Christian flag causes chaos in Connecticut town—because Satan wants in, too

Waterbury's mayor is scrambling to appease Christians while avoiding a First Amendment lawsuit

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Elected leaders in Waterbury, Connecticut can’t seem to figure out which flags should be allowed outside City Hall because they can’t figure out how to allow a Christian flag while denying a Satanic flag without creating a legal mess for themselves.

For months now, atheist activist Chaz Stevens has been on a personal quest to challenge flag laws across the country. If he learns that there’s a Christian flag flying outside some city hall, he’s been putting in requests to fly one of his flags endorsing “The Church of Satanology and Perpetual Soirée.”

Why bother? Because if they refuse, it could be considered a city-endorsed religious message and therefore a potential First Amendment violation.

The irony is that the very argument Stevens is using to raise his flag in these cities is the one conservative Christians pushed to fly their flag in Boston. The Supreme Court ruled in 2022 that the city couldn’t deny a man’s request to raise a Christian flag outside City Hall when they created an open forum for speech. Stevens, who hopes to create other activists just like him through his website REVOLT Training, often says to local officials, “You’ve opened the door. I’m simply walking through it—with horns held high, and very very sharp elbows… I’m not here to provoke—I’m here to participate. But I won’t be denied the rights you’ve granted others.”

Chaz Stevens (provided by Stevens)

In Waterbury, the whole situation has been downright comical. Last year, the city displayed the Christian flag before the National Day of Prayer. After Stevens requested his own flag be flown, the city changed the rules so that outside groups couldn’t make any future requests—basically shutting down the open forum—and that meant denying the Christian flag from being flown this year.

Mayor Paul K. Pernerewski Jr. said the only flags that could go up would be the U.S. flag, state flag, city flag, and those representing other countries. Weeks later, he said the city would also allow the Juneteenth flag since that was a federal holiday. But all of that still meant no Christian flag could go up.

That, naturally, pissed off local Christians.

The Christian flag (via Adobe Spark)

What the city needed was an official policy that was fair for everyone. The simple option, of course, is to just say no to all outside requests. But they didn’t want to go that far, so the mayor proposed something else:

The proposed policy permitted the continued the display of the U.S., state and city flags continued on city property and authorized the display of certain other flags by proclamation of the mayor or by resolution of the Board of Aldermen.

As proposed, the mayor could order the flying of the POW/MIA flag. The mayor or Board of Aldermen could permit the display of flags of other U.S. states, territories, cities and districts, federally recognized Native American tribes, any sister cities of Waterbury, officially recognized foreign countries, and branches of the armed services and first responders. The Pride, rainbow, Pan-African, and Juneteenth flags could also be flown at the discretion of the mayor or Board of Aldermen.

In short, there would be more options! But the proposed policy would still exclude the Christian flag. Making matters worse for bigots, a Pride flag could go up even while their religious flag could not. (They were mad. Very mad.)

At last week’s Board of Aldermen Meeting, several Christians spoke up to push for a more inclusive policy—that included their flag but not a Satanic one.

Eventually, Mayor Pernerewski chimed in to table his own proposal—it clearly needed work—and remind the crowd that the goal here was to avoid a lawsuit. Along the way, he made it very clear his end goal was appeasing Christians.

… I proposed this resolution and it was never my intention to treat people unfairly, or to cause any angst or any hurt or any bad will in the community.

As you know, the city hall is a public facility, and so we do raise flags here on a regular basis, and the concern had come up earlier this year. It’s something we hadn't faced before, but a push to raise flags that I think we would all agree are universally offensive to put up there. And so I'm trying to work with corporation council in a way to come up with a plan that allows us to continue to do some of what we've been doing, probably not all of it, but to be able to control what we put up there so that we're not going to be compelled by a court to raise Satan's flag over City Hall, because that is something I don't think any of us would want to happen.

And there are other flags as well that I think we could find all equally offensive. So at this point, earlier this year, I put in place an executive order which simply limits flags to government flags flying—the American flag, the state flags, the city flags, flags of recognized countries, the flags that the State Department recognizes of other countries, and I think, ultimately, the Juneteenth commemorative flag. That’s the brand new holiday—city, state, and federal holiday. That's what drove the issue about the flag this year, for the Christian flag. And so… we do need to address that somehow. Either keep that in place exactly as is, go back to what we were doing and take our chances with what kind of flags we could be compelled to raise here if someone wants to push it, or to come up with a different plan of what we want to allow or not allow.

So, I think we need to have more dialogue. I'm happy to sit down and talk with all of you about what you think, where we're coming from, how we can get to a place we want to be, because I want to be supportive. I fully believe the work that you're doing is going to make Waterbury a better place. I, too, am very religious. I belong to the Catholic Church, but I attend regularly. But I also, you know, attend other churches here in the city as well. And I firmly believe that faith is going to be the basis that's going to fix a lot of the problems Martin talked about today. I think it's the lack of that faith and that foundation in this community, across the country, that is causing so many of the problems that we have today, and we have to try to return to that. So I think that's critically important.

So with that, I want to tell you we're going to hopefully table that tonight. It will remain right now just governmental flags flying, but we'll try to figure out a way to work it out. I don't know that we're going to make everybody happy, but we're going to try to at least have a conversation about it. Okay?

Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate it. And thank you all for your continued prayers for the city. I, too, believe Waterbury is a blessed place, and it's because of people like you. Thank you.

Pernerewski openly declared his desire for a policy that promotes his faith while shutting everyone else’s out… but he doesn’t want to create a liability for the city. All because one activist wanted to promote Satanism and these people can’t handle competing ideas.

Mayor Pernerewski (screenshot via YouTube)

I’m not a city lawyer but I can help him out: There’s no way to do it. The bottom line is that either the Christian and Satanic flags can go up—along with other flags that might upset people—or neither of them can.

Also, to state the obvious, there’s nothing offensive about Stevens’ flag. Meanwhile, the Christian flag, which was flown during the attempted insurrection on January 6 and implies that non-believers will be tortured for all eternity, sends a truly offensive message to everyone outside their bubble.

In a statement to CT Insider, Stevens said he was glad his request is making the city think twice about raising a Christian flag again.

"It is really simple. My problem is boiled down to a bumper sticker: all or none. Not some, all or none," he said.

"If they allow a Christian flag, a flag of the Druids, a flag of SpongeBob SquarePants, they are creating what is known as a limited public forum, and, thank goodness, we have this thing called the First Amendment. And the First Amendment is supposed to be the free flow of information, the free flow of thoughts. So, if they put the Christian flag up there, they need to put the Church of Satanology flag up there, and, if they don't, that proves my point, which is favoritism."

Stevens told me he was disturbed by the mayor’s speech at the meeting:

Apparently, the mayor supports inclusion—as long as it’s not too gay, too brown, or too Satanic.

Government neutrality isn’t optional. You don’t get to fly one belief system’s flag while blocking others without inviting a lawsuit—and trust me, I bring receipts. Lots of them.

He’ll be watching what the mayor and aldermen do next. For their sake, they better hope their eventual policy is fair to everyone.

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