I don’t mind who practices what (even Satanism!) as long as they do not aggressively try to evangelize or proselytize to my children or me. You are free to practice how you want as long as you leave my children and me out of it — I’ve even saved you, the “in general theist who might do this” you, the trouble of claiming, “But you’re a Satanist! So you have to be raising your children to be little Satanists!” by stating that I have not introduced any form of religion to them, not even my own, and that I do not intend to do so for as long as they are minors under my care.e The more I think about that, the less comfortable I am with the idea of it.

You may have the right to free speech, as they say, but that doesn’t mean that I have to abide by what you say, like what you say, or continue to subject myself to what you say no matter how many souls you claim you want to net — convert — to Jesus. The more aggressive or rude about this you are to me, the less likely I am to even entertain the notion of your claims, and the more likely I will want to distance myself from you. This does not matter who you are, although my friends are respectful enough regarding any differences in our religious ideologies not to try to “net one, two, or three for Jesus” or to push their religious ideologies and worldviews on me unless I’ve explicitly asked them something about those ideologies and worldviews and make it clear that I consent to them doing so. You don’t get any points here being loud about this or violent.

“Them: Satanic canals are planning on world domination and ritual abuse and sacrifice.

Satanists: Which Buffy universe is better.”

Quoted from a friend as they were debating Buffy in a Discord chat.

“Because Satan gives us eternal life through Lucifer Morningstar, the true believer is secure in that salvation for eternity. If you have been genuinely saved, you cannot “lose” it. Salvation is maintained by the grace and power of Satan, not by the self-effort of the Satanist.

It is the grace and keeping power of Satan that gives us this security.”

This was a friend putting Satan in place of God and Jesus ripping a church bulletin… or whatever you call it.

“If I’m a Satanist but I can’t be “unsaved” does that mean I can fistfight God when I die?”

Another friend.

The moral is that we’re not as bad of a lot as people think we are. But peculiar, some of us, loud and proud.

Truth be told, I haven’t exactly needed to come up with a pen name because I’ve found myself using two monikers more than anything else when I’m not using my own name: (Oerba Dia) Vanille or Serah (Farron), depending on where you find me. This might surprise some people given that I’m… a bit more careful than most about what I publicly post, but I haven’t conclusively come up with a “pen name” that is uniquely mine as much as I use monikers that pay homage to favorite characters of mine from, up until this point, video games that I love. My Discord name happens to be Vanille, and that one was easier to snag because Discord assigns numbers after your name (Name#Numbers), which means that you can probably get the “name” that you want on Discord without having to work hard at it. As for my domain, I was actually surprised that this URL wasn’t registered. Both happen to be favorite characters of mine in the Final Fantasy XIII series.

At any rate, a lot of Satanists have come up with pen names for themselves because they are not in positions to where they can “out themselves” as such — they may not have supportive family members, it may be perilous for their job if that information were to become public knowledge attached to their real names, or for any number of reasons. I wish that we didn’t have to live in a world where one’s religious views, or even lack thereof, meant that we had to safeguard ourselves against others’ criticism, but we still do, even though I would like to take the time to point out the irony in Christians claiming to be persecuted because of their religious views when they are anything but in today’s world. I don’t feel like I can openly wear my necklace from The Satanic Temple in a lot of situations, or even a shirt. I don’t quite feel like I can openly wear some of my other Satanic jewelry (over my shirt, of course, since my skin allergies are that bad) because someone might recognize the lore it comes from and attempt to start something with me “in the name of Jesus”. I don’t feel like I can tell a whole lot of people what my religious views honestly are. So I definitely get the appeal of having a pen name, and have begun to give it some thought, just to have one in the back of my mind in case I ever do authentically need one. (Some people call them “Satanic names”, heh.)

I suppose something will come to me in due time, something that just sounds so right I go, “That’s the one!”

Another thing about certain religions that I despise is their attempt to force themselves onto unwilling participants. Again, the Catholic and Mormon faiths seem to be two of the worst at this, although my only “experience” has been with Catholicism — I was not raised Mormon, with any of my Mormon relatives, and quickly came to reject the Mormon faith, resulting in many of my extended Mormon relatives no longer associating with me as a result, which hasn’t concerned me any since I wasn’t any closer to them than being friends on social media had allowed anyway. But I do know that those two faiths are particularly bad about trying to force individuals who are not even members of their doctrine into following their faith. For instance:

· the Catholic faith “demands” that children born of a Catholic parent be baptized Catholic
· the Catholic faith “demands” that children born of a Catholic parent be brought up Catholic
· if one member of the marriage is Catholic, the marriage must generally take place in a Catholic church, getting a dispensation from this is difficult, and it must follow their marriage protocol even with one
· if a non-Catholic marries a Catholic, they must be “open to life” and not contracept “for it to be valid”
· if a non-Catholic marries a Catholic, they must be monogamous (“faithful for life”) “for it to be valid”
· if a non-Catholic has been previously married, they must pursue an annulment through the Catholic church
· the Catholic church requires that both parties go through various pre-marriage… consults prior to marriage

To me, this is a lot of control being exercised for someone who might never convert to Catholicism, and I can see why it puts a lot of people off to Catholicism. Prior to the wedding that wasn’t with Bub’s father, I eventually put my foot down and stated that I was not willing to do anything that his church asked of me. I was not willing to convert, I was not willing to consent to my older son’s conversion or our son’s baptism, and I was not willing to do anything that his church asked of me in the way of marriage because I was sick and tired of having anything at all to do with his church. It finally managed to get the point across though…

That was when I began to enforce the requirement that I not be expected to participate in the religious activities of any significant other unless we shared that religion in common coming into the relationship. I wasn’t going to go to church with them, I wasn’t going to partake in any of their rituals, I wasn’t going to attend any functions with them. I didn’t want to hear about them if it was something that we didn’t already share in common, and to be frank, if we didn’t share religion in common and their religion was that important to them, I would wonder why we were even in a relationship given what my religious views are.