Satanic Prayer Will Open Florida Town Council Meeting If Chaz Stevens Has His Way

Man Requests Satanic Prayer Before Town Council Meeting
Chaz Stevens talks with reporters after setting up his Festivus pole made out of beer cans at the Florida Capitol building in Tallahassee, Fla., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Stevens placed the pole across from a Nativity scene. Since Florida considers the Statehouse rotunda to be a public forum, people can use the space to express themselves or protest, as long as they first apply with a state agency. (AP Photo/Brendan Farrington)
Chaz Stevens talks with reporters after setting up his Festivus pole made out of beer cans at the Florida Capitol building in Tallahassee, Fla., Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Stevens placed the pole across from a Nativity scene. Since Florida considers the Statehouse rotunda to be a public forum, people can use the space to express themselves or protest, as long as they first apply with a state agency. (AP Photo/Brendan Farrington)

Just three days after the Supreme Court ruled that sectarian legislative prayer was constitutional in Greece v. Galloway, a man in Deerfield Beach, Florida, requested to open a session of the town council or the Florida State Senate with a Satanic prayer, reports 12 News.

Chaz Stevens, a Satanist, explained to Raw Story:

I just want equal billing. We allow various religious nutjobs to give a prayer. They pray to Jesus who is make-believe, god who is make-believe, why not Satan who is make-believe? Why discriminate against one make-believe god over another? Satan and I are being circumvented. The city of Deerfield Beach has once again declared war on religion — and this time it’s Satanism.

Stevens previously made headlines last December when he successfully put up a secular Festivus pole made of beer cans in the Florida Capitol in protest of a nativity scene that was also displayed there.

Dear City of Deerfield Beach;
With the recent US Supreme Court ruling allowing “prayer before Commission meetings” and seeking the rights granted to others, I hereby am requesting I be allowed to open a Commission meeting praying for my God, my divine spirit, my Dude in Charge.
Be advised, I am a Satanist.
Let me know when this is good for you.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion in the case stated, “[t]o hold that invocations must be nonsectarian would force the legislatures that sponsor prayers and the courts that are asked to decide these cases to act as supervisors and censors of religious speech," meaning that prayers are allowed to be specific to a person's particular beliefs or traditions.

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