Dear Otus,
I'm really confused now. I saw on the news the Satanic Temple Baphomet statue on a truck at the Capitol and figured they were all set to install the thing next to state Sen. Jason Rapert's monument. I drove by a couple of days ago and there was no Baphomet statue in sight. I really wanted to see the thing. When will it be installed?
-- Daryl Van Horne,
Bryant
Dear Daryl,
It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you and to let you know that the Baphomet statue is still in limbo, so to speak.
You are right in that the statue's unveiling last week was quite the theater of the absurd as a couple hundred colorful Satanic Templars and/or First Amendment supporters squared off across Woodlane Street from an equal number of Bible-waving fundamentalists chanting non sequiturs and singing "Onward Christian Soldiers."
A stoic blue phalanx of Little Rock's finest kept the groups apart as they traded jibes, retorts, insults and snappy ripostes. There was a lot of noise, but no violence.
Which is all well and good, because the future of the Satanic statue on Capitol grounds is in the hands of the courts, as it should be.
There are a couple of pending federal lawsuits contending that the Ten Commandment monument (currently standing behind stout anti-crash bollards near the southwest corner of the Capitol) violates the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.
Ah, yes. That pesky First Amendment. The clause not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion, but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion or non-religion over non-religion or religion over religion.
In other words -- if you allow a Ten Commandments monument, you must allow everybody's monument.
Rapert, a Republican from Conway, was the mover and shaker behind the 2015 legislation authorizing the monument's placement. He also just happens to be the president of the American History and Heritage Foundation, which bought the thing.
In Rapert's defense, he has said, "The sole reason that we donated this monument to the state of Arkansas is because the Ten Commandments are an important component to the foundation of the laws and the legal system of the United States of America and of the state of Arkansas."
See. There wasn't any religious basis to it at all.
That still brought howls of protest from the Friends of The Code of Hammurabi, the Sons and Daughters of the Magna Carta Libertatum and Citizens Behind Corpus Juris Civilis. Each wanted a piece of the legal system credit now reserved for the Decalogue.
Their lawsuit wants Rapert's 6-foot-tall granite monolith permanently removed. This is actually the second incarnation of the thing. The original monument was installed June 27, 2017, and destroyed via Dodge Dart before the sun rose on the 28th.
The Satanic Templars don't care if Rapert's monument stays or goes, but if it stays, they have their impressive bronze Baphomet statue ready to go and a cozy spot picked out on the mall just east of the Education Department building.
Rapert, always a low-key, plain-spoken man of few words, had a simple response: "It will be a very cold day in hell before an offensive statue will be forced on us to be permanently erected on the grounds of the Arkansas state Capitol."
Note he said not just a "cold" day, but a "very cold" day. Also, "offensive" is in the eye of the beholder.
As a sculpture, the Baphomet statue is a kind of cool post-neoclassical creation adhering to Vitruvian principles and reminiscent of Francois Rude. The seated, goat-headed, winged Baphomet is being admired by two children while he signals with his right hand either the two-finger Cub Scout salute or sign language for the letter U.
Until next time, Kalaka reminds you that until it's all decided, the Satanic Temple has the statue on a truck and it's available to rent for public gatherings or children's parties. The templars also have a wide variety of bouncy houses.
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Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of humorous fabrication
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HomeStyle on 08/25/2018