Ep.44: First They Came for the Satanists - Florida's Exclusionary Tactics

# Satanists Nextdoor
# Ep.44: First They Came for the Satanists - Florida's Exclusionary Tactics

[Lilin Lavin]
Welcome, dear listeners, to Satanist Next Door. We're your hosts, Lilin Lavin and Tommy Lavin. Whether you're an open-minded curious onlooker or a fellow Satanist seeking camaraderie, our goal is to share our personal experiences and delve into the intricate tapestry of Satanism in our daily lives, occasionally inviting other guests to share their unique perspectives, leaving no pentagram unturned.

We'll explore how our beliefs shape our views on society, dive into struggles and triumphs we've encountered, and reveal the humanity that unites us all. So grab your favorite chalice and join us on this captivating journey. Satanist Next Door is ready to peel back the curtain and offer you a glimpse into our world, one captivating episode at a time.

[Tommy Lavin]
Hello and welcome to another episode of Satanist Next Door. This week we thought we'd piggyback a little bit on some of the things going on with Florida and these chaplain programs and the legal presentation that Lucian did this week. Again, we talked about this a little while ago when it was happening here in Texas and said, wait and see, you'll see this in other states.

And now we have Florida, which Florida kind of in the typical Florida versus Texas sort of thing that they've had going on for a while, decided to one up Texas in the way that DeSantis says, we're going to have chaplains and Satanist cannot be chaplains.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, yeah, on the one hand, he said that you can't exclude religion from school and then said, except, you know, Satanism. Because he contends that it's not actually a religion. And we know that it's been established multiple times now outside of just the IRS standard.

We know that we're a religious organization. We know that we have deeply held religious beliefs. And we've been recognized as such.

[Tommy Lavin]
We have been and whether he likes it or not, the US government has recognized us as a religion.

[Lilin Lavin]
So, you know, and just to make it very clear, the chaplaincy programs nationwide, globally, actually, they involve other religious beliefs. There are, believe it or not, Buddhist chaplains, there are atheistic chaplains, there are chaplains of all stripes that exist because of the fact that the world is created very pluralistic people. And if you want to have an impact across the board, then it's best to have people that are diverse.

[Tommy Lavin]
Wait, no, no, no, everybody has to be Christian. I mean, that's, that's the rule, right? I mean, yes, the United States has freedom of religion, but it's really freedom for Christians to push their religion.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yes. Well, the United States has an establishment clause. And everyone says, but the founders would never want this.

What want the separation of church and state that they called out the first very first thing that they addressed on purpose?

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, that's like the number one issue. And normally, when you write a list of things, and you're you're writing out, you know, procedures or anything like that, number one tends to be the most important. It's like the first thing on their mind saying, we need to get this fucking thing in there first, because above everything else, this is the most important thing.

Yeah. And what we're finding is Christian nationalists are taking that in conveniently ignoring it or throwing it away or saying stuff like, well, they meant freedom of Christian religions, not not any other religion, which I don't see the word Christian in there anywhere.

[Lilin Lavin]
And I find it very hard to believe that the founding fathers who weren't the best people in reality, retrospectively, yes, but they did a lot to do try and create a place where people can flourish. So, you know, when you look at it on the face of it, they weren't Christians in the way that people are now most of them weren't actually Christians, many of them were deists. And there's many, you know, shades of that belief system there.

So when they did this, they understood they left a monarchy where there was religious extremism, where they didn't have the right to their own beliefs. And they said, you know, in order to have a vibrant, flourishing society, we probably should ensure that no one religion can take hold.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And like you said, they even at that time, the Christianity or, you know, some of their other beliefs were this Christian nationalism that is sweeping through our country like a virus is a set of extremists. This is, you know, the the Taliban, the ISIS of Christianity, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
And for Christian parents, they should be incredibly concerned because this is really extremism that's being brought into their spaces. Now, Florida, I think, in a way, was a smarter way to go about it, because it has to be requested by the parents. Now, I see that as negative and positive.

I see it as a negative. If you are dealing with a child that is already having problems at home, maybe someone that is struggling with their identity, sexuality, and the parents find this to be a way to kind of reinforce what they're doing at home in the school environment. And I think that's very dangerous.

I think it's actually a negative, and it will create no safe spaces for kids. I grew up in a very abusive home. And one of my safety places was school.

It was a place where I wasn't being abused psychologically, physically, it was a place where I could learn and kind of escape the very negative environment of my home, and it was a safe space for me. And so what they're doing is they're invading that safety, and they're imposing what could be abusive beliefs on people that are trying very hard to just delegate, like, where can I be safe? What are my places to go?

And kids don't have a lot of escape from places, and school traditionally has been one of those places.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, yeah. And, you know, again, schools, public schools, let me rephrase, public schools are supposed to be secular. If you want your child to get a religious education, there are plenty, and I mean plenty, of religious private schools.

Now, if those schools are too expensive, that is a problem with that church. So you, as a member of their flock, should go and talk to the head shepherd at that church and say, hey, I thought our religion was supposed to allow people to come in and not create wealth for you. So if you have an issue with the private school being too expensive, then that's an issue between you and the church.

But that doesn't mean, hey, I can't afford to put my kid into private religious school, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to cram Christianity down the throats of everybody else in public school, which is supposed to be secular, and sure, we'll kind of make it sound maybe like we'll allow other chaplains in. But if you look at how these laws are being put in, and if you listen to the board meetings, I mean, we went to a board meeting, Lillen spoke at a board meeting. And if you listen to the manipulative way that they're writing these things, sure, on the outside, it sounds like, oh, yeah, we can have all kinds of chaplains.

But then they throw all sorts of rules and guidelines and things like that on top of it, that most people will not meet.

[Lilin Lavin]
And... But if you listen to them, because that's public, you can go and look at the entire board meeting. When they're speaking, they said, well, we're not trying to evangelize.

We're not trying to proselytize. And yet, they go on to them bringing Jesus. So that's proselytization.

You can have religious beliefs, and you can be a faith leader that goes to speak to people. And you can do that without directly bringing up a specific faith. It's a crazy concept, I know.

But you can go somewhere, and you can actually be there for people in a capacity that's similar to, you know, guidance, what's provided by some counselors. It's a very small portion of what a counselor does. But you could be, you know, there as a support person.

[Tommy Lavin]
But you can't if you're an extremist. You can't. That's the problem.

The people pushing this are extremists. They cannot separate themselves and their message from their religion. And if you've spent 30 seconds around one of these extreme Christian nationalists, you know that anything happening to you is your fault because of the distance between you and God.

So imagine a child who's being abused in any way, going to some chaplain there, who is really just a religious extremist, and trying to talk to them in the same way that they would a counselor, who a counselor has a duty to report. Chaplains don't. They've got this little loophole in the law.

[Lilin Lavin]
Wait, and that's not every state. But yeah, Florida is one of them. Texas, I believe, also has it.

But the thing is, they say, well, if it's given to them as a type of confession, or trying to work out an issue, which is what the capacity would be, then they have the discretion to decide whether or not something that is reportable. A therapist, a counselor, a teacher, a doctor, a nurse, all of the specific people that typically deal with these things, they are mandatory reporters. A chaplain, a priest, these people are not mandatory reporters.

Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And what I was saying was, if they go to that person and say, hey, this is happening to me, or I'm feeling this, you know, there's going to be some of them that will be like, well, Jimmy, that's because of the distance between you and God. And if you just pray harder, or, well, God is just testing you, and a bunch of that bullshit, where they then put the blame back onto the victim. It's the victim's fault.

And we see this all the time. There are countless youth group leaders, ministers, pastors, every single week, arrested for SA. And don't tell me nobody else in that fucking church knew what the hell was going on.

They had an example where the church leaders saw the fucking text messages between this youth group leader and a 15-year-old girl, and still allowed him to take her on an overnight excursion, because it was a religious thing. And oh, you know, I guess Bob really won't do that in a religion. Bullshit.

You know, so this is where this gets so fucking dangerous. And this was always my issue with, you know, until TST came along, is that satanists would always stay quiet about this. It's not our place.

You know, we don't get involved in government sort of shit. No, there is a time to get fucking involved when your religion is specifically called out and excluded, which is against the Constitution. That's a time to kind of get out of the corner, raise your hand and say, excuse me, but no, you can't do that.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, and there were notably individuals that did come out and do just that. Whatever COS and some of those individuals might try to say, LeVay was actually one of the people that did to a degree do that. And then other individuals definitely more so.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, I would say yes and no. Going on Oprah and Geraldo is not counting as saying no, there is a legal issue here. And we're going to pass it, you know, we're going to challenge you in court.

Right.

[Lilin Lavin]
And that was where I think a lot of it fell flat for me. The issue being that in the time when COS was in its heyday, you know, satanic ritual abuse and things like that were very prevalent. And instead of counteracting what was going on.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, the charge or the made up.

[Lilin Lavin]
The made up term, the whole situation, which was really, it was a moral panic. So the whole claim of ritual. Claim, that's the word I was looking for.

The claim that was prevalent at the time was that this was a thing that was happening. And realistically, we know when you look historically, they've been other things, right? It's been people that were either abused and trying to protect themselves with these very grandiose stories.

It was therapists or counselors that were manipulating people because they worked with people. It was ex-wives or ex-partners, you know, that were manipulating the kids to say certain things because it fit a narrative that was very popular at the time. And we see this time and again, you go back to today where you've got the satanic pizza parlor crap.

So, you know, this is not new. The problem is before people didn't stand up and say, we are religion, we have a right to the space, we are real, relevant, and, you know, we have a say. And that's necessary because you're being pulled into the sphere anyway.

And if you just sit idly by and just let people run amok with it, then what have you done?

[Tommy Lavin]
And even let's just say, okay, wipe the slate fucking clean, the satanic panic, all that shit. Okay, let's just say that was all valid, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Let's go nowadays.

Well, right now, at this very moment, we have religion being forced into schools through a chaplain program. In one of those states, we have a governor that specifically said- No satanists. No satanists.

So, basically saying you are not a legitimate religion. What, who else is speaking up?

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, nobody. You know, you do get people that are very, very happy to see a lot of the atheist groups. They definitely are standing up and saying, no, you know, we've got too many groups out there that are pushing this.

We've got the Federalist Society. We've got so many different groups that are out there actively pushing this on people and pushing this into schools and demanding religion be returned to education where it absolutely doesn't belong. We have a huge Christian school going up right up the road.

So, there is no shortage of religious education. If that's what you want, do it. There's no reason in a lot of states you can't homeschool.

If you want your kids to have religious education, go ahead. I think it's a disservice because if you're going to teach about religion, teach about all religions. Give them the opportunity to decide what makes sense for them.

And if you do believe that your faith is the superior, best one, reasonable one, the one that's natural and makes the most sense, obviously, they'll gravitate to it. And if they don't, well, it's not.

[Tommy Lavin]
And in Texas, really, there is no excuse. If you are truly one of these people that believes public school is injecting horrible, they're poisoning my child, blah, blah, blah. If you want to homeschool in Texas, you can homeschool in Texas and you can literally make up your own curriculum of the Bible.

And in Texas, homeschooling is treated as private school. So the degree that you hand your child for literally just teaching them the Bible and nothing else, they don't even know how to fucking count, you know, is comparable to a private school. It's not a GED, it's a private school.

[Lilin Lavin]
That's an issue. If the only education you get in math is from numbers, that does not count. That's when you get two Corinthians.

But, you know, it's totally within your rights if you believe that is the route that you want to take as a parent. I'm going to disagree because it's just, like I said, a disservice to narrowly define the world that your kid gets to experience because then when they go out into the world, it's a very frightening experience. It's confusing.

You're encountering a lot of things. And if you've been taught the world is your enemy, well, the world is a very scary place indeed.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, but it is their right. It is their right. As much as we can disagree with it and say it's morally probably wrong, it is their right.

So they already have the right to teach their children a religious education.

[Lilin Lavin]
And so that's why I'm so furious about this being pushed into public schools because they're saying we as secular parents don't have the right to a secular place for our kids that religion should be injected on our kids. And, you know, regardless of how we feel about it, although their kids should not be exposed to things that they don't agree with. So it's this, like, very hypocritical, very, unfortunately, very expected mentality that has just become very normalized.

Like I said, the founding fathers themselves were not Christians, and they certainly weren't Christian nationalists. Some of them were Christian with a very different type of Christian, but many of them were not.

[Tommy Lavin]
And they knew how to write. They knew words, you know, they actually understood words. So if they wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, if they wanted freedom of Christian religion only, they would have written the word Christian in there.

They definitely knew how to write. So because they didn't write Christian in there, we can make a logical and educational deduction that that's not what they meant. So stop injecting your religious and the beliefs that you wish they would have done into, quote unquote, reality, because it's not reality.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, and I definitely implore people that are curious, look up theistic rationalism, because the majority of the founders were actually theistic rationalists. And that pulled in a lot of different things. So there was the mention of God or a deity often, but it did not mean the type of thing that we now understand to be connected with God or a deity.

So at that time, and we're talking about Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Wilson, Morris, Madison, Hamilton, most of these people were really rationalist. And they had a very specific idea that the morality should benefit the public as a whole, and be really flexible to the needs of the many over the needs of the few, so that we were ensuring that, again, the thriving, you know, populace.

[Tommy Lavin]
So and the other thing that, yeah, as we were prepping for this, Lillian was pulling up a bunch of pages and stuff like that. And she pulled up one of the pages that that showed a map and the map showed the states that I believe these are the states that these bills have been introduced, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
And introduced or actually passed. So there weren't two that have passed as of current were Texas and Florida. Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Texas and Florida, they both have very, like varying degrees of how it's going to work. But at this point, for both, it seems that the school districts themselves have to choose to adopt it. Florida, I'm a little less aware of all of it, because I haven't had a chance to read through all of the bill and take it apart.

Because these bills are worded very carefully, and to make it harder to digest harder to understand and easier to manipulate on the back end. But for Texas, it definitely had to be adopted. The majority of large districts in the state of Texas decided not to.

Other districts, as you saw with where we were, when I spoke for the board, they were playing with the idea and did in fact pass a type of acceptance. But there are certain qualifications they're still ironing out. So it hasn't technically been adopted.

The portion that was adopted was the adoption to move forward. So we'll see how that shapes up.

[Tommy Lavin]
And we knew when Texas went, I think I even said this on our podcast about that, just wait, Florida will be next. Because between Abbott and DeSantis, they have this ongoing pissing contest to see, oh, you did that? Okay, well, I'm going to do that too.

But I'm going to one up you and then DeSantis does something and then Abbott.

[Lilin Lavin]
I don't even think it's a pissing contest. If I'm honest, I think it's two of the states that are really testing grounds for, you know, dictatorship or theocracy or, you know, and I really think that they are pushing these things because they have large populace, and they have high GDPR. They have a lot of different things that factor into how they influence the country.

And again, the educational curriculum that the majority of the United States uses comes out of Texas. So when you have a strong religious push in this state, it affects the country as a whole.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right? Yeah. And when I said pissing contest, I didn't mean it as in they hate each other.

[Lilin Lavin]
Oh, no, I mean, I actually do.

[Tommy Lavin]
But yeah, I mean, a pissing contest, as in one of them will try something that is just, you know, just really extreme. And that'll trigger the other one to be like, oh, that means we can do this. But hey, let's see if we can make it a little bit more extreme.

And this is sort of the back and forth. And you see it with immigration, you know, starting to ship immigrants to other states, and DeSantis jumps on board and does the same thing, you know, so you see it with a lot of things that one of the states will do something that's, that's just completely either immoral, or, you know, again, extremely, that really just pushes the bounds of the Constitution.

[Lilin Lavin]
And it feels to me like that's what they're discontinuing to do. Yes. How far can we push it until it breaks?

Yeah. And that's what really concerns me. But when you look again, Texas and Florida were the two that passed it.

They have been legislation introduced in Utah, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, and then it looks like Maryland, and possibly Delaware. And I'll have to look into those they've introduced quite a few. And, you know, again, I don't necessarily have an issue with chaplaincy, per se.

The problem is the type of chaplaincy is very, very, very narrow. And then I believe that there's, there's an individual that's really pushing a lot of this.

[Tommy Lavin]
As far as the program that we've seen, unfortunately, this is the one we were sitting right behind, we were actually just wound up sitting behind just happened chance to sit behind.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, his name is Rocky, Rocky Malloy. And honestly, I had no idea who he was when we first got there. He definitely had like a not like, I don't know, his vibe was just, oh, yeah, he had that, that piss.

[Tommy Lavin]
I mean, you could just tell he was pissed.

[Lilin Lavin]
I knew he was there for religious representation, because he had a little white background red cross pin a lot of them have.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, they were all wearing that same pin there. You could tell the ones that were from that group, the ones that were shipped in because they weren't even from that district. They had no kids in that district.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, no, they came in from out of state just to do this. And you know, I stood in front of that group of people, and they were not amused. I believe one of the guys on there, if I'm correct, was actually involved in January 6.

So you had an insurrectionist actually sitting on this board, which to me is just why is that even a thing? But you know, he went up, and he had brought many people to speak on this. And they really referenced heavily the prison program that they have, which I feel is heavily manipulated, even the numbers that come out of that a lot of these people, there's no real statistics on the rate of recidivism, recidivism.

[Tommy Lavin]
But are we really comparing our children to prisoners?

[Lilin Lavin]
Think about the education system.

[Tommy Lavin]
I mean, in a way in a prison, so we're gonna we're gonna cram this down our children's throats.

[Lilin Lavin]
Disingenuously also associated suicide rates. So rates of unaliving were brought up. And the fact that this is a prevalent problem for kids, and it is, but you look at what they're living through, and it makes a lot of sense.

They say it's, you know, the destruction of family, family values, and blah, blah, blah, being ostracized. But really, I mean, a lot of it is people are dealing with a very strong, I mean, you can call it what it is, it's a societal, like moral war that's happening right now. You've got kids that are doing drills for, you know, shooting drills, shooting drills, where they're constantly under the threat of if I go to school today, you know, do I go home?

And they've got a really broken education system that really heavily pushes test answer, you know, so that they get good grades, they're not learning like they traditionally were.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, yeah, and you have representatives, like in Oklahoma, that said, you know, basically, they don't even want trans kids in there. And if something bad happens to him, good riddance. I mean, you know, that was a that was a state representative, you know, that just fucking government telling you, you shouldn't exist.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah, which we all know that that's crap. Let me be very clear. Religion, even my religion is a choice.

You choose at some point in your life to be involved with religion, what religion you want to be involved with or no religion at all, your your gender, maybe that's, you know, you're born into biologically, an assigned gender, but that that body and those genitalia are not defining of who you as a person are. So a lot of us understand neurologically, physiologically, there's so many different pieces to it, they kind of make up who and how we identify as we grow. During teenage years, it's very, very common to just have that whole thing be in question, you're trying to figure it out, very normal.

And some people, they just are not in line with what society deems, quote, unquote, normal. So these people are then ostracized. So that leads to depression, that leads to, you know, personal issues and abuse, right?

And they can't even do any like societal transitioning anymore. Because now you have people saying, well, if you do any of that, we've got some states putting in laws that want to actually make it a sexual offense, and say that if teachers acknowledge a child by a different pronoun, that they are essentially a class E sex offender, and would have to register potentially have fines and possible jail time, and I would assume that their teaching career would most likely be affected or gone.

Yeah, that would be gone at that point. You know, you have states like and I believe that was Mississippi. I may be wrong, I'll have to check.

But the point is other states are doing this very same thing. And again, you see it come up where well, the sports and the bathrooms and look at the population. Like, if we do it scientifically, the one per 100,000, if you look at it per capita, that it doesn't even make up a fraction by state by any state, it doesn't, it makes up the smallest, smallest fraction.

So when you look at it in schools, you're just being completely intellectually disingenuous. These individuals are just trying to participate like anybody else. And up until a certain point, especially in grade school, you're there's no difference.

There's really no difference. There's no reason why they can't participate equally, literally no difference. And then they've got things like chess clubs, like, you know, what is the difference there?

Exactly. I mean, come on.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, we're getting a little off topic.

[Lilin Lavin]
But this is where but religion, as seen by Christian nationalists, these bills, the chaplain bill, the things against transgender individuals, the care bills, and where we've got teachers, book bands, it all comes back to the same thing.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, everything boils down. I mean, even throw in abortion, IVF, birth control, all that all boils down to the same thing.

[Lilin Lavin]
Look at and the discipline issues where we've got schools that are literally using legislators using religion in order to abuse the very same kids they claim to want to help. So it doesn't make sense to me.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. So and rewind all the way back to when I said we pulled up that map. The thing that I found ironic was you look at the map, where either these bills, the anti satanic bills, the the, as you said, you know, the anti anti trans, all of these sort of religious based bills are and you look at the states, and then pull up the map of the Confederacy.

And it is scary how much they overlay. Mm hmm. You know, time and time again, yeah, time and time again, they pretty much over like, yes, now we're bringing in a bit of the Midwest and Utah, which during the Civil War, you know, they weren't even really, you know, and Utah's its own sort of thing.

Because we all know, Utah's this, you know, a different type of state, you know, so it is scary when you look at that. And you think, huh, we're like, voluntarily going back to this.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, there's definitely legislators that have outright and I don't know which one I don't know which state right now off the top of my head. But I did hear it firsthand, where the legislators stood up and said that they never lost. The Confederacy was was never it never ended.

And I'm like, well, what what world do you live in? That's a very magic bubble you have there. But it all comes back to these people are fighting against a huge shift in the way society functions thinks and exists.

[Tommy Lavin]
Well, and I think Florida really showed where DeSantis had to sort of one up and open his mouth and you know, sort of say, well, not sort of say say that Satanists would not be allowed in this, again, taking the Constitution, ripping it up, throwing it away. And then Lucien challenging him to a debate. Yeah, which I would love to see even Fox News, you know, push across what is DeSantis do the typical DeSantis thing?

He ignores it. He stays quiet. He doesn't debate.

He knows he can't win that debate. He knows all he's doing is pandering to his base of this 25% of voters, which again, doesn't make sense because in no situation anywhere at all, can 25% of the people get you anything? I mean, you don't win with 25%.

[Lilin Lavin]
You know what, though, but I but I do appreciate it, because I think in the long run, it would be worthwhile for Satanists to explore a chaplaincy program. And I think that it benefits us because a chaplaincy program, honestly, is an interfaith program. Anyone that enters into that, as a chaplain, myself included, I would love to be part of that.

It's something I'm actually actively pursuing. At this point, it's just harder when you stand outside the traditional faith based groups. But I have no problem being a support system for someone that's Christian or Buddhist or Baha'i or, you know, whatever your particular beliefs might be, because your job as a chaplain is to be there for people.

[Tommy Lavin]
But you're not a radical extremist. So you can compartmentalize your religion to just that, that's your religion, and this person has a different religion, and that's okay. And the problem is the people that are pushing these through, the initial chaplains, the ones that they're writing these bills, can't do that.

They- Well, they can, but they choose not to. Well, no, but fundamentally, their religion tells them they can't because they say, if you're not Christian, you're wrong.

[Lilin Lavin]
Which is really a disservice to their belief system, to be quite honest.

[Tommy Lavin]
I wish more, and I'm seeing it a little bit more. I am starting to see this a little bit more, and I'm glad that I'm starting to see this. I wish I would see more of it, of actual Christians, not Christian nationalists, not these evangelical extremists, but actual Christians starting to stand up and say, you don't represent my religion, you are not really a Christian.

And I wish I'd see more of it because I think that is much more powerful than a Satanist saying, no, you're really not a Christian, look at all the- And we can have those intellectual discussions. We could talk about the Bible all day long. You ask these people about Satanism, they can't answer a single fucking question.

They're like, oh, you sacrifice children and drink blood. And it's like, what the fuck? No, we don't.

Let's get out of sci-fi. Let's get out of horror movies. Have you ever even googled or read anything on Satanism?

And of course, they haven't. Most Satanists have read the Bible.

[Lilin Lavin]
The thing with the chaplaincy program, I don't feel that it fits into what the traditional chaplaincy program even is, because by its own bounds, you have to be able to, based on their own documentation, speak and act in ways that honor the dignity and value of every individual. That is like one, one of the ethical principles in relationship with clients. If you are there in a capacity to strictly reinforce your own particular beliefs and ideology and impress that upon people as a means to fix their issues, then you already have failed at the very first premise of what it is that you're supposed to be doing in that role.

And I heard it directly from individuals that went to that particular board meeting to speak. Their entire ideology screamed that they were going to push the salvation of Jesus onto people because that alone will fix their problem.

[Tommy Lavin]
Right. I mean, they would start out opening saying, we're not here to prophesize, we're not going to prophesize to children. But the way that Jesus impacted my life, well, time out.

Yeah. You just started prophesizing. Yeah.

I don't think they understand. They don't actually understand what prophesization is. They can't step outside of themselves and say, oh, wait, I can't talk about Jesus.

Well, what's the why am I here then? Because everything surrounds Jesus.

[Lilin Lavin]
It just continues to provide care that is intended to promote the best interest of the client and to foster strength, integrity and healing, demonstrate respect for cultural and religious values of those they serve and refrain from imposing their own values, beliefs on those served. Well, Jesus loved people of all countries. There I hit the cultural part.

Are mindful of imbalances of power in the professional client relationship and refrain from exploiting that imbalance, maintain relationships with clients professionally. Well, I would hope you would only be there. There's a whole other case.

Jesus flipped the table. You know, he didn't like power. Well, I mean, you could argue that avoid or correct any conflicts of interest or appearance of calm.

I mean, right there. There's so many things that right out of the box, when you look at the traditional chaplaincy program, they have already failed. They already failed.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, they have. But this in no way is traditional. Again, we have stepped away from traditional Christian religion, which, again, I have my own.

I, you know, I wish we could go back to the days where I'm just arguing with Christians over ideology and the differences in that. Now we're arguing about you're taking my fucking rights. You're pushing yourself into this.

[Lilin Lavin]
And, and it, you know, I know this is where I think extremism is actually a wonderful thing. And it sounds weird to say that, right? Because I think I know where you're going.

It forces people of different beliefs, different ideologies to come together and recognize where they overlap and see the strength and being able to work together for the benefit of the people that actually matter to them. And then the extremists come out like just showing their true colors of being like, they're technically really hate groups that are built on fear, bias, bigotry. They're really there to essentially promote almost it.

Well, I'm not almost it's a hate group.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah, they they're a hate group with with the Bible in their hand, right?

[Lilin Lavin]
You know, they're trying to sanctify hate and division through religion.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yes. And, and for all the other religions that are like, whoo, well, at least the Santa's didn't say Buddhism or, or he didn't say Muslims, you know, if he would have said Muslims, I mean, we'd have people would go fucking crazy, but guess what? You're on the fucking list.

Yeah. He just didn't say it yet. It's easier for them to set a standard with Satan is because everybody fucking hates Satan.

So they're like, Oh, nobody likes to say this. You know, I mean, how many times have I heard that?

[Lilin Lavin]
You know, so we're automatically the black sheet, which we are the entry point for the rest of people that don't fit in line with their idea of quote unquote Christianity. Yes. And you know, we, we are an easy to attack because it's, it's much more palatable than to say the Hindus, the Muslims, the Buddhists, the Baha'i, the interreligious belief here because people will get very upset and up in arms about it, but making a mistake by the very language that they're trying to use to exclude Satanism, which again, are we really going to start letting people define what religious beliefs you hold and whether or not your religion is in fact a religion, because if they do it to Satanist, that's your bottom dollar that they're going to do it to everyone else. And then within those groups, they're going to do it to each other. We see it already.

With Methodist churches, they have great divisions over LGBTQIA status. Catholics, we see the same thing. Different Catholics aren't Christians.

What Catholics? Again, Catholics, which are in fact Christians, despite what other people might want to say, they're the original Christians, I would argue. But you know, when you go through it, these are all groups that are have a lot of infighting because they don't agree with a lot of the cultural crap that's happening today.

And it's torn apart their very own, you know, groups. So yeah, you might want to quibble over the fact that whether or not a Satanist is universally bad, which sorry, if you don't know what universal is, that seems like a big problem. But you know, universally bad is not possible for it to be because there's thousands of Satanists.

And if you just get outside of TST and COS, there's thousands more that have different shades of belief in, you know, some theistic Satanists. So again, it cannot be universally seen as anything when universally, it's just not.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And like I was saying, so all these, all these other religions that again, they're kind of sitting on the sidelines sitting quietly, because the boy, he didn't draw our name into there. Well, he did.

And if you sit by silently, you are complicit in your own destruction. Because I guarantee I will bet I bet fucking anything that if they were to get this program going, and if they were to really get, you know, momentum behind them, they will find a way to ostracize other religions. And they're already trying to do that.

Yes, but and, and then they'll, they'll make some sort of statement, some governor somewhere will make some sort of statement, we're not going to allow Muslims because of this, you know, and it'll come as a great big shock. And people will be like, what the hell? What are they doing?

They already did it. You sat by and you were quiet about it, because it wasn't you that was being affected. It was some other religion, which you don't really like.

And that's where people need to step outside of themselves and say, holy shit, what's going on here? Yeah, you know, yeah, I can disagree with another religion. But at the same time, I can look and say, but that doesn't mean it's okay to exclude that religion.

I disagree philosophically with them. But whoa, once we start down this path, I might be next. And that's wrong.

And what they're doing constitutionally is just wrong.

[Lilin Lavin]
And if you can't allow criticism to exist about your beliefs, then how strong are they really, we should be able to, I know, as a Satanist, I strive to challenge my own preconceived notions about what I believe I have as a religion, what it means to me, what the philosophical meaning is, does it change, it should change. As we grow and learn over time, we recognize different things about how it applies and why it applies that way. So you're doing a disservice to your own religion.

If you say there's no air for disagreement, there's no air for, you know, philosophical disagreements between individually, even within that faith. So you know, and I think really, and there's a lot of controversy over who said it. But we can go back and say that it was John Stuart Mill, who at a university inaugural address said, let not any one pacify his conscience by delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part and forms no opinion.

Bad men need do nothing more than to compass their ends than that good men should look on it and do nothing. He's not a good man without a protest allowing wrong to be committed in his name and with the means which he helps to supply because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject. So essentially, just saying if you know, and have the opportunity to stand up against something that you obviously understand is wrong, and you do nothing, you're just as complicit.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And again, I say this, I've said this 100 times on this podcast, inaction is an action. It is it is a conscious choice, and it is an action in of itself.

So by doing nothing, you are making a conscious choice to let that happen, whether it's to another person to yourself, whatever it is, and do nothing about it. Stay quiet, stay silent, because oh, we don't get involved in whatever enter this here. You know, if if, if a religion is directly attacked in an unconstitutional way, and I if you haven't listened to Lucian's legal, the legal town hall thing that they did earlier this week, he does them routinely now, and they're phenomenal.

Yeah, it's a good listen. Because again, it wasn't only Satanist on there. You know, they, they had other, they had some atheists, they forgot free thinkers, you know, and again, this goes back to this affects more than just TST. Yeah, you know, it doesn't matter if you're you fucking hate TST. Okay, well, go boohoo into your fucking pillow over that. It still affects you. And if your hatred for something is so strong that you allow yourself to be attacked, or your rights to be taken away, because Oh, well, they're doing it to these people that I don't like, then you kind of get what you get, in a sense, you know, I lose my sympathy for you at that point.

[Lilin Lavin]
Yeah. And to all those people that are out there as maybe congregation heads or other ministers, I definitely encourage you to engage with your local atheist community with your local free thought community with your separation of church and state community because that foundational I'm building that foundation building between our groups are like minded groups, and helps us to be stronger societally. And I even encourage you to go ahead and engage with the interfaith community, where you have other faith leaders coming together to work towards the goal of creating a more equitable society for all people of all faiths.

And, you know, especially as a minister, or a congregation head, you're going to have people come to you who are of different beliefs, no beliefs at all who are coming to life to try and figure out what their interests even are. And your obligation, like it or not, is to be able to guide them. And sometimes it's to say, I don't know if this is a good fit for you.

You're definitely welcome to hang out, be an ally, do stuff with us. But here are some other places you can look that may fit you better. And you're doing a big service to yourself to your group, you're going to be much more respected.

And then trying to squish a, you know, round peg into a square hole, because these people may flourish. And they will remember the people that cared enough to say, you know, I love having you around. You're a great person to have here.

But I just, I just feel like this might be something you'll enjoy more.

[Tommy Lavin]
Yeah. And again, there are Christians, there are Christian churches that believe in pluralism. There are Christian churches that believe Satanists have the same rights, the same legal rights as them.

There are Christian churches and pastors that have no problem having a friendship or a dialogue with a Satanist. There's few, but they are there. And in your interfaith communities, you can find those.

And like you said, it is a positive thing. If you have a group of people that are all from different faiths, that can actually work together, recognize that everybody has the same legal rights. So that way, if one is targeted, all are targeted.

It's almost like the UN of religion.

[Lilin Lavin]
Truly it is. I mean, the interfaith community stands together against a lot of things, especially when it comes to bills that affect children and the LGBTQIA community. They've been at the forefront of protecting marriage equality, of protecting, you know, children from abuse, especially religious.

I mean, these individuals recognize the disservice that's done to all belief systems when a belief system co-ops it in order to abuse people. They understand the harm that's done. We've seen in many communities, small faith groups just completely taken apart and small churches completely washed away by these large fundamentalist churches that have a lot of lights and shine and glitz and glam.

And, you know, what happens is these places flourish. They don't give back to the community except for specific groups that they agree with. And it actually ends up destroying your local community because no longer is there that place to go to get help or to help show you different areas to get the help you might need.

No longer is there, you know, a trusted person that actually knows the community intimately there to help guide people. And that's what these small...

[Tommy Lavin]
But they have a really cool rock band on Sunday. And sometimes there's even aerial shows. Or swords.

It's like Cirque du Soleil. Naked or shirtless dude with a sword, you know, symbolically. Oh, my gosh.

[Lilin Lavin]
Symbolically fighting demons in spiritual warfare. Those stances were horrible. And I don't know who taught you how to swing that thing around, but I've seen kids playing with jump ropes that made a lot more sense and moves.

It was awful. And then there was a guy that looked like some kind of freak show out of a haunted house that was pulling out some plank with chains on it. And I'm like, what the hell are these people doing nowadays?

[Tommy Lavin]
Seriously, I mean, I took years of martial arts. So when I watched somebody and I loved the sword, it was one of my favorite, you know, my favorite weapons to use. So when I saw that dude on stage doing that, I'm like, oh, man, you have no, I mean...

[Lilin Lavin]
I mean, does the insurance company that is sponsoring you guys realize what you're doing?

[Tommy Lavin]
Because that just is an accident waiting to happen. I mean, if that's how you're fighting with a sword, you're going to lose, man. I mean, just give it up.

Yeah. Anyways, so... We tangented again.

We did. I know I got hot on this one because this is exactly what I was afraid. I mean, rewind, look back through our episodes and find the one where we first started talking about chaplains in Texas.

Oh, yeah. And listen to what we talked about. And so when you say something, when you see something, it's so fucking clear.

And you say, this is going to happen. And then it fucking happens. And then still you have a lot of people being quite about it.

It just infuriates me because I'm like, how can you not see what the fuck is going on here?

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, and I hate to say it like this, but schools are always like now about money, money, money, right? And a really good counselor is not cheap, you know?

[Tommy Lavin]
Nope.

[Lilin Lavin]
They're well-educated. They often have bachelor's, master's. We're talking about people that are really well-trained.

Now, again, if you go by the letter of the law, the true chaplains actually have the same sort of qualifications. They've got a bachelor's master's and divinity or something of that like, and often have had counseling training to some degree, and many have done rotation. So if you're looking at traditional chaplains, again, there's a bar to be met.

And I don't necessarily have as much of an issue there because they should be interfaith. But that's not what's happening here. And a lot of religious organizations have these, you know, special programs.

[Tommy Lavin]
Chaplain privates, what I was going to get to.

[Lilin Lavin]
They're technically certification programs, but they're done through specific organizations. They give you life experience.

[Tommy Lavin]
So basically, you can be like, oh, I had years of being this, and all you did was fucking hold a sign in Times Square saying the world's gonna end for six years. And all of a sudden, you've got life experience and you're certified.

[Lilin Lavin]
Or they have hours, which I don't necessarily have an issue with some of those programs, depending on what the ultimate goal is. But, you know, where you go into a jail, or you go into a hospital, or you do different locations, and you're actually there working with someone that's done this for a long period of time, you're learning how to actually apply these things necessarily. I mean, I think that's great, but it does not replace a trained school counselor.

So again, what I was getting to is these schools have so much money to work with. And if you can get chaplains and replace counselors, those damn expensive counselors, you know, third of the cost or whatever, you know, they'll do it. Now, I believe Florida, you have to, the parents have to select the person and then, you know, they get to go in.

And I don't know how that's going to look. I know that there's background checks involved, which, you know, if you haven't gotten caught doing the bad things yet, I guess great. It's not going to catch you.

But it seems like an incredibly low bar. And I do worry about how it will be manipulated to just keep pushing and actually causing harm to people and giving them no space to figure things out. And as a parent, you should want kids to have space to decide who they are, what they want, what they like, what their dreams are, who they want to be, whether or not you like it is irrelevant.

You're not there to create a mini you. You're there to support an individual who will eventually be on their own in society and hopefully have given them the tools to function that way. But it's not up to you who they are.

You're just there to guide them until you no longer are the one providing care.

[Tommy Lavin]
And let me just be really clear, because I hear this argument all the time. Schools are supposed to be secular. There shouldn't be counselors or chaplains or ministers in school.

So because as a Satanist, I don't believe that I'm not going to say anything. Okay. I completely agree.

Schools are supposed to be secular, but they're not anymore. Okay. So now by not doing anything about that and by saying, oh, well, the way that I'm going to fight this is I'm going to be really quiet about it.

And I'm just not going to do it. You're basically just giving them permission. So all TST is saying is one, we don't think religion should be in school.

But if you're going to pass this law, then all religions, including Satanism, have to be treated equally. That means we have just as much of a right as the Christian nationalists, extremists, radicals do and Buddhist and everybody else. That doesn't mean we're saying, hey, we really are promoting this to happen in school.

We're simply saying if they're going to be there, they're going to be there. Whether you shut your mouth, sit in the corner with your thumb up your ass or not, they're going to be there anyways. So the logical thing to do is to counterbalance that using your constitutional rights and saying, we have the same rights as everybody else does.

[Lilin Lavin]
Well, and just to be clear, it does affect you. If you're paying taxes that are being used in those schools, this is the society that you're going to be surrounded by. These people are going to make up the jobs and positions that you're going to be interacting with.

So it does affect you. It affects you.

[Tommy Lavin]
They're going to be passing the laws. If you've got children, your children are going to go there. They're going to be having this push down their fucking throat.

[Lilin Lavin]
Right. But you don't have to approach it as a Satanist. If you don't feel comfortable doing that, I understand.

It is unnerving. Like I said, I've said it many times. When you go to these things and you interact at that level, if you go as a Satanist, and your name is attached, it can be very unnerving.

I completely understand. Go as a private citizen. You don't have to go if you don't want to publicly go somewhere.

Great. You could submit oftentimes things to be put into the record. If there's legislation, a lot of times you can put things in the public record.

You never have to bring up Satanism specifically. You could talk about the merits of concern. You could talk about what's bad about the implementation.

You could talk about your personal concerns, send letters, send rebuttals, write op-eds. Papers love those. If you can write competently, and you can make a decent point without cursing or being just completely ridiculous.

But I mean, there's ways to approach certain topics. And if you can come at it intellectually and share just what it is that you personally feel and why it affects you as a person and what you feel it affects as a community, those are powerful statements to people. Sometimes they it resonates, and then that encourages people to continue to participate.

So you can do that. You can write your school boards, you can write the schools that are implementing it specifically to like principals, vice principals, you include all of the board members, you can write letters, you can get together with groups, and you could do these things. So these are all things that you have the opportunity to do.

And you never ever have to bring in if you have a belief at all. And even if you don't have a belief, you should probably do it anyway, because it will affect you at some point in your life. If we just allow this to run rampant, and we're not helping people to understand the value of pluralism, and why it's so important to be open to other people's beliefs and to understand, just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it's wrong.

You know, that that hurts all of us, because it's shutting down the ability for people to comprehensively look at the world around them and understand how it all kind of fits together whether or not we want to admit it. And so when you shut that down, you know, there's no discourse, there's no opportunity for growth, there's no ability for people to flourish, because there's just no room for it. Right?

[Tommy Lavin]
I think with that, it's a good place to stop. Because I'm just gonna keep getting Yeah, yeah, we're getting old.

[Lilin Lavin]
We got to keep the blood pressure. No. But no, I appreciate all of you for listening.

And you know, I do encourage you to be involved to be as involved as you want as you comfortably can. Again, there's satanic representation out there. There's an entire committee, you can go onto the TST website, you can look under committees, and they've got satanic representation as well as a plethora of others.

There's a protect kids project, there's, you know, the reproductive rights camp, there's so many campaigns that you can choose to be as involved in as you want, even if it's monetarily supporting it, you can do just that much. You can ask where they need help, because they always always do. I guarantee you there's a handful of people that are keeping these things alive, and they work their ass off on a routine basis and put countless hours in so they will welcome your ability to support them in whatever capacity you have reach out to them.

Those campaigns are always willing and ready to receive people to do different things in different capacities. So please just be involved. Yeah.

[Tommy Lavin]
And again, I want to thank EM and Lucian for for having more of those open legal sort of dialogues. Yeah, because I think it, it really helps people to understand, okay, this is where this is where executive mana EM is coming from. This, this is their stance.

So okay, now I know what I can do, well, you know what I should do what the things that I shouldn't do as well, you know, and I know their stance doesn't mean you have to agree with it. It doesn't mean that, you know, anything like that.

[Lilin Lavin]
People disagree with me. I'm good with it. People disagree with I've sometimes disagree with Lucian.

We are all going to do that from time to time. I don't have a leader. I don't have an idol.

Nope.

[Tommy Lavin]
You know, we're just I lose no sleep over people that disagree with me over people that that troll me or anything. I lose absolutely no sleep.

[Lilin Lavin]
While you do I tend to play with it because it's just funny.

[Tommy Lavin]
I either block them or the other thing that I like to do is I mute him, because then they don't know. And so they keep screaming. And it's like they're screaming at a wall.

They're out there in the ether, just losing their fucking mind. And I don't even see any of it. What's the worst you're gonna do?

[Lilin Lavin]
Tell me that I'm like, you know, they often just call me a dude because apparently that makes them feel better. Or they point out things on my face that I already know are there because I kind of like it's my nose ring.

[Tommy Lavin]
So but yeah, all right, well, we're going off on a tangent. So with all that, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever the fuck you are in the world and hail Satan.