Gay demonic

In 2014, as he prepared for a life explaining away his Lucifer tattoos with a spiel about liking the literary archetype, he discovered the Satanic Temple, an unrelated though similarly-named group. He also claimed to feel the demons he summoned sleeping in his soul. As it turns out, I’m not alone.

With 60 chapters around the world (many of them online, according to LA chapter head Ali Kellog) and more than 70,000 followers on Facebook, the Temple has gained recent attention thanks to several campaigns meant to challenge the religious right’s grip on American policymaking.

He also told me he saw omens. “Queer is an extra layer on top of being gay just like Satan is an extra layer on top of being an atheist,” Astaroth said. And so are demons. Without a physical church to visit, he said he’d spend a few hours each day at his local library, logging onto online Satanic forums and chatting with like-minded souls.

Don’t be ridiculous.

Then something or someone starts attacking Max, and Sal is determined to rid the hotel of the demonic entity trapping ghosts and influencing a murderer. It was actually an anti-Satanic Temple rant that drew him to the organization, posted to YouTube by Brian Werner, a former death metal vocalist in the band Vital Remains.

Given society’s long history of pegging Satan as the root of all evil, that’s fair—though it’s worth making some distinctions. The tenants of his church, known as the Nine Satanic Statements are as follows:

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted on ingrates!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible instead of concern for psychic vampires
7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
9. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!

LaVey’s decision to form his own religion started when he noticed that those who rebelled against God, the church, and the status quo, were the ones who created the most progress in society.

For women it seems to manifest in healing work, rituals, and a closer bond to the earth.
 
This section of QueerHorror deals with demons.  Whether they be followers of Lucifer, or cute little snakey creatures from a parallel universe, they're here, they're queer, and they're ready to stand up and be counted.  Sometimes evil, sometimes misunderstood, always a part of our culture.  Here there be demons.

Without defining itself as an LGBTQ organization outright, the Satanic Temple has become a haven for queer folks. As someone who identifies as both gay and queer—queer in the modern sense of rejecting binary thinking—I feel at home in its embrace of complexity. At the first meeting I attended, nearly everyone I talked to was confidently queer, gay, pansexual, transgender, bi, polyamorous, or something in between.

There’s still ample confusion about what it means to be a Satanist.

Then again, these people aren't happy unless they can oppress someone, feeling better about themselves by vilifying a less powerful group. Through that connection they can draw strength and gain insight. Perhaps the most famous demonologists are Ed and Lorraine Warren. The internet operates as both a Pandora’s box of vile commentary and a tool for distributing a means of communication and organization to marginalized communities around the world.

Ed was a demonologist while Lorraine is a trance medium. Mix this with a formula of nine-parts social responsibility and one-part outrage and you have the Church of Satan.

Another masculine form of the occult is demonology.