A unsuccessful Mississippi Republican Congressional candidate has been charged with criminal mischief for smashing a statue of the pagan god Baphomet in the Iowa State Capitol. Satanists claim that the US Constitution protects their emblems.
According to the Iowa Department of Public Safety, Michael Cassidy of Lauderdale, Mississippi, was arrested on Thursday and charged with fourth-degree criminal mischief after beheading and toppling the goat-headed effigy. If convicted, he faces a maximum term of one year in prison and a $2,560 fine.
Clad in a crimson robe and surrounded by prayer candles, the statue depicted a figure with a man’s body and a horned goat’s head holding a wicker pentacle. Baphomet is commonly associated with occultism and Satanism, and the display was erected by the Satanic Temple, a registered religious group that took advantage of state rules allowing different religions to display their symbols in the capitol over the Christmas period.
I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” Cassidy told The Sentinel, a conservative news site. “The world may tell Christians to submissively accept the legitimization of Satan, but none of the founders would have considered government sanction of Satanic altars inside Capitol buildings as protected by the First Amendment.”
“My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted,” he said.
Republican lawmakers and Christian activists had urged for the statue to be removed before it was demolished, but Republican Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds argued that she was required by the US Constitution to keep it in place.
“Like many Iowans, I find the Satanic Temple’s display in the Capitol absolutely objectionable,” Reynolds said Tuesday in a statement. “In a free society, the best response to objectionable speech is more speech, and I encourage all those of faith to join me today in praying over the Capitol and recognising the Nativity scene that will be on display ― the true reason for the season.”
Although the Satanic Temple is a religious organisation, it does not encourage the worship of deities such as Baphomet.
