Once again Satan seems to be on a winning streak in our court system.  It seems that no one can (legally) say “no” to having an “After School Satan Club” in their place of child learning.  Or at least not if they’re one of the nearly 5000 schools that already have a Good News Bible Club after school program.

In 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court found in favor (6-3) of an after school evangelical program in a case called the Good News Club v. Milford Central School.  The majority of the Court found that allowing Good News Clubs to run after-school programs and “speak on school ground would ensure, not threaten, neutrality toward religion.”

Between 2001 and 2015 the number of Good News Clubs grew from 536 to 4,779, and the number of participating students grew from 16,805 to 183,914.

Now the Satanic Temple (with its main offices not coincidentally in Salem, Massachusetts) is pushing for the establishment of After School Satan Clubs in schools which already have Good News Clubs.  The Satanic Temple says that the Good News decision opened the (mystical) door for them.  The Satanic T, through spokespersons with boy-next-door names like Lucien Greaves and Tarkus Claypool, says that it wants to bring diversity to the religious opinions which kids are exposed to in (and after) school.  Supposedly the After School Satan Clubs will NOT be influencing tots to worship the Dark Lord himself through ritual sacrifices and blasphemies (a likely story…) It should be noted that some of the merch on the After School Satan website, including t-shirts and the Satanic Children’s Big Book of Activies, is quite cute: click here.

The story which just made headlines this weekend is that a lawyer hired by the Mount Vernon school district in Washington state has advised “I think that if the school district denied that application, you would face costly litigation that would be distracting from your mission… And would ultimately be unsuccessful.”  Putting aside how and why this legal advice became public, presumably waiving attorney-client privilege, one can easily imagine why a lawyer would give this advice (even without being a Satan-worshipper himself). [For more insight into the intersection of lawyers and Satan, besides reading MURDERING LAWYERS, listen to the heavy metal classic “Satan is a Lawyer“.]

For some reason, one of the news outlets which has latched onto this story is RT (Russia Today), which is currently featuring this story on its “news” site, under its “America” tab.  It is difficult to figure out what position the website is taking, and the comments are mixed.  Note that one comment predicts: “Human sacrifice is next: allow it or face costly lawsuits” and it looks like a comment thereto says “They already have that in 3,500 public schools according to the article” (this MAY be a misinterpretation of the article).  So this seems to be yet another field in which Russia is lagging far behind the U.S.