Render unto Satan: RBG's passing leads lawyer to the dark(er) side

 Much as the famous 2018 Brooklyn Wicca hex ritual led, I can only assume, to Justice Kavanaugh's spontaneous regurgitation of gallons of grape juice while attending church, a lawyer by the name of Jamie Smith has announced that Justice Ginsburg's death has prompted her to turn to a *ahem* lower power to ensure that the Supreme Court continues to walk the lefthand path.

When Justice Ginsburg died, I knew immediately that action was needed on a scale we have not seen before. Our democracy has become so fragile that the loss of one of the last guardians of common sense and decency in government less than two months before a pivotal election has put our civil and reproductive rights in danger like never before. And, so, I have turned to Satanism.

But Smith -- whose bio and c.v. the Huffington Post seems to have misplaced -- is not your stereotypical goat-slitting Satanist. There is a method to her madness.

The Satanic Temple hopes to appear before the Supreme Court in a case challenging a Missouri abortion law that requires those seeking to terminate their pregnancy to first receive materials asserting that their abortion would end the life of a separate, unique person. The temple argues that these materials violate the deeply held religious beliefs of one of its members regarding bodily autonomy and scientifically reasonable personal choice. The argument the Satanic Temple is using is the same one the Supreme Court effectively endorsed in the Hobby Lobby birth control case, for which Justice Ginsburg wrote the dissent ― that no one should have to follow a law that violates their deeply held religious beliefs. If a Christian should not have to do so based on their religion, a Satanist should not have to either. This is what equality under the law means on a fundamental level.

Smith (seen below at her swearing-in ceremony upon admission to the bar) has a point. Though I thought for sure the argument would have been that any law curbing the availability of dismembered fetuses for the ritual blood sacrifice would have run afoul of the "effect" prong of the Lemon test.