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But we’re not responding to the black mass performance in terms of religious liberty. They will be doing their satanic rituals in the future as they have in the past—and I suppose they have a right to do that—but the nature of this black mass, in my view, is that it is not authentic religion; it’s really more akin to hate speech. It’s a direct attack upon the Christian faith and the Catholic Mass and the Eucharist. It’s deliberately intended to inflame and incite, so I don’t think it’s necessarily a form of speech that is appropriate for a public venue. Not all speech is protected speech. If, for example, a group had desired to come and rent this same facility for the purpose of burning the Quran or lighting a cross in a racist, Ku Klux Klan sort of demonstration, or somehow committing anti-Semitic acts, I think the city likely would have found a reason to prevent that. Not all speech is protected speech.

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