Mad as hell: Satanic Temple holds religious reproductive rights protest in Utah

It wasn’t your parents’ protest. Around 200 supporters showed up to the Utah Capitol grounds, most dressed in black. Some wore cloaks and held up signs with messages like “Abort the patriarchy” and “My body, my temple,” while others made a statement donning horns and macabre masks. Around a bustling merch table that featured logo-emblazoned T-shirts and flags, plans were shared to hit up Licentia, the official afterparty, which was billed as a “salacious celebration of bodily autonomy, choice and freedom.”

This is how the Satanic Temple does demonstrations.

Members of the Salem, Massachusetts-based organisation, including some from chapters across the American West, congregated on Saturday with one unifying mission: protect religious abortion access for its members and sympathisers in the wake of restrictive legislation in Texas.

The proposed actions, the group argues, go against self-rule, one of the seven sacred tenets the nontheistic religious and human rights organisation lives by emcee Michelle Shortt, who leads the temple’s Arizona chapter.

“We reject any viewpoint that has no scientific basis,” Ms Shortt said. “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,” she continued, punctuating her statement with a hearty “Hail Satan!” that was hurled back by the crowd in unison. The ruckus was almost loud enough to drown out a rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner” sung by nearby anti-abortion protesters.

Invoking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Satanic Temple, which was recognised as a legitimate religion by the IRS in 2019, announced this month that it would challenge Texas’ Senate Bill 8 — aka the “heart beat law” — which bans abortions around the six week mark, when a foetal heartbeat can be detected. Calling the law “overly restrictive and likely unconstitutional,” the group says that abortion is an inalienable right of its sympathisers.

“We believe that bodily autonomy is one of our deeply held religious beliefs, and anybody who is a member — or believes the same as we do — should have access via religious freedom to safe and effective affordable healthcare,” temple spokesperson Thomasin Rite told The Independent.

Although the rally’s timing seems fortuitous, she said it was originally scheduled for 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic. Utah was chosen as a location after TST members overwhelmingly labeled it a “religious right fundraiser.” Ms Rite said the state has the distinction of having “one of the most egregious abortion laws and restrictions” in the country.

Those in Utah who seek abortions must receive informed consent materials, attend in-person counselling and wait 72-hours upon completion before undergoing the procedure. The state also passed legislation last year dictating that health care facilities must provide foetal remains for burial or cremation, and over the summer, filed a “friend of the court” brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade.

The weekend gathering managed to draw a few dozen counter protesters, who sported signs of their own with slogans like “Every life matters” and “Not today Satan,” and waved yellow flags displaying the word “Life” in bold letters.

“Utah is a life-affirming state,” Pro-Life Utah executive director Deanna Holland said in a news release ahead of the event. “We believe that love, kindness and supporting women in crisis pregnancies, while protecting unborn life, is the way to move society forward.”

In a statement of its own, counterprotest co-organisers Utah Patriots said abortion “is evil and a repulsive act of violence to the unborn and those that cannot defend themselves.” The collective’s flyer for the event featured an image of former President Donald Trump carrying a baby cradled in the American flag.

Ms Rite was unfazed by the two groups’ presence. “I really don’t have a message [for] them, honestly,” she said. “They have the absolute right to believe exactly what they believe. Our only issue is when that belief turns into legislation that controls everybody else regardless of their own opinion.”

Staging headline-grabbing events is in the temple’s blood. In 2013, it crowdsourced a nearly nine-foot bronze statue of Baphomet — a throned, winged, sexually ambiguous, half-goat half-human deity — meant to counter a privately funded Ten Commandments monument that called the Oklahoma statehouse home. Shortly before the horned statue’s trek, the state’s Supreme Court decided that religious displays on public property violated the Constitution and removed the ministerial marble monolith.

In 2016, it launched After School Satan in response to Evangelical Christian-backed Good News Clubs. The after-school programme for elementary students, the temple said, aimed to “promote self-directed education by supporting the intellectual and creative interests of students.”

When the Westboro Baptist Church announced it intended to picket funeral services for the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Satanic Temple held a “pink mass” over the grave of Catherine Johnston, Westboro founder Fred Phelps’ mother. The ritual consisted of two gay couples kissing while an encantation was performed to convert the deceased “gay forever.”

Countering Christian nativity displays on public grounds, temple members have created their own displays, including a diorama depicting a fallen angel headed toward hell in the Florida rotunda and Michigan’s jolly “yule goat.”

The group is also no stranger to homegrown controversies. In 2018, they were criticised for hiring attorney Marc Randazza following Twitter’s decision to temporarily ban and not award blue-check status to TST co-founder Lucien Greaves. Mr Randazza had a previous client catalogue that included the founder of neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer, and Infowars’ Alex Jones. As a result, the LA chapter disaffiliated.

Around the same time, former New York City temple co-chapter head Emma Story renounced via a Medium post calling out Mr Randazza’s problematic client roster and the temple’s lack of diversity within its ranks.

“[H]ow can we expect people from vulnerable minority groups to believe a word we say when we’re busy allying ourselves with a man who spends his time working for and befriending literal Neo-Nazis?” Ms Story wrote. “Regardless of the original reasons for TST’s diversity problem, working with someone like Randazza can only make it worse.”

Rows and all, the group’s rallying cry around reproductive rights was enough to make those in attendance at the Salt Lake City rally pledge allegiance.

Satanic Temple religious reproductive rights rally. Salt Lake City, Utah

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Noelia Citialin remembers the exact moment she found out she was pregnant. She was 17 and mortified at the response she’d get from her conservative parents, who she called abusive.

“I was really scared and I knew that I couldn’t talk to my parents. That I had to make a difficult choice out of fear,” Ms Citialin, told the audience. “It wasn’t a callous choice, however. I knew that it was the right decision because I also knew that I would continue the cycle of violence in my family.”

Recognising she’d be an “awful teen mother,” Ms Citialin, now a registered nurse, says she has no regrets and that terminating the pregnancy was a “relief.”

Through Planned Parenthood she says she picked up adequate family planning tools. “Because of what they provided for me, I felt that I should give back to my community, so I did.”

Ms Citialin decided to start her nursing career at Planned Parenthood, and has been with the organisation for 21 years.

She said she’s dealt with her share of “intrusive” and “aggressive“ picketers at her work, and that on occasions she’s been followed home “just for standing up for other people’s rights and providing a service that we consider a terrible necessity.”

Ash Schade was there to “stand against the latest development in the Christian dominionist movement’s ongoing culture war,” and to share his unique story.

“You see, there’s a deeply unsung victim of the religious right’s attack on abortion restrictions. This, specifically, is transgender people,” Mr Schade, who was assigned female at birth, said.

He spoke about the “numerous restrictions” transgender individuals face, including hormone replacement therapy, the ability to legally change their names, confirmation surgery, employment restrictions, “and many times, over our reproductive autonomy.”

Some states like his native Kentucky, Mr Schade said, have pushed for members of the transgender community to be sterilised before receiving an amended birth certificate.

“It’s not just about the right to choose an abortion,” he said. “It’s about the right to choose one’s fertility without having your man- or womanhood under attack as well.”

In February of 2020, Mr Schade was surprised to find out he was pregnant. “I was depressed, on Grindr and thought I was sterile,” he said. He sought care at a Catholic hospital, where he says medical staff “demanded” he terminate the pregnancy.

“Everything about me was under question: my genitals, my competency, you name it,” he recalled. He then was referred to a women’s clinic, where he feared he’d be met by “screaming Christians.”

He went against the advice.

“While everybody invalidated my manhood and my masculinity, while practically yelling at me to terminate regardless of my personal decision, I decided to keep her,” he said, “That choice was mine and mine alone.”

For the nine months that followed, Mr Schade dealt with stares, “angry old ladies,” doctors who were hesitant to treat him, and at least one nurse who said it was time to rethink his gender identity, following up with a lone piece of unsolicited advice: “Think of the children.”

He says he was also slut-shamed for not knowing who the father was, and his unborn child was called a “bastard and an abomination” by “Evangelicals who claimed to be anti-choice ... but this time they didn’t care.”

Citing the Satanic Temple’s seven fundamental tenets, he told the cheering crowd that “there is no religious leader, no politician, no person in authority that has the right to tell me what I do with my body as a trans man,” and that his daughter is a constant reminder of that realisation.

“My kid is Grindr’s gift to man,” he joked.