The Alarming LGBTQ - Satanic Temple Connection
As many as half of American Satanists self-identify as LGBTQ+
The Satanic Temple has become the fastest-growing “religious” organization in the world. Since its formal founding in 2012, the Satanic Temple has grown exponentially from a handful of members to chapters across the US and internationally, with chapters in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Some estimate its membership is now approaching one million... fueled by a growing number of young gays, lesbians, and transgenders. (Notice the children in the picture above?)
Satanism is becoming so popular in America that a new documentary premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival in Utah entitled “Hail, Satan”. The film attempted to portray Temple members as misunderstood people by aligning their message with the message of the Progressive Left.
The Satanic Temple is a politically active group that opposes any laws that interfere with personal freedom. The group regards the “sacredness” of the body as a key doctrine. It views all restrictions on abortion, (including mandatory waiting periods), as an infringement on the rights of Satanists to practice their religion. (The abortion battle is not over!)
When most people think of worshipping the devil, they think of dark rituals, hooded cloaks, pentagrams, animal sacrifices, and witchcraft… (and all of that is very real), but pure Satanism is much simpler than that. Satanism’s essence is that the highest authority is not God, but self. Followers are urged to recognize that they are their own gods and goddesses, subject only to their own final authority... not God’s. Satanists see the Devil as a positive symbol of pride, individualism, and enlightenment and as a symbol of defiance of the hypocrisy displayed by Judeo-Christian religions.
The precursor to the Satanic Temple was the old Church of Satan, founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey, who was the church's High Priest until he died in 1997. LaVey criticized Christianity for what he saw as its suppression of humanity's natural instincts. Its scripture was based on occultist Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law, which celebrates “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law". It also contains the Law of Thelema, which mandates that each person follow their “true will” to attain fulfillment and freedom from the restriction of their nature.
But that was nothing new… One of the earliest mentions of Thelemic philosophy occurred in 1532. The essential nature of the old Law of Thelema is that of love. Under it, each individual “unites with his or her true self in love, and when so empowered, the entire universe of conscious beings unites with every other being in love”. That sounds a lot like Progressive Christianity’s, “God is love” mantra, which of course, is not Christianity at all.
At the same time, there is a dark spiritual component to homosexuality. As many as half of American Satanists self-identify as LGBTQ+. This is confirmed by Lucien Grieves, head of the Satanic Temple of the United States, more than 50% of the Satan-worshippers in their organization are homosexuals or gender-confused. Grieves once told Attitude magazine, “From the start, when one of our early actions was the Pink Mass, (a ceremony designed to 'make the deceased gay in the after-life’), a lot of LGBTQ+ people are looking for another community that didn’t see them as defined by their sexual orientation.”
One LGBTQ+ group later explained the Greaves interview this way, “A commitment to Satan is not required to join the Satanic Temple, although a commitment to trolling anti-LGBTQ+ evangelicals is desirable.”
That explains a lot...
“But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron...” (1st Timothy 4:1-2)