In February 2020, a member of what had been the South Sound Saanists group expressed to another TST Washington member that he didn’t have faith in the current leadership of the Washington State group. He was unilaterally removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March 2020, a public stunt at the Washington State capitol involved TST members wearing makeup similar to what the young, sexually harassed former member had made famous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than apologizing for further harm caused, intended or unintended, two local leaders began to call themselves “senior leadership”, claimed they were “democratic to a point”, and on March 12, 2020, dissolved the 20-plus-person democratic and volunteer committees in favor of a smaller group consisting of themselves, their partners, and their favored subordinates. They also said they had done nothing wrong, and anyone CC’d on the internal complaint against their handling of the situation had taken part in an attempted coup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 14, 2020, they told local TST member Joshua Calavera he had been “fucking up” by using the re-purposed South Sound page (by then the “Memes page”) to say transphobia, racism, and white supremacy were bad \u2014 because, senior leadership said, this had nothing to do with Satanism. Calavera removed himself from the main Chapter page, but as admin of the Memes page, removed all the other admins and moderators from that Memes page and posted a statement declaring the page was no longer associated with the Temple and therefore was explicitly against “ableism, misogyny, and racism”, racists, transphobes, and all bootlickers who weren’t in it for the kink. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 14, 2020, TST’s local representatives told Calavera they were not interested in the Memes page and it was his “free and clear”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also on March 14, 2020, Nathan Sullivan \u2014 despite creating it \u2014 was one of a handful of people to discover he no longer had access to the local TST Discord server. This was the only form of communication Sullivan ever received that he was no longer a member of The Satanic Temple Seattle\/Washington after more than five years in the organization \u2014 up until the point he was served papers for a lawsuit weeks later. But the following day, March 15, a Zoom meeting confirmed that Calavera, people CC’d on an internal complaint, and any of those people’s partners had been expelled from TST Washington on suspicion of a coup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the expulsions and explainer meeting, more people left the local chapter and began to share their stories of harassment and abuse, comparing notes where they had previously been isolated as well as highlighting issues present at the national level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 20, 2020, expelled TST Washington member and defendant David A. Johnson was still an admin of Washington State’s chapter page and did as Calavera had done, removing all other admins and moderators and announcing it was no longer connected to The Satanic Temple. Johnson posted news articles, former member testimony from other chapters, and TST owners’ own words on the Facebook page<\/a>, along with criticism<\/a> of the way TST’s practices did not live up to their religious principles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n On April 3, 2020, The Satanic Temple began suing four \u2014 and only four \u2014 of the expelled people in federal court: Nathan Sullivan, Joshua Calavera, David A. Johnson, and Leah Fishbaugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Feb. 26, 2021, the district court judge dismissed the case for the first time, with leave to amend some claims but dismissing the defamation claim with prejudice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On March 29, 2021, The Satanic Temple filed an amended complaint to continue the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Jan. 6, 2023, the district judge dismissed the case for a second and final time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Jan. 25, 2023, The Satanic Temple appealed their loss to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On April 5, 2023, The Satanic Temple filed a new case against the four defendants in King County Superior Court about the same issues previously dismissed in federal court from three years before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The Satanic Temple is suing four former members of the Seattle\/Washington State chapter because it is a hierarchical business cum<\/em> religion owned by two men who cannot stand to be publicly criticized, particularly for their failure to live up to their own stated principles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Cevin Daniel Soling (“Malcolm Jarry”, “Calvin Soling”) and Douglas Alexander Misicko (“Lucien Greaves”, “Doug Mesner”) have demonstrated repeatedly that what they hate more than anything else is being confronted with the ways their propaganda falls short of reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n No matter how many human rights crises rage around the country \u2014 many manufactured deliberately by self-described fascists and Christian theocrats \u2014 the thing that Misicko and Soling feel truly threatened by is having their religion publicly scrutinized on a basis more substantive than on the “heroic Satanist underdogs against mean Christians” narrative that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for them, with merch sale profits tossed in on top.<\/p>\n\n\n April 3, 2023, marked three years since this lawsuit began. TST’s legal assault on us is about as old as the Covid-19 pandemic itself, and it persists because The Satanic Temple wants to commit resources to extending it and because its owners are willing to repeatedly demand state-enforced compensation for damages predicated on overtly false allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we want to be explicit about this in particular: <\/p>\n\n\n TST’s decision to sue us on claims they either didn’t know or didn’t care were false<\/strong> \u2014 and their multiple attempts to force the court to issue rulings that it had no legal or even constitutional authority to give \u2014 is not merely an issue of hypocrisy<\/em> on TST’s part<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is far more charitable than TST deserves to say that TST has, or ever<\/em> had, good intentions about any of this, or has merely been forced into an unfortunate series of decisions out of practicality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody forced TST to file false allegations against uninvolved people. <\/p>\n\n\n Nobody forced TST to repeatedly refuse to substantiate their claims when given multiple opportunities by the judge as a matter of codified law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody forced TST to voluntarily admit \u2014 two years<\/em> into this legal assault \u2014 that they had been making up allegations this entire time just to maximize a payout that they had no interest in demonstrating they were entitled to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody forced TST to admit that they pay contractors to spy on their critics, using otherwise protected speech as ammunition for frivolous and malicious legal harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n And then, when the case was dismissed from federal court, nobody forced TST to simultaneously appeal the dismissal in the Ninth Circuit and also repeat their claims in state court at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of these are decisions that TST’s owners have consciously and repeatedly made, and will continue to make as long as they’re allowed to without scrutiny. And there is every reason to believe that they will do it again to other people in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These seem like big claims to make, and maybe even unwise ones to make given that we are currently already being targeted for a lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, if you stick with us through all of this, you will discover that the Temple and its operatives are both so malicious and incompetent, there is no shortage of receipts and outright admissions for all of these things \u2014 but also that the U.S. legal system is not a justice system, and rich people can file all of the lawsuits they want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This write-up will be much more thorough than most will ever need. That’s fine. But it intends to shed much-needed daylight with every specific we can muster and document on what is possibly The Satanic Temple’s most sustained assault on that speech to date, and on the events that led up to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When it comes to The Satanic Temple, there’s always more, and it’s always worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you don’t believe us yet, keep reading because you will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, this writeup is intended to be thorough <\/em>but not necessarily comprehensive<\/em>, and certainly nothing close to neutral. We want to show what we believe are TST’s actual priorities as an institution, how those priorities reveal themselves in the Temple’s publicly-recorded decisions, who is affected most by the consequences of those decisions, and most importantly, what all of this says about TST’s relationship to the public interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of all of TST’s lawsuits, we naturally know this one the best, and we believe that it is one of the clearest examples we’ll ever have of what TST actually considers to be threats to itself, and what it considers to be a reasonable response to those threats. This writeup, as long as it is, is thus intended to be a sort of highlight reel; we want to focus on the most egregious and bad faith arguments that TST makes in this lawsuit, because we think that the very existence of those claims, and the fact that TST finds them compelling enough to present to multiple judges, highlights the Temple’s fundamentally predatory worldview towards its own members, towards the general public, and towards public institutions like the press and the legal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don’t expect anyone to simply take us at our word, though. We cannot emphasize enough that you should, in fact, examine the primary sources wherever you can: court documents, testimonials from other members and ex-members around the country, TST’s own recorded statements over the last decade of its existence and beyond. All we’ve done is compile them, do our best to make them as accessible as possible to as many people as possible, and then talk about what we believe are the patterns that emerge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We think you deserve better. We think the entire world deserves better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are a journalist wondering why so much mainstream coverage of The Satanic Temple keeps sounding the same, this article is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are an advocate for the separation of church and state, and want to know whether The Satanic Temple can be trusted to be on your side when it comes to religions demanding to wield the power of the state with minimal scrutiny, this article is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are an exvangelical<\/a> or other survivor of religious abuse, and want to know whether The Satanic Temple takes the root causes of that abuse seriously and takes care to avoid repeating them, this article is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are rightly horrified by the assaults on reproductive freedom and bodily autonomy by fascist legislators and local reactionaries, and are considering supporting The Satanic Temple as a theoretical counter to them, this article is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And last but not least, if you are a former member of The Satanic Temple:<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you joined with every intention of joining that ongoing struggle for justice \u2014 if you poured countless hours, if not years, of your life into helping realize the Satanic Temple’s purported missions only to be used, abused, and then disposed of by its lieutenants or regional leadership, and then harassed or threatened into silence so as to not endanger the Temple’s progressive reputation \u2014 if any of that is true, this article is for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n These now multiple<\/em> frivolous, incompetent lawsuits by The Satanic Temple against four former members is a rare window into what the so-called “bona fide religion” actually is<\/strong>: an abusive, predatory organization that actively targets the most vulnerable people in its reach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As TST’s whole campaign against us shows, it is an one actively willing to corrode the separation of church and state just to protect its ability to profit further from the exploitation of those people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this three-year period, we have seen the first case dismissed by a federal judge once in February 2021<\/a>, and again in January 2023<\/a>. We have seen the Temple’s incompetent defamation claims refuted directly on the simple basis that the First Amendment protects the right to criticize a religion’s beliefs, and seen the original excuse for the case resolved back in May 2020 via Facebook ticket with no need for litigation at all.<\/p>\n\n\n Again: ostensibly this is all about The Satanic Temple claiming the Temple’s for-profit corporation’s owners \u2014 rather than the actual page admins or especially rather than Mark Zuckerberg and Meta corporation \u2014 own Facebook pages, and that any criticism of TST as a religion is de facto<\/em> defamation because TST’s owners disagree with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At any point, the Temple had the power to end this, even to declare victory at their retaliation being credible and efficacious, if they so chose. Instead, they appealed their federal court loss to a higher court and started a new lawsuit over the same issues in state superior court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We continue our fight to defend ourselves because we have to but also because it’s clear that if The Satanic Temple is not stopped here, they will grow into something even more dangerous and abusive. This is not a problem that will resolve on its own or that can be trusted to let someone else rescue us from.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consider that since suing us, TST has now also sued Newsweek<\/em> and its reporter as an individual<\/a> for writing about the case, and has even sued a Texas TikToker<\/a> who made two videos critical of the Temple. <\/p>\n\n\n\n TST and its loyalists have been shown more than willing to move the goalposts however much they feel is necessary in order to justify the existence of this suit, as they pursue it for over three years and in three different courts to date. Their justifications both in and out of court run the gamut: acording to them, we’ve stolen their property, committed cyberpiracy and fraud, and funneled away donations and members that TST was theoretically entitled to in order to prop up a competitor organization called “The Satanic Temple 2: Electric Boogaloo<\/a><\/strong>.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n None of those claims have any factual or legal weight, and the court has so far repeatedly recognize this dearth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But this is always expensive<\/em>, and TST continues to allege them and prop them up whenever they have to acknowledge this suit’s existence because ultimately, no matter no matter how many justifications that TST invents, they all follow one consistent thread on formal examination: <\/p>\n\n\n\n If someone talks about The Satanic Temple in terms of its actual<\/em> actions and track record,<\/a> rather than merely regurgitating TST’s own press releases and “both sides are equally bad” whitewashing, TST’s owners and legal team will find \u2014 or just make up out of whole cloth \u2014 an excuse to retaliate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the Temple’s claim to simply want back property they (falsely) profess was stolen from them, one of TST’s final briefings in federal district court was an all-but-explicit admission that their real <\/em>concern was the theoretical harm that might arise from seeing us criticize them on any <\/em>platform. So regardless of whether or not TST had any whiff of a property claim to that platform, such as a working class leftist podcast about Southern history and culture, The Satanic Temple wanted the courts to call discussion of its failures to live up to its own stated values something legally prohibited and at least civily actionable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not a religion that deserves the benefit of the doubt \u2014 from anyone! \u2014 that it is interested or even capable of advancing the rights of marginalized people anywhere in the country, and certainly not against the oligarch-powered, multi-generational project of Christian fascism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Satanic Temple is not the underdog in this story; they are vastly better-funded as a national organization than we are as a handful of individuals scrapping for donations on GoFundMe and Paypal. But we keep winning<\/strong>. Every motion, every stage of the case: we win and the Temple loses. And the reason that keeps happening is because despite all of its bloviating about how “beliefs should follow evidence” and that “we believe in Enlightenment rationality,” The Satanic Temple simply cannot survive in any arena where it is expected to be able to defend its claims against any kind of sustained, factually-informed pushback.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet TST persists with its accusations because, ultimately and by their lawyer’s own admission, they’re much less concerned about the merits than they are about retaliating against the very sort of protected speech they claim to value (as long as it’s pointed at someone else).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Satanic Temple puts incredible weight on their reputation as a counterweight to the Christian Right; it generates countless donations every year on the idea that they can be trusted to protect human rights and social progress via the sheer novelty of “trolling Christians.” The Temple generates endless headlines that ultimately do no more than repeat TST’s press releases and rehash their website’s “About Us” sections, while utterly failing to conduct the necessary follow-up discussion as to how TST’s supposed theory of change meaningfully benefits anyone outside its owners and inner circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a common saying on the left: “a better world is possible<\/strong>“. We would argue that the reality is TST has no interest in building a world where it is not in the position to profit from the trauma and desperation of the marginalized, and that its dogged use of SLAPP suits is just one more way it manufactures that trauma in an attempt to profit further. We would argue that this makes TST uniquely and imminently dangerous to people around the country marginalized in so many other ways already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We think you deserve better than TST. We think the entire world deserves better than TST.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is nothing remarkable about us. We are so utterly mediocre it is almost a joke. Except in one way: we are the only ones to have been stubborn enough and resourced enough by our allies to fight back<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our thesis is simple: We refuse to be held liable for damages allegedly caused by things that never actually happened, and especially when conceding would make it easier for TST to perpetrate its structured abuse on anyone else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And just to clear up a misconception that keeps springing up: we’re not suing TST. We have always<\/em> been the defendants, legally forced to respond to the complaints made by TST. We’re not the ones keeping this farce of a suit in court, let alone dragging it into three different courts as of April 2023. TST is the one consciously deciding to file new complaints, refusing to defend its own claims, and then appealing the dismissal that inevitably results, and so the fight continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Legally, TST is comprised of a stack of for-profits and nonprofits owned solely by two men who have admitted in court to operating with no oversight at all – and over the last several years, they have established a pattern of overt contempt for the legal standards of protected speech, harassing and threatening with financial ruin anyone who draws attention to the numerous problems that flow from an institution arranged in this manner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This writeup, as long as it is, is intended to be a sort of highlight reel \u2014 we want to focus on the most egregious and bad faith arguments that TST makes in this lawsuit, because we think that the very existence of those claims, and the fact that TST finds them compelling enough to present to multiple judges, highlights the Temple’s fundamentally predatory worldview towards its own members, towards the general public, and towards public institutions like the press and the legal system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And this is all just stuff that’s already on the record \u2014 either because TST put these facts down itself, or gave us the opportunity to contradict them in sworn statements. None of this is new information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as always, we encourage you to read the court documents and see for yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (Download the RECAP browser extension<\/a> to pay it forward and help others get around the paywalls.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n This lawsuit involves a conflict between The Satanic Temple \u2014 specifically, its for-profit arm, the United Federation of Churches, LLC<\/a>, which owns the trademarks to “The Satanic Temple,” “Lucien Greaves<\/a>,” “SatanCon,” and others \u2014 on the one hand and four former members of TST’s Washington chapter (hereafter, TST-WA) on the other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chapters, more recently re-branded “congregations”, function largely autonomously with regards to their day-to-day activities, with the crucial exception that, at the time, every chapter had two figures who officially represented the national organization, and who presumably have a signed agreement with the United Federation of Churches, LLC outlining those obligations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those figures include a Chapter Head and at least one Media Liaison who acts as a co-head of sorts, and focuses specifically on managing media interactions at the local level on behalf of TST itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In TST-WA, the Chapter Head at the time was Leah Garvais a.k.a. “Siri Sanguine,” and the Media Liaison was Paul Case a.k.a. “Tarkus Claypool.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The four former members, now the defendants collectively referred to as QueerSatanic or “QS,” are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/queersatanic.com-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-33-1024x683.png\")
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Cameron Sheppard | WNPA News Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nPreface<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
“Wait, why is The Satanic Temple suing you?”<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a>![\"111.](\"https:\/\/queersatanic.com-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Satanic-Boogaloo-Court.png\")
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\n\n\n\nWho is this for?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Introduction<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Part I<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
So, what actually happened?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/queersatanic.com-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/TST-organizational-structure.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"TST](\"https:\/\/queersatanic.com-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/TST-Structure-Censored.png\")
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