Revision as of 01:19, 10 March 2023

Jul 29, 2013 at 2:29 am
Conversations With Dwyer: Lucien Greaves, Satanic Temple/Activist
Lucien Greaves has been stirring up a lot of controversy due to the 'Pink Mass' he performed over the grave of founding member of the Wesboro Baptist Church, Fred Phelps, mother. The ritual turns straight people gay in the afterlife. Mr. Greaves joins me on a riveting talk about the 'Pink Mass', the media's irresponsibility, as well as misconceptions about satanism.
https://shows.acast.com/mattdwyer_x/episodes/lucien-greaves-satanic-templeactivist

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Archival footage supplied by archive.org

Transcript

Transcipt without bolded names remains auto-generated and not manually corrected by an individual listener.

Intro

00:00:01 [Intro]

00:02:51 Matt Dwyer: Hello, welcome to Conversations with Dwyer. I'm Dwyer. I'm really excited about this episode. Super excited. Before I tell you what it is I just don't want to say that the music theme music was playing to be like that music, check out more price points.com and I am really excited because today I speak with Lucien Greaves, who is part of the Satanic Temple. And I don't know if you've heard this thing that was going on around in the news lately. It's still going on. But he and his people performed a pink mass over the grave of Fred Phelps who founded the Westboro Baptist Church hit the over his mother's grave a ritual that would turn her homosexual in the afterlife and it has stirred up a lot of controversy and I think it's awesome and hilarious I'm not gonna waste any time we're just gonna get right into this. Please enjoy this conversation now...

00:04:16 I don't know in the rest of it, but in my social media feed your story comes up it's constant what? And it's been an ever ongoing sort of saga you I guess we should go to what you did for those of my listeners who don't. You performed a pink mass over Fred Phelps, his mother's who of course if people I'm sure everybody knows who the hell Fred Phelps is founder of Westboro Baptist Church. What exactly is a pink mass?

00:04:49 Lucien Greaves: A ceremony in which we had a couple homosexuals affirm their... What would you say? I don't know... made out and got all gay, at her grave site, while I officiated in some words and everything else, and it was all very ceremonial, and I wore my horns and everything else. And the point of which is the idea that now, Fred Phelps, his mother is gay in the afterlife. But the thing is something a lot of people haven't noticed, even though I've told this to many of the interviewers, we don't actually believe in the supernatural. What we're putting forward now is that we believe that due to his beliefs, we have obligated Fred Phelps to believe that his mother is gay in the afterlife. And nobody can challenge our right to believe that Fred Phelps believe that his mother is now gay.

00:05:57 Matt Dwyer: Is he... Does he believe this actually happened that his mother is my become...

00:06:05 Lucien Greaves: We believe we believe that you must believe that his mother is gay. And he hasn't made any statement about that. Westboro Baptist spokesperson made a statement to the to ABC. And all he said was that it didn't matter if we're dancing on graves, or dancing and hot air balloons or some other thing. Homosexuality is a sin and the wages of sin is death. And that just makes you wonder if there's anything you can say, if there's any volume at which you could scream into their ears, in which they would actually understand what you're saying to them, because it doesn't address the question at all, doesn't address the question of homosexuality and the afterlife, or conscious thought and the afterlife. It doesn't they don't go anywhere that really explains their religious perspective in general, where do they fall on issues of supernatural belief and the Second Coming or whatever else? Their broken record, and all they can say is that homosexuality is a sin, the wages of sin are death. And I guess it's just too confusing to them the idea of gay and they asked her life that they still hold to this mantra that way to defend his death, even for the dead apparently.

00:07:24 Matt Dwyer: So she she dies again, I guess, is like...

00:07:30 Lucien Greaves: Well, she's going to now they seem to think that anytime somebody dies, that is because of homosexuality. I guess. Somebody just wouldn't die if they weren't homosexual. So we'll be waiting to see what happens to Fred Phelps.

00:07:46 Matt Dwyer: That's the only response they gave? There was no other...

Legal Threats regarding "Pink Mass"

00:07:52 Lucien Greaves: Yeah, it was a response that creditor match the question. But I'm glad to see that they they recently tweeted the story that the sheriff in Meridian, Mississippi intends to arrest me and press charges. So, Westboro Baptists are clearly paying attention to what's going on here.

00:08:13 Matt Dwyer: They're... And they're trying to press charges for desecrating the grave, which isn't that sort of...

00:08:20 Lucien Greaves: Yeah. But what's interesting is a couple days before they released an article, they released a statement and they said, at a minimum, that what I was looking at was trespassing, indecent exposure, and criminal mischief. And that was at a minimum, they said, and I was wondering how those fits. Exactly. And I was looking up the standards for those. Well, now, apparently, none of those are, are at issue at all. And now they're opting for desecration of a grave; when they might as well as stuck with criminal mischief because it still does not fit. If you look up any of the legal standards for desecration. It involves some type of material damage or vandalism, you have to damage the grave you have to vandalize the grave, or it consists of digging up the grave, whether you're trying to harvest organs or whatever, quite bones, whatever you're doing. None of that happened. We left the cemetery exactly as we found it. Ours was a crime of expression. And it wasn't a crime at all. It's just that the sheriff was offended. And he feels he needs to be able to do something about it. And he's willing to contort the law in such a way to try to bring criminal charges against us because he was offended, and that's an abuse of authority. And if he was being responsible, he would have told the offended people of Meridian, Mississippi, the truth, and the truth is that he's powerless to do anything about it, and that the same exceptions and exemptions that are enjoyed by the guys at the Westboro Baptist Church can be enjoyed by the Satanic Temple as well. It didn't matter how disgusted these people felt by the sentiments of at all.

00:10:05 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, it's interesting with within our country, there's, there's when they say we have freedom of religion, that's a real narrow, actual statement, that statement is very narrow, because it's like, it's not true. People who have a variety of religions are not allowed to practice fully. And it's very discriminate like, I mean, Satanism, I think is, when you say is very misunderstood.

00:10:33 Lucien Greaves: See, is not only misunderstood, it's fairly newly created, really, I mean, it's been it's, we have this cultural backgrounds of this idea of Satanism, we have this long running aesthetic of Satanism, we have all these things that were absorbed under the umbrella of what people perceive as Satanism, and these are elements, symbols, and everything else from various obscure religions and everything else. But Satanism, as, as we know, it is is often described to us, as does not have an unbroken tradition, a doctrine that we can look back at, that goes back to Biblical or pre biblical times up into the present, although you might hear these asinine claims that it does. What we think we know about Satanism has always come from witch hunter mythology. And demonization of peoples is what we know now has been converted from blood libel against the Jews, even. Even the more simple minds turn the homosexual agenda into something similar to this titanic threat. So we've taken this symbolism, this idea, and we've turned it into. We haven't really, you know, in a vacuum turned it into to anything. And Tom Levey put together a doctrine of Satanism in the in the 60s. And that's kind of a jumping off point for us also. And I feel it's important to have something like this out in the culture to actually do things in the name of faith. Because it is such a subjective term, that it forces people to evaluate what we really mean by that kind of terminology, what it really means to be a Satanist. And it's hopefully, to people who are astute enough just to see this brings forward this the reality that there is no inherent value on the label Satanism, and that is that the think so is a supernatural belief. Some people are simple enough that they feel like if whatever you're doing, if you call it Satanism, if you're channeling, channeling the will of an actual red guy with horns on his head, or whatever else seems beaten, in that you can't possibly be doing positive feeds. And we've seen things like that when a Christian news outlet posted a story about our bid for the adaptive highway campaign in New York City. And a lot of the comments were of that variety where people felt that there was an inherent value of Satanism. And no matter what we ourselves even thought we were doing, we were going to be doing evil that was going to lead inexorably toward murder sacrifice or whatever else. That simply isn't true. And when we do these things, it's partially in mockery of those people.

00:13:46 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, it's a it's kind of amazing. They don't pick up on that. Like, and because it's, I mean, I when I first read the article about the the pink mass it is now it was because part of me was like, Is this something that the pink mass is that an actual existing, say, tannic thing or was that I was like, or is this just a created thing just to fuck with the Westboro Baptist Church and

00:14:19 Lucien Greaves: well we we created it Yeah, but what's what's been hilarious in the coverage is how some of these news sources just picked right up on it so everybody knows what a pink mass is, you know, we released this idea of a pink mass and that we did the pink mass and then we get these news stories popping up where it says Satan has performed pink mass in in they say without qualification so now pick mass it's just become this part of the vernacular perhaps I really don't. It's hard to know from the inside what the what effect on the general culture this will have but you Google a pink mass now you get tons of hits and all generated from when we do Did this event and you have polls online where people are asking what do you think of the tank mass and things like that. So now it's become this thing is an actual. It's an actual event. So yeah, we created it. And it's a real thing now.

00:15:17 Matt Dwyer: It shows a little bit of flaw in journalism to that nobody decided to see if that was. I mean it because it's to see if that was a pre existing thing. It just shows them getting the media getting excited about, you know who Satan and Westboro because I kind of partial Well,

00:15:37 Lucien Greaves: you have to see that you have to see the news report from Meridian itself when they first announced that charges were going to be filed against us. The it's, it's a hilarious work of art, because they for one thing it seemed to be talking about the ritual is though, it's a fact we turned his mother gay in the afterlife. So that alone is something surreal to see on a news outlet. You know, the idea that these these guys went to a cemetery and turned to a woman gay in the afterlife. And that being reported in the straightforward manner, without any sense of irony, and nobody cracking a chuckle. But what was also remarkable to me is that the sheriff released a statement saying that it was an unusual crime, and one that he has not come across in a long time. And I thought, What in the hell is he talking about? When is he come across this before?

00:16:37 Matt Dwyer: But that's the thing is, if they want to press charges, your debt seems like you guys are you're in another state. So it's gonna be pretty hard. Like they're not going to spend the 1000s of dollars it is to, to come after you to send you back to Mississippi for a misdemeanor.

00:16:56 Lucien Greaves: Well, right, and it seems like if you look at some of the comments on the articles, when we first performed the think mass in the in the news really started rolling in the comments, I was surprised, then were largely in our favor. People were saying, Oh, good, good job. This is, you know, irrelevant. Counter protests to the tastelessness of the Westboro Baptist Church and stuff like that. But there's still a sizable smattering of people saying this does no good. And this makes these guys no better than than Westboro Baptists. And people were upset about it. And for some reason, assuming that we were staying the name of much broader categories, like this makes all gay people look bad or whatever else. And I really have no idea where these people get off thinking that I would even try to put myself forward as a spokesperson for a group that broad but or why we would legitimize other people who might think that we do, but but after the sheriff announced that he was going to arrest us, you can see the comments are pretty much universally in our favor. They really rally people behind us. So Huffington Post released a piece today, and it sounds like the sheriff is really tamped down his rhetoric. When he was saying when they were earlier reporting that arrest for him, and now he seems to be saying that, you know, he's filed charges, and that I'll be arrested if I come back into Lauderdale County. And in that it is a misdemeanor offense, and the charge would would would not involve any jail time most likely be under $500. And it's fine. And he's he's come out and said that now. And I think it's in the midst of some type of criticism that, that I've been laying out there that it's rather an abuse of authority in general to take a instance of expression and try to criminalize it because you're offended.

00:19:10 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, well, the good thing is it sounds like a part of the country no one would really want to revisit anyway. So I think you're I think you're safe.

00:19:20 Lucien Greaves: Unless there's just not much there, then people we ran into were very nice. And in fact, one funny aside is that afterward, we went to a restaurant and bartender asked us what who we were what we were doing there. It's still a small enough territory that somebody would ask. And while everybody else was scrambling for cover stories, I told them exactly who we were what we had done. And wow, he laughed. He laughed and patted me on the back and he did not believe a single word of it. And he's the guy I've been wondering about since he's, you know, I've been one wondering what he's made of this now?

00:20:03 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, it's It's probably some attention that Tom didn't expect to get. Do you know? Do you think because I've often questioned that the Westboro Baptist Church is a bit of a media created problem, because it's not a very I don't it's not a very big job, isn't it? Only 40 members?

00:20:27 Lucien Greaves: Yes. Something, something around that. For sure.

00:20:29 Matt Dwyer: I feel like, if the press didn't give them so much attention, no one would give a shit. But it's like, and there's so many more new worthy... news. I can't speak. It just seems like a very frivolous thing for the media to really spend that much time focusing on. Like in Yeah.

00:20:48 Lucien Greaves: So the thing is, is the ritual of course and the visit to the cemetery is far less important than having this in the news. And I feel like it's fun to it's, it's fun to manufacture the news in such a way that it does work against them. Because it is fine to think that now you have these new sources reporting as though it's it's a concrete fact that Fred Phelps his mother is gay in the afterlife. How surreal is that? It's kind of you know, it's kind of the the media turnaround. I'm not sure if that's exactly the kind of press they they approve of. Or like, I guess Westboro Baptist seems to think any press is good press. I don't. I'm not exactly sure that that's accurate. I think these are probably some very miserable, lonely people and and they're not doing they're not doing anything positive to their own cause to their own ends.

00:21:52 Matt Dwyer: Have you ever met or spoke with any of them?

00:21:57 Lucien Greaves: No, the thing was, is the idea for this came up when, after the Boston Marathon bombings, and I was in Boston with with a friend of mine, who's also part of the Satanic Temple. And the Westboro Baptist Church was saying that they were going to pick it, the funerals of the victims of bombing. And that was that was very aggravating and we decided, well, we're going to go, we're going to go and we're going to see if we can meet these people face to face as a Satanic Temple. And we meet them there. So we went in, we waited for them, and there were a lot of Bostonians waiting for the Westboro Baptist Church. And the Baptist had a failure of nerve and decided that they couldn't face that kind of angry mob, which is probably good for their physical safety. But we decided it but they released a statement they tweeted a photoshopped picture of one of them hovering over the crowd with their anti gay signs and God Hates Fags rhetoric and everything else and he tweeted some kind of message about how they were there and spirits and they were acquitted. See that? We had all been thinking of that. So we thought how can we meet them spiritually? This time on our own terms, so that's when we thought of the pink mass

00:23:33 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, it's good they didn't I think I have a lot of friends from Boston and they would have I think that was the one time that somebody would have probably finally taken a baseball bat to some of them I thought it was gonna happen at another day I forget what else they protested recently but and they just protest they protested a year ago they were protesting the Home Run Derby I'm like, where what is the what is the connection like what are you just you just media Hungry Horse really

00:24:12 Lucien Greaves: hungry and but I don't think that necessarily means they should be ignored either. I I do not hold to the Christian value of turn the other cheek. And I think like for like, at the very least is is an order for certain things. I hope we offended in disgust and Phelps. I hope we caused some consternation. I hope he dies soon. And I hope he has a miserable time when he does.

00:24:43 Matt Dwyer: I don't Yeah, I you know, if if karma exists, it's it's not going to be good for the because it's like you can't I just It's strange to me because most people gravitate towards spiritual beliefs and religion too. because they're trying to become a better person. And all that comes from them is hate in. And I think violence like it's not direct actual physical violence, but there's violence within what they do and it's harmful to, then it probably does spurn, spawn other kinds of...

00:25:21 Lucien Greaves: People are drawn to their religions for different reasons. And I think we see when it comes to priests in the Catholic Church and other things that so in Rick Santorum that some people are drawn to the church, I think, due to due to certain types of self loathing and repressed desire, and they see a certain doctrine that they feel will save them from these impulses that they've been conditioned to have such shame in. So I think that's why you find these repressed homosexual factions within. Within the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, and I'm sure probably within Scientology in the other religions that are explicitly anti gay, I think you'll find people who grew up in areas that weren't tolerant towards towards homosexuality will gravitate towards some of these religions, because they think it can be can reform them or keep them in check or whatever. And that kind of thing is wreak havoc on your on your psychology, of course, it'll turn you into a Rick Santorum, or Sean Hannity, or any of these other clearly gay individuals. I think that's where the hate and outrage comes from.

TST "supporting" Rick Scott

00:26:43 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, and I saw another thing that you guys were You were supporting Rick Scott, for Governor of Florida. Is that correct?

00:26:54 Lucien Greaves: No, we weren't supporting him. For governor of Florida. We did a rally in defense of his Senate Bill 98. And we were trying to be quite clear, this is another case for the message kind of gets away from you, because you start talking to journalists, and they start really editing down to very selective quotes. We're very clear on the fact that we were supporting only Senate Bill 98. And, and his courage in that case of pushing that through, because what Senate Bill 98 was, was it allowed for inspirational messages in school essentially allowed for prayer in school. And so we decided that we would just take a very literal perspective on that. And the legalistic perspective, which is that this bill being pushed through wasn't necessarily for all religions, it was for anybody who, you know, any group, minority or otherwise, that would put forward their specific inspirational message. So we decided to look at this in a positive way. And we determine that well, now. Children are allowed to pray to satan in school, mechanic literature can be brought in, and children who might not be introduced to Satanism, otherwise, now will have the opportunity for that exposure due to Rick Scott's Senate Bill 98. Now, people have suggested that this was, this would definitely be an unintended consequence of the Christian conservative Rick Scott's real agenda. But we said that he that as it may, it could serve to our benefit, and we supported it, we want people to know we supported it, and that we would plan to take advantage of similar laws in the future.

00:28:54 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, it doesn't seem like a lot of people try to spin those kind of cars when into their favor, like I mean, what what you did is you're using it as a means to which it should be if they're allowed to have Christian prayer, like then why is there not a Satan prayer?

00:29:12 Lucien Greaves: Yeah, well, one thing we're doing now is we're collecting information from our membership. And we particularly want to know what county they live in, if you have listeners who would stand up and be willing to identify themselves and sadness in their county, For this cause. Reason is, is that if one of them happens to be in a county, where say the courthouse is allowed a 10 commandments monument to be placed there. If we have somebody represented in residency in that county, we can assert our right to put a satanic monument at the same courthouse. And if they're going to allow that kind of encroachment into the public square, that's just fine. Because it's there for everyone. And we We'll take advantage of that.

00:30:03 Matt Dwyer: Though you said something interesting if people when you said, I guess you said if they're strong enough to stand up, or I'm paraphrasing, or but are a lot of people afraid to admit there's Satanists in certain parts of the I mean, is it? Because it is such a misunderstood?

00:30:19 Lucien Greaves: Well, maybe not as many people is shouldn't be afraid of that. I mean, I feel I fully know what I'm putting myself up for what kind of what kind of abuse they might get from this everything else. I'm surprised actually at the amount of people we've gotten who unquestionably, unquestionably said, yeah, we'll stand up for it, the more people do it, the easier it becomes for sure. So I wouldn't want to scare them away from that, but just the same, it is something I think you and I know can cause you a great deal of harm, and bring a great deal of prejudice upon you. And that's why when we're doing this, and as we're doing this, we have to make the message is clear as possible. And we have to get it to as broad an audience as possible. And we have a mission to do nothing less than change the entire culture and how he thinks of this kind of thing. Before, before we can walk away from this position, position we put ourselves in, I think.

00:31:22 Matt Dwyer: Do you feel like people are becoming a little bit more accepting of it or more aware? Or is it still pretty...

00:31:29 Lucien Greaves: I think now is the time. And I think his actions like the ones we did that will do it. A lot of people are looking at what we did, at what we've done so far as being, you know, merely political statements and in humorous theater, therefore not real Satanism. And I'm saying, I can't be both, you know, why can't somebody make those kinds of statements organize themselves in this way, and be a quote unquote, real Satanist. But then it begs the question of what is a real Satanist? We define Satanism on our own terms, but we're completely free to do so because you're going to define them on other terms that are pre existing, those are completely made up terms from which Hans and everything else. You know, we don't arbitrarily latch on to the aesthetic of Satanism, either. That's something near and dear to me. Although I'm not homicidal, I'm not. I'm not psychopathic. I, I have goodwill toward people and want to bring compassionate works into into the culture and I feel like important that people realize that, that people like me can feel that way about our social interactions and in be productive members of society.

What drew "Lucien Greaves" to Satanism

00:32:49 Matt Dwyer: What was was there? What What drew you to Satanism?

00:32:54 Lucien Greaves: Actually, well, I grew up in the shadow of the Satanic Panic. So when I was a kid, there was these stories, you know, gherardo, ran special everything else. There's the stories of the of the homicidal roving hordes of Satanists with the mobile crematoriums and all that other kinds of things. And these actually terrified me. And you know, his story is heavy metal music causes, you know, has hidden satanic subliminal messages, and Dungeons and Dragons, leads you to suicide and that kind of thing. In in these things, terrified me as a kid, and then I kind of forgot about it kind of faded out. And then later on, I started wondering, where did this all go, I was remembering these ridiculous stories that had hit the mainstream press. And I was kind of thinking that I must have kind of conflated it in my head as a child. But was there some truth, this idea of satanic calls, I became really interested in the idea of, of subcultures of hidden subcultures, you know, you'll hear about serial killers, and you'll hear about small groups, even killers, or whatever else, usually no more than two. And even then they usually can't hold together without getting caught sooner at some point. But the idea of a whole hidden society, operating outside of the social norms and morals of regular regular civilization, is that even possible because you build an algorithm that will show the limits of that, and you know, some of the Satanic Panic, people who are still around today will point to a gas tech culture and say, well see they did ritual sacrifice. Yes. But that wasn't mainstream culture when they were doing it with people who are raised on this idea that of our own culture. Moore's are they are, can you really get a group of people together that are going to hold this conspiracy of silence. And it became more and more apparent that what was being presented at that time just wasn't true at all. And I actually went out looking for the status, you know, find the truth about about Satanism. And, of course, there was the Church of Satan, which was already pretty much defunct at this this time it is it still exists, actually. But it's really it's just a website and they sell, they sell membership cards, they don't really do anything, at least not that I can sell. And a lot of the conspiracy theorists were saying, Well, the most dangerous calls in the world was the process, church and final judgment. And I actually went and found the old inner circle membership of the process and talk to some of them found a completely different story than the one that was put forward. And from there, from this idea of modern Satanism, I actually dug back to see if there was real Satanism by reliable historical reports. And what you find there is that there is a certain consistency in historical claims. But these aren't uncommon. Anytime you get somebody, some people together and try to get them to come up with the most pray things they can think of a group of people doing. So when they create an out group, whether it be Jews, and it has been used at several points, or anybody else, often sadness, there's a certain there's a certain catalogue of material we go through with things that disgust us. And I illustrated this in a lecture I gave at the Harvard Graduate School of Education on the topic of Satanism, where I asked the people in the audience to write down on a three by five card. The five I think it was most depraved anti human activities they could think of, and they were generally uniform, and they fit these allegations of Satanism. Also, you know, and it doesn't mean that a group of because these people came up with a fairly uniform idea of what the ultimate evils are. It just means we're in agreement on that. It doesn't mean that there's a group of secretly operating that does these things in the background. So this argument that the that the reports are fairly consistent, really mean nothing, because they're only consistent on those broad details. And the history just does not support the idea that there is any unbroken doctrine or tradition of Satanism that extends back beyond 1966.

00:37:40 Matt Dwyer: What do you what do you think the drum like that that scare was all about like, what was the was that just sensationalist news? Or was there actually something?

00:37:49 Lucien Greaves: Well, there's a, there was a confluence of factors at that time. And I've read a lot about this and researched a lot about it. And there's a movement that still goes on, let's still insist on putting forward Satanic Panic ideas. It still does encroach sometimes in the courtrooms and in ruins, people's lives and everything else. And it's something a lot of people don't realize is just how this still does happen. And that's what makes, you know, our project. Importantly, but what happened in the 80s was, culture was changing. A lot of a lot of single parents who are now single parents were becoming more than norm in divorce parents and, and working parents were both the mother and father were working. So the daycare culture started propping up and people were worried that children being raised in daycares was was going to destroy them with a moral fabric of our culture, and who are these people watching over the children. And there was a general called scare. That was kind of a backlash from the 60s and 70s and the Jim Jones calls and everything else. So the idea of cults and brainwashing became this big idea also, and you had religious conservatives, worried about Satan and Satanism as they, as they always are. And you also had these therapists who had this therapy movements for multiple personality disorder became this big idea. And with multiple personality disorder, is kind of hinges on this idea that certain traumas are so so explicitly in comprehensible to the conscious mind that they are repressed. So people can have these buried memories of highly traumatic events. They have no recollection of it, but it causes different types of melees in their in their daily life in other ways somebody has trouble holding a job. Well, you know, maybe they were molested as a child and And totally forgot about it. It just kind of made its way into the culture where people still think that this is actually a fact of psychology. But there's no cognitive science back to this idea. And you had these you had some of these therapists practicing recovered memory therapies where they would try to draw off for the memories of abuse that had caused these people to have whatever problems they're having today. And this is the same tactic by which people are regressed to recall past lives or by which people recall that they were abducted by aliens is is confabulation, you know, they, they put into a hypnotic state, and they have this general idea of what they're supposed to be remembering. Obviously, there's supposed to be a trauma in the background is usually supposed to be a sexual trauma involving incest. Well, as these stories would come out, there was also this idea that these recovered memories were of high fidelity, they were sitting in the mind untouched, so they must be true. If these memories were recovered, that alone is evidence of their truth, their veracity is unimpeachable. Oh, they run into these problems where the facts don't match, you know, geographical location, whatever else that somebody wasn't there when he's claiming he's supposed to be less than somebody or whatever, medical records don't exist. And so to explain that away, it becomes a larger conspiracy, you know, so you have these kinds of converging factors. And then you just have this huge satanic scare because they had the McMartin preschool case where one kid was claimed to have been molested at the school. And it turns out, the woman who, who was the mother of that child was schizophrenic, and they'd often made these outrageous claims anyway, but the whole idea devolved in this hysteria, because they then had the kid questions really interrogated by these by these unqualified therapist who felt that the, the only way to get the truth out of these children was to essentially browbeat them into into saying that they were molested, you can watch the tapes on these kinds of cases, like Martin Keller daycare case, Gerald emerald, these types of things. So they put forward this idea also that children can possibly make this thing up, but they made the ideas quite clear to the children what they were looking for. So they get these outrageous stories of the satanic calls at this McMartin preschool Center, which couldn't possibly have been true in. But being that you had such a huge social panic of the court, sometimes were cowed into imprisoning people for many years at a time. And, and as I said, this kind of thing still happens today, some Dan and Fran Keller ran a daycare center and their case is still on appeal. They've been in prison, they've been in prison all this time for the exact same type of thing. And you still have people claiming savings and you still have these therapists, you still have the pockets of therapists who work in dissociative disorders. Now multiple personality disorder is called dissociative identity disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. And they're still putting out this idea that this satanic ritual abuse exists and is and is a thing. And they really do need a group to counter this to ask them to qualify what they say about Satanism, and who they mean when they're talking about Satanists. And how they can just throw that word out there like that, as we all know what they're talking about. And I'm hoping that we can be a proper counter force to that.

What's next on the agenda?

00:44:13 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, is there... what do you have anything that is next on your agenda in any plans to... I don't know...

00:44:23 Lucien Greaves: Well, I indicated earlier that we were reaching out to people to know what county they're in. And that as far as the agenda for sure. And we also, we also want to give our membership, certain religious exemptions to we're in the we're in the process now of incorporating everything else. We have to get that all in order. But we want our our membership to enjoy certain exemptions that we feel are proper for them, due to our belief. And one of those places that the body is inviolable, subject to one's own will alone and um, for that matter, we feel that women within the Satanic Temple cannot be cannot be imposed upon with, with what are those those aggressive ultrasounds, internal ultrasounds, that type of thing, nor can the children be subjected to corporal punishment, we would like to put put out a a waiver at the beginning of the school year for anybody who would have a child with us, that makes the school agree that the child cannot be subjected to corporal punishment in places where it's allowed. I don't know if you realize what a problem corporal punishment still is, but it's Savage is it's a savage practice that's still allowed in many states over here. And and we have a number of things we're in the planning phases for but I think you get the gist of where we're going with this.

00:45:56 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, it's an interesting what you're saying about the ultrasound, that's an injury, because if it is your religious beliefs, then they can't impose that on you.

00:46:04 Lucien Greaves: Well, and we feel that it was only imposed to begin with due to somebody else's religious beliefs.

00:46:09 Matt Dwyer: Absolutely, yeah.

00:46:10 Lucien Greaves: And in part of the messages here, is that this this whole thing cuts both ways. You know?

00:46:16 Matt Dwyer: I can't imagine that some of your work is you've got to be getting some hostile mail. Or, or threats.

00:46:26 Lucien Greaves: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I always have.

00:46:31 Matt Dwyer: Yeah, you're surely stirring up this a pot and a pot that needs surely needs to be stirred. And I meant to follow up on this, but we got carried away on something else. But when you were talking about the Adopt a Highway, are they... could because there's actually a highway, a chunk of highway very close to where I live, that is by an atheist owned by an atheist organization not owned, but you know, adopted? And did they have did you have? Are they saying you can't have a chunk of highway? Or is that I'm assuming you're coming up against a great amount of...

Adopt-A-Highway Fundraiser

00:47:08 Lucien Greaves: Oh, no, no, nobody said we can't hear. But we haven't actually submitted for it yet. We're just raising funds to not only adopt the highway, but for the maintenance of the highway. Because we'll have two years of maintenance. We intend to take that seriously. And we want to be sure we're, we're fully equipped and armed to do that. But we have stated, we set up an IndieGoGo page for the for crowdsource funds to to make the adopted highway a reality. But we stated that if this money this money will go towards the Adopt a Highway. If we're denied up the highway, it will the money will go towards contesting that decision.

00:47:50 Matt Dwyer: Can you do a chunk of can you do a pink mass on that chunk of the highway. So when everybody drives on that mile, they're gay for a mile?

00:48:00 Lucien Greaves: We might have to think about it. Think NASA is taken off into being such a big thing that people have made all kinds of requests regarding, you know, variations on a pink mass, it's we've had no shortage of messages from people suggesting other targets of the pink mass to us.

00:48:14 Matt Dwyer: My mom is she's very conservative Christian. And so when she dies, believe me, I'm going to be calling you for a pink mass because I want my mom getting. I want my mom getting multi tagged by lesbian. I want my mom hit with a strap on. I don't know if that's a line to say. But that's what... Now, if somebody is listening to this, and they're curious about Satanism, and which direction can where can they go to educate themselves properly?

00:48:51 Lucien Greaves: Well, we have a website, TheSatanicTemple.com. And we were very straightforward on where we're coming from there. And we do have more to add, we're going to add about the issues we want to specifically take on and things like that. It has all been moving rather fast. But I feel like the the material we have on TheSatanicTemple.com is a good primer. And also put up the lecture notes from the Harvard presentation I did on it on this site also. So those are great points to know where we're coming from. But I think it's I think it's important people realize that that's where that's where we're coming from is the core of the group. And but we're not trying to take a stranglehold approach on to what is Satan as your what your beliefs should be. Some other groups are really hell bent on defining people's beliefs for them because they don't do anything else on an active level. What's important for us is is our Our actions and when and how we change the culture how we bring these things into the public sphere and add to the dialogue. So, though I'm atheistic, if somebody holds on to some kind of theistic perspective of this, that's fine so long as they agree that the organization shouldn't be run. Atheist agree processes should be run atheist Stickley. Just in the same way science must run atheist Stickley, because you can't stop at a supernatural answer. There's no mechanistic cause for something supernatural. So you've, you've cut yourself out from whatever the answer may be. Right? So, I mean, that's an extra that's kind of a maybe confusing, convoluted response. But we are willing to embrace people of all various perspectives, so long as they agree on the basic tenets of compassion, general goodwill, and in the fact that we don't we don't abuse people we don't advocate sacrifice or anything else. If you do, we want no part of that. But it's really your activities that are your actions and how you how you go about expressing your religion and you're unsure of what's correct.

Websites and Social Media

00:51:28 Matt Dwyer: And what were what are your various websites and other forms people can go and find

00:51:36 Lucien Greaves: Well, TheSatanicTemple.com. That's, that's, that's primary. We have a Facebook page for sure. And we do have a Twitter feed. That's, that's SatanicPsalms, PS-A-LMS. Satanic Psalms. This is our at tag, if you that's how you say it in Twitter language.

00:51:59 Matt Dwyer: Okay.

00:52:00 Lucien Greaves: Follow us there too. And then that's where our updates come through.

00:52:04 Matt Dwyer: Great. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me. I hope you enjoyed it.

00:52:12 Lucien Greaves: I did I hope I didn't get too too complicated into too abstract.

00:52:20 Matt Dwyer: No, I didn't think so at all. But I also great, great, but thank you very much.

00:52:25 Lucien Greaves: Thank you. And, you know, check in with me anytime I'd be happy to do any follow up interviews you have.

00:52:38 [Outro]

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+''Transcipt without'' '''bolded''' ''names remains auto-generated and not manually corrected by an individual listener.''
+==Intro==
 :00:01	[Intro]
@@ Line 26: / Line 33: @@
 :07:46	Matt Dwyer: That's the only response they gave? There was no other...
+==Legal Threats regarding "Pink Mass"==
 :07:52	Lucien Greaves: Yeah, it was a response that creditor match the question. But I'm glad to see that they they recently tweeted the story that the sheriff in Meridian, Mississippi intends to arrest me and press charges. So, Westboro Baptists are clearly paying attention to what's going on here.
@@ Line 72: / Line 80: @@
 :25:21	Lucien Greaves: People are drawn to their religions for different reasons. And I think we see when it comes to priests in the Catholic Church and other things that so in Rick Santorum that some people are drawn to the church, I think, due to due to certain types of self loathing and repressed desire, and they see a certain doctrine that they feel will save them from these impulses that they've been conditioned to have such shame in. So I think that's why you find these repressed homosexual factions within. Within the Catholic Church and other Christian churches, and I'm sure probably within Scientology in the other religions that are explicitly anti gay, I think you'll find people who grew up in areas that weren't tolerant towards towards homosexuality will gravitate towards some of these religions, because they think it can be can reform them or keep them in check or whatever. And that kind of thing is wreak havoc on your on your psychology, of course, it'll turn you into a Rick Santorum, or Sean Hannity, or any of these other clearly gay individuals. I think that's where the hate and outrage comes from.
+==TST "supporting" Rick Scott==
 :26:43	Matt Dwyer: Yeah, and I saw another thing that you guys were You were supporting Rick Scott, for Governor of Florida. Is that correct?
@@ Line 88: / Line 97: @@
 :31:29	Lucien Greaves: I think now is the time. And I think his actions like the ones we did that will do it. A lot of people are looking at what we did, at what we've done so far as being, you know, merely political statements and in humorous theater, therefore not real Satanism. And I'm saying, I can't be both, you know, why can't somebody make those kinds of statements organize themselves in this way, and be a quote unquote, real Satanist. But then it begs the question of what is a real Satanist? We define Satanism on our own terms, but we're completely free to do so because you're going to define them on other terms that are pre existing, those are completely made up terms from which Hans and everything else. You know, we don't arbitrarily latch on to the aesthetic of Satanism, either. That's something near and dear to me. Although I'm not homicidal, I'm not. I'm not psychopathic. I, I have goodwill toward people and want to bring compassionate works into into the culture and I feel like important that people realize that, that people like me can feel that way about our social interactions and in be productive members of society.
+==What drew "Lucien Greaves" to Satanism==
 :32:49	Matt Dwyer: What was was there? What What drew you to Satanism?
@@ Line 96: / Line 106: @@
 :37:49	Lucien Greaves: Well, there's a, there was a confluence of factors at that time. And I've read a lot about this and researched a lot about it. And there's a movement that still goes on, let's still insist on putting forward Satanic Panic ideas. It still does encroach sometimes in the courtrooms and in ruins, people's lives and everything else. And it's something a lot of people don't realize is just how this still does happen. And that's what makes, you know, our project. Importantly, but what happened in the 80s was, culture was changing. A lot of a lot of single parents who are now single parents were becoming more than norm in divorce parents and, and working parents were both the mother and father were working. So the daycare culture started propping up and people were worried that children being raised in daycares was was going to destroy them with a moral fabric of our culture, and who are these people watching over the children. And there was a general called scare. That was kind of a backlash from the 60s and 70s and the Jim Jones calls and everything else. So the idea of cults and brainwashing became this big idea also, and you had religious conservatives, worried about Satan and Satanism as they, as they always are. And you also had these therapists who had this therapy movements for multiple personality disorder became this big idea. And with multiple personality disorder, is kind of hinges on this idea that certain traumas are so so explicitly in comprehensible to the conscious mind that they are repressed. So people can have these buried memories of highly traumatic events. They have no recollection of it, but it causes different types of melees in their in their daily life in other ways somebody has trouble holding a job. Well, you know, maybe they were molested as a child and And totally forgot about it. It just kind of made its way into the culture where people still think that this is actually a fact of psychology. But there's no cognitive science back to this idea. And you had these you had some of these therapists practicing recovered memory therapies where they would try to draw off for the memories of abuse that had caused these people to have whatever problems they're having today. And this is the same tactic by which people are regressed to recall past lives or by which people recall that they were abducted by aliens is is confabulation, you know, they, they put into a hypnotic state, and they have this general idea of what they're supposed to be remembering. Obviously, there's supposed to be a trauma in the background is usually supposed to be a sexual trauma involving incest. Well, as these stories would come out, there was also this idea that these recovered memories were of high fidelity, they were sitting in the mind untouched, so they must be true. If these memories were recovered, that alone is evidence of their truth, their veracity is unimpeachable. Oh, they run into these problems where the facts don't match, you know, geographical location, whatever else that somebody wasn't there when he's claiming he's supposed to be less than somebody or whatever, medical records don't exist. And so to explain that away, it becomes a larger conspiracy, you know, so you have these kinds of converging factors. And then you just have this huge satanic scare because they had the McMartin preschool case where one kid was claimed to have been molested at the school. And it turns out, the woman who, who was the mother of that child was schizophrenic, and they'd often made these outrageous claims anyway, but the whole idea devolved in this hysteria, because they then had the kid questions really interrogated by these by these unqualified therapist who felt that the, the only way to get the truth out of these children was to essentially browbeat them into into saying that they were molested, you can watch the tapes on these kinds of cases, like Martin Keller daycare case, Gerald emerald, these types of things. So they put forward this idea also that children can possibly make this thing up, but they made the ideas quite clear to the children what they were looking for. So they get these outrageous stories of the satanic calls at this McMartin preschool Center, which couldn't possibly have been true in. But being that you had such a huge social panic of the court, sometimes were cowed into imprisoning people for many years at a time. And, and as I said, this kind of thing still happens today, some Dan and Fran Keller ran a daycare center and their case is still on appeal. They've been in prison, they've been in prison all this time for the exact same type of thing. And you still have people claiming savings and you still have these therapists, you still have the pockets of therapists who work in dissociative disorders. Now multiple personality disorder is called dissociative identity disorder in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. And they're still putting out this idea that this satanic ritual abuse exists and is and is a thing. And they really do need a group to counter this to ask them to qualify what they say about Satanism, and who they mean when they're talking about Satanists. And how they can just throw that word out there like that, as we all know what they're talking about. And I'm hoping that we can be a proper counter force to that.
+==What's next on the agenda?==
 :44:13	Matt Dwyer: Yeah, is there... what do you have anything that is next on your agenda in any plans to... I don't know...
@@ Line 114: / Line 125: @@
 :46:31	Matt Dwyer: Yeah, you're surely stirring up this a pot and a pot that needs surely needs to be stirred. And I meant to follow up on this, but we got carried away on something else. But when you were talking about the Adopt a Highway, are they... could because there's actually a highway, a chunk of highway very close to where I live, that is by an atheist owned by an atheist organization not owned, but you know, adopted? And did they have did you have? Are they saying you can't have a chunk of highway? Or is that I'm assuming you're coming up against a great amount of...
+==Adopt-A-Highway Fundraiser==
 :47:08	Lucien Greaves: Oh, no, no, nobody said we can't hear. But we haven't actually submitted for it yet. We're just raising funds to not only adopt the highway, but for the maintenance of the highway. Because we'll have two years of maintenance. We intend to take that seriously. And we want to be sure we're, we're fully equipped and armed to do that. But we have stated, we set up an IndieGoGo page for the for crowdsource funds to to make the adopted highway a reality. But we stated that if this money this money will go towards the Adopt a Highway. If we're denied up the highway, it will the money will go towards contesting that decision.
@@ Line 124: / Line 136: @@
 :48:51	Lucien Greaves: Well, we have a website, TheSatanicTemple.com. And we were very straightforward on where we're coming from there. And we do have more to add, we're going to add about the issues we want to specifically take on and things like that. It has all been moving rather fast. But I feel like the the material we have on TheSatanicTemple.com is a good primer. And also put up the lecture notes from the Harvard presentation I did on it on this site also. So those are great points to know where we're coming from. But I think it's I think it's important people realize that that's where that's where we're coming from is the core of the group. And but we're not trying to take a stranglehold approach on to what is Satan as your what your beliefs should be. Some other groups are really hell bent on defining people's beliefs for them because they don't do anything else on an active level. What's important for us is is our Our actions and when and how we change the culture how we bring these things into the public sphere and add to the dialogue. So, though I'm atheistic, if somebody holds on to some kind of theistic perspective of this, that's fine so long as they agree that the organization shouldn't be run. Atheist agree processes should be run atheist Stickley. Just in the same way science must run atheist Stickley, because you can't stop at a supernatural answer. There's no mechanistic cause for something supernatural. So you've, you've cut yourself out from whatever the answer may be. Right? So, I mean, that's an extra that's kind of a maybe confusing, convoluted response. But we are willing to embrace people of all various perspectives, so long as they agree on the basic tenets of compassion, general goodwill, and in the fact that we don't we don't abuse people we don't advocate sacrifice or anything else. If you do, we want no part of that. But it's really your activities that are your actions and how you how you go about expressing your religion and you're unsure of what's correct.
+==Websites and Social Media==
 :51:28	Matt Dwyer: And what were what are your various websites and other forms people can go and find

Podcasts/CwD-LucienGreaves: Difference between revisions