Michael Cassidy, a strong Christian and Military Officer, decapitated the Baphomet statue and threw its head in the trashcan.
The Satanic Temple obtained permission from Iowa’s government to erect a statue of a goat-headed figure at the state capitol in Des Moines along with the group’s seven fundamental tenets, which call on members “to act with compassion and empathy toward all” and declare people’s bodies as “inviolable”.
The statue and its association with the Satanic Temple ignited a fierce debate over the breadth of the US constitution’s first amendment, which provides Americans their core freedoms of speech and religion.
The Satanic Temple makes clear that its members do not actually worship the devil nor do they believe in either Satan’s existence or the supernatural. Instead Satan is used as a symbol of free will, humanism and anti-authoritarianism.
Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, issued a statement calling the Satanic Temple’s display “absolutely objectionable” but suggested it was one “a free society” should allow to stand. Reynolds called on “all those of faith” to pray alongside her and recognize the traditional display honoring Jesus’s birth also put up at the capitol.
Reynolds met intense criticism from conservative circles who believed she should leverage her executive powers to remove the display.
Conservatives staged prayer rallies and protests around the goat-headed statue, all of which are consistent with the first amendment.
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