THEY'RE REALLY DOING IT

Well that escalated quickly.

Back in January (which is like 6 posts ago, I know, and I'm sorry. I've been busy) I wrote about the Satanic Temple and their plans to erect a giant Baphomet statue in front of the Oklahoma state capitol. The reasoning is that since Oklahoma is kind of violating that whole "separation of church and state" thing by having a 10 Commandments monument, the other side of the coin should be represented as well.

The Satanic Temple launched an Indie GoGo fund to raise money, and hit their goal fairly easily. I pretty much assumed that would be the last we heard of it, but that's thankfully not the case and they've been hard at work actually making the damn thing.

It turns out that Oklahoma state representative Mike Ritze paid for the 10 Commandments statue with his own money and donated it to the state house. Since it was a gift, it was deemed okay to place it on state grounds. Following that explanation, the Satanic Temple has submitted the proper forms and applications and is waiting to hear back. All the while, they've hired a New York-based artist trained in classic sculptures to start making a bust that they'll be able to cast in bronze and place as soon as they get the word.

As noted before, The Church of Satan (probably pissed that they didn't think of it first) had a few issues with the proposed statue, and it looks like some of those issues have been addressed. Vice followed up on the project and got a nice little behind the scenes look at the progress of the 7-foot statue and some great comments from Lucien Greaves—who used to be listed as the leader of the group, but is now just listed as a spokesman. I could probably find out one way or the other, but I've got other things to get back to.

Most notably, Greaves spoke about what might happen to the statue once it's placed. There are bound to be a lot of unhappy people in Oklahoma if the statue is put up and vandalism is highly likely. Greaves said he "wouldn’t expect these outraged and nearly insensible reactionaries to actually know how to assault a bronze monument without severely hurting themselves in the process."

Still, they're not taking any chances and instead building a mold so that if one is damaged, they can just pop out another. "Depending on our insurance policy, we may be able to cast two from the destruction of one, expediting our arrival to the next battleground."

Oklahoma's been staging some great battles in newspaper headlines and inside execution chambers this week, so I'm sure shedding blood on the steps of their statehouse over a statue wouldn't be outside their wheelhouse.

So yeah, the Satanic Temple isn't fucking around here. You should head over to Vice to read their whole piece. I lifted a couple of quotes and these photos from them, so the least you can do is actually go check out their article. And you'll probably get lost in their archives like I do every time. It's fun though. They've got good stuff.