Following an Alaska Supreme Court ruling last year upholding the right of anyone to offer the invocation at government meetings, a Satanic Temple member opened a regional Kenai Peninsula Borough this week by declaring “Hail Satan.”
“That which will not bend, must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared as demise. It is done, hail Satan,” Satanic Temple member Iris Fontana said in her "prayer," according to Kenai radio station KSRM.
According to the Associated Press, Fontana was just one of several people, including a Jewish woman and an atheist, who brought a lawsuit represented by the ACLU of Alaska after the Kenai local government barred them from giving the official invocation at their meetings.
Fontana’s direct appeal to Satan reportedly caused about a dozen government officials and attendees to walk out of the meeting, including borough Mayor Charlie Pierce.
The Satanic Temple has made a major push over the past few years to insert itself into local government proceedings as a form of protest over government inclusion of other faiths, particularly Christianity. On top of raising copious lawsuits against localities that don't bend to their wishes, the group has pointedly erected disturbing statues of Baphomet, a goat-headed demon surrounded by small children, outside government buildings that feature the Ten Commandments or the cross.