Your thoughts on Satanism and the petition for a Satanic statue.

[TheRealJoeFish]

I have a problem with them wanting to put that up right next to a Christian/Jewish symbol, though. Those Satanists did not invent the symbol of the Demon, the bible did. They took something that was made up to represent evil, and are trying to make it their own. Which is fine, I guess, but by putting it next to the 10 commandments statue, they are deliberately and knowingly trying to "defile" something that is very sacred for the majority of people in this country.

This gets into another issue: the "sincerely held belief" issue.  For the most part, the government is not allowed to inquire whether you profess a belief in a certain religion because you actually believe it or because it will give you some benefit to say you believe it.  Otherwise, the government would be making decisions about whether someone who claims they were discriminated against is a "real christian" or just pretending to be.  Any such determination would be extremely at odds with the first amendment, and would be really terrible on a civil rights level, probably.  Because, then, the government can't get into "motive" when someone claims they were discriminated against because they were christian, the government similarly can't get into motive when someone claims they're discriminated against for being satanist (or atheist or buddhist or ba'hai or not christian).  So, the "deliberately and knowingly defiling" aspect of things is, well, something that can trouble you personally but is definitely not a legitimate governmental concern.

If putting baphomet next to a christian symbol defiles that christian symbol, then having the christian symbol next to baphomet defiles baphomet.  The government is not allowed to care which came first.  Again, it's an issue of "we must be allowed to defile equally, or not at all."  Most of these people don't want to defile your symbols.  They want to make the point that our government is not allowed to declare a religious symbol "sacred", so if you want the government to recognize a symbol you believe is sacred you also have to have the government recognize a symbol that you believe defiles it.