Satanic Temple: ‘More Than 50% of Our Membership is LGBTQ’
In an interview with the British magazine Attitude, Lucien Greaves, the co-founder of The Satanic Temple in the United States, says that “more than 50% of our membership is LGBTQ,” and that is a “conservative estimate.”
Attitude is a best-selling gay magazine, founded in 1994. The Satanic Temple was founded in 2013 and it promotes a secular humanist agenda. The Temple, based in Salem, Mass., denies that there is an actual Satan and it claims that it does not worship the Devil.
“It would be a conservative estimate to say that more than 50 per cent of our membership is LGBTQ,” Greaves told Attitude. “I think that’s because they feel disowned and disenfranchised from the traditional religious institutions.”
“So, you have a population willing to embrace a religious identification that is boldly willing to speak out to the contrary,” he said.
“Within the Satanic Temple, we’re all pretty much one and the same,” said Greaves. “We’re all Satanists and it’s not like we have ‘tolerance’ for trans people or gay people or sex workers — we just don’t f***ing care, and a lot of people in those communities appreciate that.”
Greaves, a pseudonym he uses reportedly to protect his family from death threats, went on to say that The Satanic Temple often participates in LGBT Pride parades and supports LGBT initiatives.
“Our chapters are always involved with Pride parades in the United States, they’re always doing something for the LGBTQ community and they’re always open about inclusion,” Greaves told Attitude.
He further said that The Satanic Temple supports abortion, as well as the gay agenda, and will fight attempts to roll back Roe v. Wade or laws that affect homosexuals.
“We will always fight them,” he said. “We will fight them to the death to ensure that there are equal rights for the gay community.”
The comments by Lucien Greaves were initially pubished in the Aug. 23 online edition of Attitude.