Minnesota town will have the nation’s first public Satanic Temple monument.
The Satanic Temple will for the first time be legally allowed to erect a monument on public space.[/tweetit] The monument will be erected in honor of war veterans from Belle Plaine, a small town in Minnesota. The erection of this monument will signify an important turn for The Satanic Temple, who have until now been fighting for the right to erect their own monuments in public spaces just as Christians do.
Satanic Temple Monument Will Honor War Veterans of Minnesota[/tweetthis]
The spokesperson for The Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, thanked the local authorities for not offering any kind of resistance to the plan. Greaves says the idea behind installing the monument was not to insult any group or to upset anyone, but only to respect the fallen heroes of Belle Paine. He does, however, accept the possibility that the monument could be taken in the wrong way by people opposed to his organization.
https://youtu.be/LpiPZPOz9Nk?t=9m20s
According to The Satanic Temple, “the path was paved for this historic event” when a complaint was lodged against a statue of an army soldier kneeling before a cross. A lawsuit was filed in 2012 stating the statue violated the separation of church and state. Following the controversy the city council decided to make a portion of the Veterans Memorial Park a public forum. As such, council members said they could not deny any group the right to erect a monument honoring veterans.
Satanic Temple to put ‘non-theistic’ monument in veterans’ park https://t.co/6KGpSoCivw pic.twitter.com/DIKG3B31W9
— Derek Gilbert (@derekgilbert) May 9, 2017
The monument is a black steel cube with an upturned helmet on top of it, the sides of the cube adorned with inverted pentagrams. The monument will also have a plaque on its side with a message honoring the Belle Paine veterans. The pentagram as a symbol was used in Christianity to represent Christ's five wounds. A five-pointed star is also used in Chinese tradition, the Baha’i Faith, the architecture of Latter-day Saints, and even Wicca.
Recently The Satanic Temple responded to Christian after school programs with one of their own, the “After School Satan” program.