It's a tempest in a teapot if I've ever seen one. Satanism as a religion probably has very few followers, though of course it's the symbolic nature of even having the statue in the first place that really matters to people. In which case, good for them, I suppose? I don't know what I'm supposed to feel here. It looks like something a teenager would've drawn on one of his school folders after listening to too much heavy metal.
I just can't get too riled up over symbolism that is transparently obvious and meant to shock religious sensibilities that are already degraded in much more real ways around the world. Try something like this in Saudi Arabia, where they actually behead people for witchcraft and the like. Then I'll be impressed. In an American context, it is yet more self-consciously "edgy" brats acting out and wasting money to throw a rave. The only people who react with hysteria (which is just what this group wants) are part of the rapidly-dwindling conservative Evangelical/Catholic/Mainline population who won't even matter in another twenty years...but you don't see them reacting with alarm about that, because it's way easier to go after obvious things like this. Go figure. The two groups (the "Satanists" and the cream puffs...er...American Christians) deserve one another, as one is a natural reaction to the rise and inevitable fall of the other. Ho hum. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
