ARROW EDGE, OKLAHOMA — The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America is one will find the implied “Separation of Church and State” doctrine upon which the country’s tolerance and acceptance of religious freedom is built. It’s not explicitly mentioned — separating the functions of government from the functions of religion — but the practical effect of the First Amendment is to limit both the ways that government can impact religion and vice versa. Many Americans, regardless of their religious beliefs, are thankful for the protections the separation offer the country’s citizens, helping to ensure that no one’s religious preferences cause another person to lose their right to practice — or not practice — religion in whatever way they see fit.
Some have argued that the Separation of Church and State has done much to stave off any potential religiously-fueled feuds from boiling over and causing real damage to society at large. In Oklahoma though, the state’s governor — Mary Fallin (R) — has decided to say “First Amendment? Shmurst Amendment” and is thumbing her nose at her state’s Supreme Court. The highest court in Oklahoma ruled a couple weeks ago that the state’s monument to the Ten Commandments of Biblical fame must be removed from the state capitol grounds, citing the First Amendment’s protection of both freedom of and freedom from religion as well as a general inappropriateness of a religious icon being put on taxpayer funded grounds. Fallin however has defiantly stated that the Ten Commandments will remain in place on Oklahoma’s capitol grounds, which has sparked a response from someone else in Oklahoma’s government, a lower district judge.
The Honorable Lucius M. Lafoy has served on Oklahoma’s second circuit court for fifteen years, but it’s only in the last four that he’s been a self-described “out and proud” Satanist. Lafoy says that it was six years ago he joined The First Church of Satan of Latter Day Anti-Saints in Arrow Edge, Oklahoma and he “immediately knew this was the place of spiritual affirmation” he wanted to be a part of. “I love everything about the Satanic church. I love, love, love it. I love it with a deep, abiding love for my Dark Lord, Beelzebub, and I have fervent, sincerely-held religious beliefs, and that’s why I stared sacrificing a goat in my courtroom every night after I’ve handed down the last verdict.”
“At first, there were some that blanched at the idea of me ritualistically killing a goat and burning it on an altar I had specially made so that I could wheel it in, lay down a few tarps, kill the goat, incinerate it, and then dance around the flames chanting ‘Hail Satan! Hail Satan! Hail Satan!’,” Lafoy told The Political Garbage Chute, “but I said to everyone at the time that if they get to put their Ten Commandments out in the public square out there, I get to sacrifice my goats in here. That’s what freedom of religion means if you start going and opening up cans of worms by putting one religion over another. You can’t have it both damn ways,” Lafoy said.
When Oklahoma’s high court ruled that the Ten Commandments must be removed from the capitol grounds, Lafoy said he was “completely ready to start doing [his] goat sacrifices when [he] got home every night,” but that when he saw Governor Fallin stubbornly insist the Christian monument stay, his “principles and deeply, sincerely-held religious beliefs” forced him to “take a stand for The Dark Lord, and to be a bright, burning, flaming torch of sin for all those who want to hear His message” adding “also, turnabouts is fair play, bitches.”
“Christians in this country have a really funny idea that Freedom of Religion can and should only pertain to Christendom,” Judge Lafoy told our reporter. “They think that there’s an actual difference between their Ten Commandments and my goat sacrifices, but there isn’t. They think their deeply held and sincere religious convictions give them a right to keep gays from marrying and homosexuals from marrying, but they cry bloody murder of an atheist wants to put up a reason booth at a town fair. Imagine the outrage if some blue state were to suddenly become mostly populated with Islamic people and they voted into existence some kind of Koran-inspired laws, you know, Sharia,” Lafoy asked rhetorically before answering himself, “they’d completely lose their shit.”
Lafoy says that as much as he enjoys his satanic sacrifices, he’d be willing to do what religious Americans did for years and years before all the religious freedom fervor started sweeping red states — practice his religion in the privacy of his home or his church of choice — if and only if the Ten Commandments are removed from the capitol grounds. He said that “it’s only right that either all religions are represented or none are” because “that’s what Freedom of Religion actually means.”
“Of course, we could just go back to being civil about religion and stop trying to force it down each other’s throats, but you’d have to talk to the fundies stamping their feet over having to remove an overtly religious symbol from taxpayer funded grounds first,” Lafoy said as he was ending the interview. “Until that happens, the goat sacrificing stays in my courtroom!”
