In case you need to know what Satanic Panic is: here
In case you need to know what Hexennacht is: here
One of the things that I wanted to take the time to touch on, as someone who gradually “came out” in her blog as a Satanist (affiliated with The Satanic Temple, at that), is that even though we may have, comparatively speaking, made strides toward being more safely and easily being able to declare our religious affiliations in some places — or lack thereof, depending on how you want to word them — it can still be dangerous to “out” yourself as a religion that is not the majority religion, especially under the Trump Administration (and especially if it becomes clear through whatever means that you are LBGT, or as I have sometimes worded it, “not an able-bodied, white-passing man”). Outing yourself as a Satanist is perhaps the diciest of all, and it can potentially have repercussions in child custody cases and job applications if it is revealed in the former or disclosed in the latter. One word of advice, though: you do not have to disclose your religious affiliation on a job application, even if the interviewer asks… and for them to “require” that is illegal.
However, plenty of divorced or separated parents — and I mean plenty — have fought over the most banal of religious issues as they pertain to their child or children, so for one parent to be outed as a Satanist, or volunteer the information that they are one, is pretty much analogous to throwing a hand grenade into the proceedings if you ask me… at least assuming that both parents are active participants in their children’s lives and are litigating with the intent to be able to have an equal say in the upbringing of said children’s lives. Sometimes it is actually court-ordered that one parent is to be the parent that has “final decision-making say” in the religious instruction of the children (or, conversely, if this becomes something that it is clear that the parents will never agree on, that both parents are forbidden from making their children “active, registered participants” in their religious denomination… which basically means that they can not baptize them or enroll them). However, for one parent to be the individual that is granted that final decision-making say is only generally done when the child (or children) have had a history of being brought up in that religion so that they can continue to be brought up in it to give them the continued regularity of that religion’s influence, especially when their lives will be shifted with the divorce or separation of their parents. Unless, of course, it’s Satanism. And then it’s, like I’ve said, like throwing a really judgmental hand grenade into the proceedings nearly all of the time because of nearly everyone’s misconceptions as to what Satanism entails.
And yet perhaps it is the most ironic of all that Satanists are generally the least judgmental and pushy.
