
A Hindu group and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, also known as the Pastafarians, have also made applications for statues illustrating their faiths' beliefs to be placed on the state Capitol grounds, but none is as far along as the Satanists' plans and certainly they have not pissed off the state legislators who approved of the Ten Commandments nearly as much.
Representative Don Armes, Republican of Faxon, said to ABC "I think you've got to remember where you are. This is Oklahoma, the middle of the heartland...I think we need to be tolerant of people who think different than us, but this is Oklahoma, and that's not going to fly here."
We could rephrase this statement in many amusing and equally accurate ways, but I'm just going to go with "This is Oklahoma, where committed Christians are such an overwhelming majority that our politicians have to suck up to us by patronizing our taste in lawn ornaments. We pay lip service to tolerance, but we advise you not to go around banging on doors asking for it, unless you want to get whacked in the face by a copy of the Ten Commandments."
Obviously the Oklahoma Legislature was so thrilled at the prospect of nailing down thousands of votes by merging their church and state that they failed to realize that they were opening the doors to the Satan statue, along with those of Zeus, Odin, Thor, Buddha and the Dudeist deity, Jeff Bridges, to be placed upon the fair grass of their Capitol.
Unfortunately, those perpetual buzzkillers, the ACLU, have sued to keep the Ten Commandments, and thus all of the other proposed monuments off the Oklahoma state turf. This is unfortunate, because the proposed Satan statue is quite an eyeful. As quoted in philly.com:
According to The Satanic Temple's application, the proposed monument features a large pentagram and “a 7-foot tall goat-headed Baphomet that sits cross-legged flanked by a child on both sides. The lap will serve as a seat for visitors."
I don't see why anyone in Oklahoma would object to this religious display. The pentagram has long been a sacred symbol for people who like pentagrams because they are easy to draw, the state is no doubt already so lousy with goats that one more hardly makes a difference and an athletic seven-footer would be coveted by any of the state's numerous college basketball programs. And like kids who believe in Santa, anyone who believes in Satan can sit on his lap.
As for the children, they send out rather a tender message about Satan's abode. Far from being a stern place of fire and brimstone, the Satanists are trying to tell us it is an eternal day care center, where people who missed out on Heaven because they don't have the maturity or attention spans to hosanna forever and ever can frolic in a wonderland of finger-painting, construction paper gluing and bead swallowing. They can catch up on the nap times and play dates they missed on Earth, the lack of which probably caused them to act up in the first place.
And as long as they are picked up by whenever eternity is over, Satan won't apply any late fees.