The Washington Post just posted a video of David Suhor giving a Satanic invocation to open a Pensacola City Council meeting. David Suhor represents the West Florida Chapter of The Satanic Temple (TSTWF).
The really appalling thing about this Washington Post video of the event is that a number of self-identified Xtians in the place try to shout down David Suhor’s invocation with their own prayers. That is NOT in the spirit of freedom of religion in the USA. Ideally, maybe Florida City Council meetings would not open with a prayer. This seems to be a bit of a violation of Church and State, but it becomes far more of a violation when some religions are invited to pray in public and others are not. Pensacola City Council President Charles Bare told the Pensacola News Journal that, after six months of requests from The Satanic Temple, he accepted David Suhor’s request to open the meeting because he felt he would otherwise open the city up to litigation. Now Charles Bare is so not a Satanist that he is literally a Sunday school teacher at the First United Methodist Church of Pensacola. Standing in front of the room of unruly shouting and rude Xtians and City Council people, Charles Bare showed his American patriotism with a handsome American flag tie and the willingness to have local police clear the room of protesters. Yes, a bunch of dickbag West Floridians felt it was reasonable to try to shout down both David Suhor trying to pray and the president of their own City Council who was trying to do the right thing as a patriotic American. They were so badly behaved that local PD was necessary to get them to stop. Usually, Pensacola has their own privileged list of pet clergy they invite to come do the opening prayer at City Council meetings. Charles Bare, in his Pensacola News Journal interview, pointed out that favoritism could not stand without the city potentially getting sued; the only way to stop people like David Suhor from being in the mix is to stop opening government meetings with prayer.
Among the protesting rabble was a dude who looks like the creepy crooked caretaker from a Scooby-Doo episode standing behind David Suhor in the video. At one point, creepy caretaker dude complains that David Suhor is going to “curse” them all. You look at that guy and you just know his life has been cursed for a long time by his own bad decisions and the devil had nothing to do with it.
When the police clear the room, you can see a lady in horizontal stripes shrieking incoherently about how this is not a Constitutional right. Actually, this is exactly a Constitutional right and that is why it was allowed. But what how much intelligence can you expect from someone wearing horizontal stripes outside of a 1950’s jail cartoon? (Exceptions can be made, of course, for rockabilly guys and dolls who are knowingly channeling 1950’s Elvis movies.)
David Suhor was finally able to give his invocation, which you can see most of on The Washington Post web site. A self-identified secular humanist, David Suhor’s invocation included calls for eating of the tree of knowledge and respecting individuality over conformity.
David Suhor‘s web site says, in addition to being available for live music events, especially those with jazz stylings, he can be booked for singing telegrams. So please keep that in mind for all the close-minded Xtians in your life, for special occasions like birthdays and holidays.
