Iowa officials block Satanic display again, exposing GOP's true stance on religious liberty
State officials keep inventing rules to silence The Satanic Temple while pretending they only care about “protecting children”
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Iowa officials are once again blocking The Satanic Temple from putting up a holiday display inside the State Capitol, a blatant case of religious discrimination that Republicans refuse to acknowledge.
This saga has been going on for years now, but here’s a quick recap: In December of 2023, a Satanic display went up in the Capitol alongside a Nativity scene. Gov. Kim Reynolds called the innocuous display “absolutely objectionable.” A Christian zealot, Michael Cassidy, soon vandalized the display and was later charged with a hate crime. (He eventually pleaded guilty to a lesser crime to avoid felony charges.)
Despite all that, it’s the Satanists who have been punished over the whole debacle, with one GOP lawmaker even filing a bill to ban Satanic displays on public property. That bill, thankfully, didn’t go anywhere, but administration officials have been trying to find their own ways to prevent Satanic displays from appearing in the Capitol.
If that bill didn’t go anywhere, then how come the Satanists were blocked from putting up a holiday display last year?
Because of a sudden rule change.
See, the Satanic Temple of Iowa planned to hold a marathon four-day reading of John Milton’s 1667 epic poem “Paradise Lost” inside the Capitol, and as soon as they filed the paperwork, the Iowa Department of Administrative Services announced that it was changing its rules for who could use the Capitol space. From now on, events couldn’t last longer than one day, and no group could hold “more than one event per calendar year.”
That one-day limit, the officials told the Satanists, would also apply to holiday displays in the future. Furthermore, that meant if the Satanists held a one-day reading of “Paradise Lost” in the Capitol, they would be prohibited from erecting a display in December.
(In fact, a different group, the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers, hoped to put a holiday display in the Capitol in 2024, but their application was rejected because they held a “Reason on the Hill” lobbying event in the building that January. In other words, they inadvertently used up their allotted yearly slot based on rules that went into effect several months later.)
The same agreement included another section that prohibited any Capitol displays that might be seen as “obscene.”
Were those rules changed directly because of the Satanists’ request? And who got to decide which displays were obscene, offensive, or worthy of value? No one knew.
In any case, the Satanists held their reading event at a different location to avoid being shut out during the holidays…
But when December came around last year, they were shut out anyway.
They planned to hold a one-day holiday celebration at the Capitol—and filled out the necessary paperwork—only to have the event canceled at the last second:
“After careful consideration of administrative rule and [Iowa Department of Administrative Services] DAS policy, I determined the totality of the event request to include elements that are harmful to minors and therefore denied the request,” DAS director Adam Steen, the director of the Iowa DAS, said in a statement provided to the Des Moines Register.
Steen didn’t specify what the objectionable elements were or how they could be harmful to minors.
Gov. Kim Reynolds later echoed those lies:
“The Iowa State Capitol Complex is a place that is open to the public, where children and families routinely visit,” the governor said. “Because of this, the state’s event policy takes into consideration conduct that would be harmful to minors. This satanic event, which specifically targets children, is harmful to minors and so it was denied.”
Again, there was no explanation of how the holiday celebration would be harmful.
The Satanists said they were “forcibly cancelled” without explanation:
We are saddened to announce that our event at the Iowa State Capitol has been forcibly cancelled by the Iowa Department of Administrative Services.
We have made every effort to work with them to ensure a successful event, but after over two months on the official Capitol events calendar we have been informed that our event will no longer be allowed.
Our goal was to promote tolerance and acceptance of diverse religious beliefs, with a theme of finding a light in the darkness and welcoming the darkest nights of the year with joy and camaraderie.
We are no stranger to obstacles in advocating for religious pluralism and freedom of speech, and we will continue to fight for the rights of Satanic Temple members and our local community.
We encourage Satanic Temple members and supporters to keep the seven tenets of The Satanic Temple in mind. As a peaceful law-abiding organization, we will embody the spirit of wisdom and compassion in the face of injustice.
Hail Satan, Hail Iowa.
None of it made any sense. The Satanic Temple Iowa threatened to file a lawsuit in 2025 over this bigotry, but they never actually did it. Over the summer, however, the ACLU of Iowa filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of the Satanists with the Iowa Civil Rights Commission.
The complaint alleges in denying the application, the state wrongly alleged the celebration would have included sex acts, gore, and similar content and was not suitable for minors.
The looming question, then, is whether this year’s Satanic display would be allowed in the Capitol given all the backlash the previous year. Would the state still fight against it or would they see the furor dying down and just let it slide?
Now we know the answer.
They’re still fighting the imaginary enemy in their heads.
This week, the Iowa Department of Administrative Services once again blocked the Satanists from putting up a holiday display in the Capitol or having any kind of celebration inside, claiming that it would be harmful to minors. (No evidence of this was offered.)
In fact, Adam Steen, who’s now running to become governor, held a press conference on Monday as part of his apparent victory-against-Satan tour:
… This is a tipping point. One of the most divisive issues in the state over the last couple of years, and the attempts of the so-called “Satanic Church,” has been denied yet again. No more marketing to children. No more trying to get them to create Satanic symbols, sing Satanic hymns, partake in Satanic rituals. No more having youth involved in costume contests that depict weapons used to abuse youth. This is not religious expression. It’s not free speech. It is evil.
…
We did it. We stood up. We got the denial that we wanted. And I’m proud to say that good, again, has defeated evil. Denying this event will protect our children. Our children deserve that. Thank you. God bless you. God bless the great state of Iowa…
Elsewhere in that video, he says he’s the “only candidate being sued by the Satanists.”
That’s a lie. The Satanic Temple hasn’t sued him, and if any reporter cared to press him on that, they would know he’s lying.
After his bloviating was over, Steen was asked what was so offensive about the proposed Satanic display. He evaded the question and said “Any content that goes towards the soul of children, and that fights against the good that are inside of children, is evil and needs to be flushed out. Anything that rips away hope from children. Anything that… raises up this Satanic name is evil for children. And I will always fight for children to keep that out of their way.”
He was also asked what, if any, other religious beliefs might be “harmful to children.” His response? “Anything that is not God first.”
Seems like a blatant case of religious discrimination to me. He’s just defining religious symbols he doesn’t like as inherently evil without explaining how they’re harmful. Simply put, if kids followed the Seven Fundamental Tenets of The Satanic Temple, they would be far more ethical than children raising in conservative Christianity.
(It’s clear that Steen did this to try and win over Republicans in a gubernatorial primary race he’s currently losing to U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra. Another Republican candidate, Brad Sherman, released his own statement applauding Steen for “taking a strong stand against the normalization and advancement of satanism” while denouncing him for ever allowing it to go up in 2023. Just a giant race to the bottom of the barrel for the GOP, as usual.)
In any case, The Satanic Temple told me they’re currently weighing their next steps. An attorney for the group, Matt Kezhaya, sent me this statement:
The heart of our complaint, currently in front of the Iowa Office of Civil Rights, is that in our country, we have a right to free exercise of religion and speech. The government is not permitted to deny public services or benefits to people or religious groups because officials disagree with their beliefs or viewpoints.
Once State officials open up the Capitol to public events, as it has for displays and events around the holidays, they can’t legally exclude The Satanic Temple because of its disfavored or a minority viewpoint.
Additionally, in Iowa we have the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which provides additional statutory protection against that sort of discrimination, and we have an administrative complaint pending with the Iowa Office of Civil Rights.
Certainly, the State should not compound the significant harm its officials have already caused by doubling down on illegal and unconstitutional discrimination. And if it does, we will be committed to continuing our work to protect the rights of our client and all Iowans to their freedoms of speech and religion, without government interference.
After filing our complaint back in June, we are awaiting a screening decision by the Iowa Office of Civil Rights. We have since supplemented the complaint with various admissions that Adam Steen has made to the press which confirm the unlawful and unconstitutional efforts to suppress the viewpoint of our client, The Satanic Temple of Iowa.
For now, the Satanists are asking everyone to save the date of December 14 for a special announcement.
It’s bizarre that a proposed Satanic display is now at the center of the GOP primary because it’s such a low-priority issue, and the major candidates all seem to be against the First Amendment, which in a sane world might upset the pro-America crowd. But as we’ve learned from Donald Trump, conservatives don’t care about the Constitution or our nation’s laws as long as their side “wins.”
This whole controversy has revealed how little conservatives care about “religious freedom.” They think it only applies to Christians like them. The moment a minority faith seeks the same access to public space that Christians have enjoyed uncontested for generations, the façade collapses. They’re using children’s safety as an excuse to censor non-Christian groups.
That is precisely why it matters that The Satanic Temple keeps pushing back. Their presence forces government officials to confront the actual meaning of religious freedom, not the imaginary version crafted by Christian Nationalists. They’re exposing the obvious double standards: how the rules only “change” when Christians feel inconvenienced, how displays are only “obscene” when they’re not promoting Jesus, and how harm to “children” only counts when imaginary demons are involved—not when an actual Christian vandal destroys a lawful display in broad daylight.
It’s unclear why the state hasn’t yet responded to the civil rights complaint. But at this point, it seems like a lawsuit is warranted since the Republicans in charge aren’t hiding their contempt for anything that isn’t Christian. When the state decides one religion is “good” and others are “evil,” we’re heading down a dangerous path.
If Iowa’s conservative leaders can get away with banning a peaceful, lawful, minority-faith display from a public building today, you can bet they’ll use that power against others who aren’t like them tomorrow.
Harmful to minors? The GOP would rather see children die of starvation through the crippling of SNAP.
Gods, how I hate these hypocritical monsters.
Every time xtians pull crap like this, they simply expose the weakness of their faith. It's an own goal.