An After School Satan Club (ASSC) launching next month at a Bakersfield elementary school is potentially unconstitutional, according to an equal rights advocate.
“It promotes an anti-Christianity religious practice,” said Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER). “The U.S. Constitution forbids government or any public entity from both promoting one religion over another and also forbids the government from restricting one's religious practices.”
Wu was responding to news reports that the After School Satan Club, sponsored by the Satanic Temple and the Reason Alliance, will hold monthly meetings at the Golden Hills Elementary School beginning in December.
“The person who's going to be leading the Satan Club is a professor at the Los Angeles Community College District,” she said. “He is quoted on the record as saying that since there is an afterschool program in line with the Christian faith, then he needed to introduce some sort of an alternative. That’s basically saying he wants to do an anti-Christianity affinity group.”
Critical thinking professor Paul Hicks, a volunteer with the After School Satan Club, told KBAK last week that the Good News Club is one reason the After School Satan Club is needed.
“We want to give an alternative point of view,” he said.
The Good News Club takes place after school and is led by volunteers who teach children, between the ages of 5 and 12 years old, Bible lessons, songs, and games from a Christian point of view.
More than 6,200 Good News Clubs take place in public elementary schools across the U.S. according to Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF) data.
“It's titled as a Satan Club and the other club is not saying it’s the Jesus Christ Club,” Wu told the Southern California Record. “If you are a government entity or employee, you should not be promoting or restricting any religion and the Establishment Clause in the California Constitution guarantees free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference. The concept of Satan is not a secular concept. It's still a religious deity and it’s anti-Christian.”
The Tehachapi Unified School District (TUSD) issued a letter to parents that was published in the Bakersfield last week on Nov. 15.
In it, Superintendent Stacey Larson Everson said by law the district cannot discriminate among groups wishing to use TUSD facilities or distribute flyers to students based on viewpoint.
“The district has approved an organization known as the After School Satan Club (ASSC) to host gatherings after school hours in the cafeteria at Golden Hills Elementary School and to distribute an associated flyer,” Larson-Everson wrote. “Students must have parent permission to attend any after-school event hosted by any outside organization.
Larson-Everson also noted that the ASSC is not a district-approved student club. However, Wu argues that permitting the club on school premises is a stamp on the ASSC's legitimacy and credibility.
"It's an afterschool program blatantly titled Satan Club and it's absolutely one hundred percent illegal," Wu added. "It will compound and exacerbate the preexisting psychological issues and emotional trauma of children who already lack parental authority figures in their lives.