I know I’ve mentioned this, but this holiday pays homage to those who were victimized by superstition.

Bub’s father and his grandmother on that side of the family attempted to coerce me into converting to Catholicism, even going so far as to rush me into filling out forms for RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults). I was never once asked how I felt about religion, or their religion. Not once was I asked if I even wanted to convert to their religion. To this day, I still remember something that Bub’s paternal grandmother said to me — “everyone has their own journey to God”, or something to that effect. No, you just expected me to roll over and die, to convert to your family’s religion because it was your family’s religion because you were going to use it as the battering ram to control me, then you were going to use it as the means to shotgun wed me to your son to “erase the sin of our child being born out of wedlock”, and then you expected me to have child after child that I did not want because your religion forbade contraception. And when I died, as I would have due to the health concerns that I had that would have caused pregnancy to imperil me, “it would have been God’s will”, because all you would have seen me as would have been your son’s incubator.

Not once was I asked if I even wanted to attend the Masses and church functions that I was literally drug to.

I told your son that I did not want to attend these things, that I did not want to convert, and look where that got me. Look exactly how far that got me, until I outed myself to your (deacon? priest? pastor?), and the people that I needed to out myself to in order to extricate myself from the whole situation. I shouldn’t have needed to go nuclear to be treated with a modicum of decent human respect, and I should have been asked about these things long before it got to that point. I was victimized by everything that led up to that point…

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!”