Phone threat closes school that planned After School Satan Club meetings; superintendent considers review of club's approval

[essentialsaltes]

On the one hand, it must be a headache for the super to have to deal with dangerous bigots in the neighborhood. On the other, we don't want the squeaky wheel to get the grease by way of a bully's veto. Either all clubs get access, or no clubs get access.

We now know the Saucon Valley School District was closed Wednesday due to a threat related to the new After School Satan Club.

In a statement to parents, Superintendent Jaime Vlasaty said a threatening voicemail was left at the School District office at 4 p.m. Tuesday by a man who referenced the approval of After School Satan Club. In consultation with the Lower Saucon Police Department, she decided to close school Wednesday.

In light of the threat and the disruption the threat caused to the district, the superintendent says, she will be recommending a full review of the club's use of the district's facility.

 

[PloverWing]

Good grief. The religious freedom that protects the right to have a Satan Club is the same religious freedom that protects my right to have an Episcopalians Club. There was a time when American Christians understood this better. Grr.

 

[durangodawood]

Good grief. The religious freedom that protects the right to have a Satan Club is the same religious freedom that protects my right to have an Episcopalians Club. There was a time when American Christians understood this better. Grr.

Freedom is fine so long as you dont offend me.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Saucon Valley School District Superintendent rescinds approval for After School Satan Club, 2 days after threat closed schools​

Superintendent Jaime Vlasaty, in a message to the community,said she has decided to rescind approval she had given for the After School Satan Club to use the school district’s facilities.

After approval was given to The Satanic Temple and Reason Alliance’s application for facility use on February 16, 2023, the TSTRA failed to meet the District requirements outlined in School Board Policy 707, subsequently violating this policy, according to the superintendent.

As you can see from the message, it doesn't make clear what policy 707 is, or how the organization failed to meet it. Although I remain sympathetic to the school that has to deal with violent hotheads in the community, they may have earned a lawsuit unless that policy decision is valid.

 

[Tinker Grey]

This appears to be 707: BoardDocs® Policy: 707 Use of School Facilities

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Good grief. The religious freedom that protects the right to have a Satan Club is the same religious freedom that protects my right to have an Episcopalians Club. There was a time when American Christians understood this better. Grr.

With all due respect to sincerely freedom-minded Christians who have the healthy attitude that you do, I don't think the bolded part was necessarily as true as some people think it was.

I think that many people found it easy to give lip service to those principles when their ideology is the overwhelmingly predominant one, and no other groups are large enough to challenge them or "inconvenience them" in any way. However, when other groups get large enough that it actually means they have to share public resources and aren't given preferential treatment, the true colors shine through.

"I think everyone should have the religious freedoms and rights as I do" is something that's easy for some to espouse when there's only a handful of non-Christians in town, and every business and public facility was catering to the Christian preferences. When there's enough non-Christians that they can afford to chip in to rent the rec center or some other public accommodation for a gathering on the night the the Christians wanted to rent it and they're told "sorry, the other group booked it first, you're going to have a pick a different night", that's when the true colors come out and you know who actually meant it, and who was just saying that because there were previously so few that it didn't stop them from having preferential treatment.

 

[Nithavela]

Saucon Valley School District Superintendent rescinds approval for After School Satan Club, 2 days after threat closed schools​

Superintendent Jaime Vlasaty, in a message to the community,said she has decided to rescind approval she had given for the After School Satan Club to use the school district’s facilities.

After approval was given to The Satanic Temple and Reason Alliance’s application for facility use on February 16, 2023, the TSTRA failed to meet the District requirements outlined in School Board Policy 707, subsequently violating this policy, according to the superintendent.

As you can see from the message, it doesn't make clear what policy 707 is, or how the organization failed to meet it. Although I remain sympathetic to the school that has to deal with violent hotheads in the community, they may have earned a lawsuit unless that policy decision is valid.

Watch and learn, kids: sending anonymous death threats gets RESULTS!

 

[Sabertooth]

If my suspicions are correct, this would be a very shrewd hate-crime hoax to shut down the Christian after-school club.
Scholastic hate-crime hoaxes have been on the increase in the news.
Jussie Smollett sentenced to 150 days in jail for lying to police in hate crime hoax
Hate Crime Hoaxes No Joke for Colleges

 

[Nithavela]

If my suspicions are correct, this would be a very shrewd hate-crime hoax to shut down the Christian after-school club.

Then I'm looking forward to your petition to reinstate the satanic club, so that the plot is thwarted.

 

[Sabertooth]

Then I'm looking forward to your petition to reinstate the satanic club, so that the plot is thwarted.

I will not endorse them, but threatening them serves no Heavenly agenda, only a devilish one.
Without the supposed threat, that group would probably just languish. Some so-called Satanic advocates have turned out to be atheists who are just trying to make trouble.

US Satanists File Lawsuits Seeking Equal Rights With Christian Groups

Should the atheist group, the Satanic Temple, have its way, the Arkansas state capitol will become home to a winged goat idol, placed beside a monument to the Ten Commandments, while Minnesota will come into possession of a new landmark –...

sputniknews.com

State authorities, however, have fought to keep the Satanic Temple out of the suit, dubbing it a "notoriously-transparent" front for "trolling". The court filing also quoted the Satanic Temple's rival, the Church of Satan, which has fumed that the Temple's devotees tend to lack real religious beliefs
and instead give Satanism "a bad name".

 

[dzheremi]

Have things changed in public schools in recent years? I haven't been in middle school in about 30 years, but I remember that even later than that when I was in high school and friends of mine wanted to form a "Gay-Straight Alliance Club" (this was back in the 1990s when DOMA was still the law of the land and anti-LGBT discrimination was not the cause celebre it would subsequently become, so the rationale for such a club was a bit more obvious), they were told that it would not be approved without a sponsor from among the faculty who would be there during the meetings to ensure that the topics discussed were appropriate for the age group, and that everyone was behaving themselves in accordance with the standards of an event hosted on school grounds.

In other words, I don't think, based on that experience, that this argument of "Well, you let this other group happen on school grounds, so you have to let its ideological opposite happen as well, or else lawsuit!" would've necessarily held sway. To be fair, I don't recall any blatantly anti-LGBT afterschool group being proposed or indeed welcome on school grounds at that time or since (I did go to both elementary and high school in California, where we generally do not take kindly to people who do not take kindly to LGBT people), but my point is that my friends were given clear guidelines under which their proposed group would or would not be approved, and they didn't seem relative to there existing some other group who would need to be given equal access to avoid getting the school or district embroiled in a lawsuit. That reasoning seems incredibly cynical on the part of the After School Satanists. (Shocking, I know.)

All that said, how incredibly mentally and spiritually weak do you have to be to threaten violence against the school because of this? I don't like there being an After School Satanists or an After School 'Turn My Kids Into Little Jack Chick People' club on school grounds, but if the stated 'all or nothing' reasoning evident among the supporters of the After School Satanist club is what does indeed guide the school's approach to cases like this, then you'd think that all sides would recognize that and, y'know, not react like violent idiots. I'm pretty sure that does nothing but play into the sometimes sadly-warranted stereotype (as in this very case!) of American Christians being people who can dish it out but can't take it and/or don't know how to behave in a pluralistic society where not everyone loves what they do, and as far as I can tell the school probably just doesn't want to get sued or be involved to any deeper level in this controversy. Now, because of some idiot theocratic warrior who apparently thinks that God can't handle some trolls manipulating the very litigious social atmosphere of American society to make an incredibly tired point, the school has to add 'not getting blown up/shot at/beset by crazy fundamentalists' to its list of concerns! What a world. I'm glad I don't have children.

 

[essentialsaltes]

In other words, I don't think, based on that experience, that this argument of "Well, you let this other group happen on school grounds, so you have to let its ideological opposite happen as well, or else lawsuit!" would've necessarily held sway.

That is not an argument being made. It is is not that 'all' possible groups must be created, but that 'any' that applies (and meets the standards like you mention of having a faculty sponsor, etc.) should have equal access.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

That is not an argument being made. It is is not that 'all' possible groups must be created, but that 'any' that applies (and meets the standards like you mention of having a faculty sponsor, etc.) should have equal access.

I would concur that equal access is key and should outweigh other aspects/concerns of the conversation...

However, I often wonder if "antagonistic use of equal access rules" (by that, I mean, sorts of things that are done intentionally to needle the other side & "prove a point" and aren't being done out of a sincere interest in the purported subject matter) are going to lead to more incidents like this in the future that people will have to be on the lookout for.

For instance, The Satanic Temple (a group that doesn't even believe in a real Satan, they do it as a ironic/satirical attempt to highlight the hypocrisy of Christians) helping facilitate and middle school after-school club in a PA county that was 2:1 republican and 93% Christian seems like it was done in that somewhat "antagonistic" theme. Much like the "Draw Muhammed" events that right-wingers were holding.


Having said that, equal access is the rule (as it should be)... people just need to be prepared and can't pretend to be too shocked and appalled when "poking the bear" leads to some rather undesirable (but predictable) consequences.

 

[essentialsaltes]

For instance, The Satanic Temple ...

Certainly they are trolling to a great extent. But I think their heart is in the right place, exposing the current conservative push for 'restoring religious rights' for what it is.

 

[dzheremi]

That is not an argument being made. It is is not that 'all' possible groups must be created, but that 'any' that applies (and meets the standards like you mention of having a faculty sponsor, etc.) should have equal access.

That's a fair distinction, and thank you for pointing it out. I think the particular nature of the individual actors/groups involved in this specific case biased my reading of the situation, since in this case it really does seem like one group came out of the woodwork specifically to be the inverse of the other, rather than forming organically (as ThatRobGuy and indeed one of the people from the Satanic Temple quoted in the article has pointed out). I will openly admit to not liking the 'reactionary' nature of both sides in this case and many similar conflicts (because, as has also been pointed out, it seems this therefore dooms us all to more and more of these confrontations, with the possibility for escalation of violence in response to what can rightly be called provocations from both sides), but that shouldn't obscure the principle by which schools are making these decisions, which is as neutral as our country's practical secularism requires.

Basically, I just wish everyone would calm down -- especially the one (an assumed Evangelical, given the context) who has actually threatened violence against the school. That is absolutely reprehensible and unacceptable.

 

[PloverWing]

With all due respect to sincerely freedom-minded Christians who have the healthy attitude that you do, I don't think the bolded part was necessarily as true as some people think it was.

I have in mind a couple of strands of American religious history, some of which connect to my Baptist upbringing.

1) The Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty. Growing up, I knew them as the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs (they've had a name change since then). Back in the day, they opposed teacher-led prayers in the public schools, on the grounds that it was a form of establishment of religion. More recently, they have filed a brief in support of an employee who wanted to wear a hijab at work, a brief opposing Masterpiece Cakeshop's discriminatory policies, and briefs opposing the displays of religious images like a large cross or the Ten Commandments on state property. See About BJC for a longer list. I remember as a child having it explained to me by my Baptist parents why teacher-led prayer in the public schools is a bad idea.

2) The First Amendment itself, which grew out of Christians' experiences of violence between Christian sects in Europe and North America.

I think it helps if one belongs to a group that used to be persecuted by other Christians, and if that memory is still kept fresh. The church of my childhood still had a memory of a time when Baptists (and Quakers, and Catholics, and some other groups) were persecuted by established churches. Take that memory, and add a little "do unto others", and you get a strong desire for religious freedom -- for all, not just for my group.

I agree that this isn't the mindset of all American Christians, either now or earlier in history. We had genuine established churches in colonial times, and we have some pseudo-established churches now. It's easy to get comfortable with the privilege of being in the majority, and to forget to have empathy with those who are in the minority. That's simple human selfishness, with "God" written over top of it.

 

[Sabertooth]

Now, because of some idiot theocratic warrior who apparently thinks that God can't handle some trolls manipulating the very litigious social atmosphere of American society to make an incredibly tired point,...

(If that is who it really was...)

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Certainly they are trolling to a great extent. But I think their heart is in the right place, exposing the current conservative push for 'restoring religious rights' for what it is.

In certain instances, there's productive trolling or "virtuous trolling".

In other ways when it's purely antagonistic (and aimed at agitating other citizens rather than making partisan government entities have to rethink their position), it can backfire like this one that ended with bomb threats.

For instance, when the Satanic Temple pursued tax exempt status and made marriage equality a sacrament of their "faith", that would be what I would consider "virtuous trolling". It was pinpointed at particular policies and was creatively exploiting loopholes that policy makers were creating to selfishly support their own faith's goals, without ever thinking that someone else could take advantage of it.

And most importantly, the only blowback they were potentially stirring up was towards themselves and not using other people as a proxy.


This one feels more like a shallow (not as well thought-out) attempt at "let's see how many right-wingers we can agitate by having a Satan club" (at a Middle School no less)...which means if it does draw ire that manifests itself in the form of extremism, Lucien Graves (the head of the Satanic Temple) isn't going to feel that blowback, it'll be some poor kids who were there for an after-hours basketball practice while the club happens to be meeting.


Plus, a good "virtuous trolling" attempt has to be aimed at people, whom, the point isn't going to go right over their heads... otherwise you just made a bunch of people angry with no upside, and potentially put innocent people in danger for no good reason. In order for it to be productive, there has to be at least a reasonable chance that a percentage of the "marks" will "get the point".

 

[dzheremi]

(If that is who it really was...)

Do we have any grounds to believe it was by someone on the other side of this conflict? I have not seen any, but I am open to whatever can be found in any reliable source or update that has not been discussed already.

 

[ozso]

Much ado over a crank phone call.