On Wednesday, the Satanic Temple erected a billboard over Texas’s Route 281 with the message, “Our Religion Doesn’t Believe in Hurting Children”.
The board, which features an image of a goat skull inside a pentagram, is a part of the Temple’s initiative against the use of corporal punishment in the Springtown Independent School District. In 2012, the Springtown high school came under fire when a male assistant principal paddled two female students.
The Massachusetts-based organization holds this incident as the number one reason they chose this particular area to raise a billboard.
Visiting the website listed at the bottom of the board will bring you to the Temple’s Protect Children Project site, where you can find the initiative’s mission, a donation link, and an FAQ.
“Hopefully, our billboard will give pause to passersby who will be forced to confront the fact that [this] school district is being operated by depraved and ignorant sadists who have no business being in education,” Spokesperson for the Temple Lucien Greaves said. “The billboard should be a wakeup call that the school district trustees, who voted 6-0 for corporal punishment, need to be replaced by competent and humane members of the community who have children’s best interests at heart.”
Students of the district are encouraged on the site to register for the project, regardless of their religious affiliations. By signing up, students give the Satanic Temple permission to send a letter to the school board if they receive and report physical punishment. The Temple is even willing to “obtain legal counsel to sue the school district for violating [the] student’s civil rights.”
“We hold among our tenets that ‘The body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone,’” Greaves said, citing the Satanic Temple’s background. “As such, we have launched a campaign to offer an exemption against corporal punishment and solitary confinement to any student who shares this deeply held belief.”
As of now, the Springtown ISD has not released a statement regarding the billboard.