, a recent arrival in Dillsburg, said she just lost a child to a suicide website run by a Satanic group.
“They gave her step-by-step instructions. We move over here, and now we find out there’s an after-school Satan club,” Bieber said.
Wes Gessaman took to the microphone and said “This is how it begins.”
“When I hear Satan, I don’t research that. I don’t look it up,” Gessaman said. “I’m not about to let it slip through my fingers I could have stopped this from happening to others’ children.”
The self-described mission of The Satanic Temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense, oppose injustice and undertake noble pursuits.
“It’s a complete contradiction because Satan is a tyrannical force,” Becky Rosely, of Dillsburg, said. However, she did speak of compassion.
“They will know we are Christians by our love,” Rosely said. “Not by our nasty, snarky remarks. We should be doing a whole lot better job at sharing the love of Christ with them.”
The After School Satan Club is an after-school program that promotes self-directed education by supporting the intellectual and creative interests of students, according to its website.
The group does not attempt to convert children nor does it try to proselytize to them. It seeks to promote free inquiry and rationalism, according to its website.
“It was clear these people had no idea who we are, and what we are doing,” Lucien Greaves, cofounder of the Temple of Satan that sponsors the after school club, said.
Some in the audience felt they knew enough to oppose it.
“I do not want my town’s image to be destroyed,” William Dacheux, of Dillsburg, spoke up. “I do not want Dillsburg to be known as the town that accepts everyone — so long as you believe what we do. If we shelter our children from different worldviews that are out there, we are doing them a disservice.”
A member of the audience held a crucifix above the crowd as Dacheux spoke.
Deanna Weaver, a Dillsburg resident, said while a significant number of people in the room were Christians, there were also people who do not believe in a superior being.
“That in no way makes me a child pornographer, a cannibal or any of the absurdities that have been rumored. This lady [Samantha Groome] has been misrepresented,” Weaver said.
Weaver continued to read the seven tenets of The Satanic Temple:
1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
“What is objectionable about all that?” Weaver said.
“Everything!” the auditorium erupted in raucous comment. Weaver silently returned to her seat.
Greaves called the experience unnecessarily traumatizing for those who wanted the group brought to Northern York County and said religious freedom does not come down to a school board’s vote.
“They had the first meeting, and people didn’t show up. They were hoping to humiliate and intimidate us and drive us out So they allowed people to show up and shout us down, then do their show trial and say they will not allow us to run the club,” Greaves said.
“They are a disgrace to their public post and they have no right sitting in those chairs,” Greaves said.
Greaves said the group tried to do everything in their power to meet the standards district policy set and to work with them as smoothly as possible.
“They instead decided to make a controversy out of it and turn it into the spectacle it became. That’s very regrettable,” Greaves said.
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OP not withstanding: I am concerned that this decision might open the door for the “Freedom from Religion Foundation”, ACLU, and other of their Legion to sue to ban other after-school religious groups, especially Christian ones.
Once the wall of religious neutrality has been breached all bets are off.
Anyway, there's no point in an after-school Satan club when the Teachers' union puts it into the daytime curriculum...
Jesus people, can you articulate your problems with the Light-Bringer?
1. One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
2. The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
I think we all agree that there is a fight between Good and Evil.
I sometimes wonder if I can tell the difference anymore
As for the Satan ... he's kind of sneaky and doesn't play by the rules. Don't believe anything him and his followers say.
We wuz poor, we didn’t have no After School Satan Club. Effin’ kids are coddled today.
“We didn’t have clubs in elementary school. None. Zero. Nada. Why should our tax dollars fund clubs when schools do worse year after year?”
I studied under a private Christian academy because my parents almost gagged at the thought of us going to public school. Even if they had to take 2 jobs each, they did it (thanks Mom and Dad), same with my brothers and sisters. Our school was patterned after the Japanese gakuen’ or high school where you HAVE to join a club or you wont graduate.
and the best part is that they called it exactly that..’satan club”, and didn’t hide from it. Unlike Democraps who keep lying to us offering X, then giving Y’.
Which are, in all reality, a bunch of crap.
Satan is not known for his benevolence and inclusion. Portraying him as such is the biggest bunch of PR BS this world has ever seen.
Tenet #8 Feel free to LIE about EVERYTHING, including tenets 1-7.
If their intentions were so noble, they wouldn’t identify with the archenemy of mankind.
>> A freakin’ elementary school? Must...resist...comment...or...I...will...get...banned...
Calling them predators shouldn’t get you banned.
3. One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
........................................................
Sounds too much like an argument that pro abort liberals might make.
The first problem is that the Satan club's tenets sound nice, but they have no intention of upholding them. It's like Google's code of conduct, "Don't be evil." Look where that has gone. Or the ACLU, which started out announcing its high intentions, but only defends the civil liberties of lefty revolutionaries once well established.
The other problem is that this club is not based on a solid public good with its own scripture reflecting those tenets, but rather is a derivative of a valid religion, and is named after a figure who is openly opposed to that religion. It would be like having a club called the "Anti-M*h*mmed Club," or even the "Anti Moses Jesus" club.
What great parents!
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