John Boehner, the former Speaker of the House, had some not -so-kind words to say about Ted Cruz this week in a speech at Stanford University:
“Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a b*tch in my life.”
He is fine with John Kasich. He even thinks Hillary will win the democratic nomination. But, he just can’t stand Ted Cruz.
The Satanic Temple has taken offense to this remark. The Temple and their leader Lucien Greaves says that they agree with the basis of the remark, but they don’t think that Cruz is the embodiment of the adversary:
“Cruz’s failures of reason, compassion, decency, and humanity are products of his Christian pandering, if not an actual Christian faith. It grows tedious when pedophile priests and loathsome politicians are conveniently dismissed as Satanic, even as they spew biblical verse and prostrate themselves before the cross, recruiting the Christian faithful. Satanists will have nothing to do with any of them.”
They’ve also gone after Cruz directly in another way. They released the domain Lucifer2016.com, and someone made it redirect to the Ted Cruz/Carly Fiorina campaign website.
The Satanic Temple is not truly a Satan-worshipping group. Their beliefs are more in line with humanism:
“A system of values and beliefs that is based on the idea that people are basically good and that problems can be solved using reason instead of religion.”
Additionally, here are the basic tenets of the Satanic Temple:
- One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
- The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
- One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
- The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo your own.
- Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
- People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
- Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
Here is a video of Lucien Greaves talking about the Temple:
Featured image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr, available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
