John Oliver: Satanism Advocate and Ally
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/19
John Oliver is a Satanist advocate.
A wonderful, satanic individual who has endorsed some of the hilarious and wonderful activism of the non-theist Satanists of The Satanic Temple. Satan’s anus poops Samuel Alitos, but Satan’s heart pumps John Olivers.
Did I use that title to get your attention? Of course, I’m an a-hole, sometimes. Like I said, I am not an exemplar. To quote the great George Clooney, “I’m not modest, but I’m very fun.” That was in front of his wife by the way, Amal.
Oliver, in an episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver entitled “Abortion Rights: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO),” talked, in a brief bit, on the foundation of Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic™.
John Oliver: We can still act here. Some have taken some small steps in the last year that are, if nothing else, immensely satisfying, like this one that was covered by a Catholic news network.
EWTN: An international group named after Satan will soon open its first abortion business in the United States. The Satanic Temple, which claims to not believe in a literal Satan, will provide telehealth screenings and prescribe abortion pills for patients in New Mexico. The name of the soon-to-be facility, the Samuel Alito’s Mom’s Satanic Abortion Clinic™.
[Crowd laughing, cheering, and applauding]
Oliver: Incredible. Very well played. Now, is that going to fix everything? No, of course, it isn’t. But when it comes to responding to such widespread devastation, you could do a lot worse than the single best ‘your mom’ joke of all time, especially when you add in that one of the group’s co-founders even said, “In 1950, Samuel Alito’s mother did not have options… and look what happened.”
On the serious note behind The Satanic Temple and its activism, Human Rights Watch has stated unambiguously in “Abortion”:
…equitable access to safe abortion services is first and foremost a human right. Where abortion is safe and legal, no one is forced to have one. Where abortion is illegal and unsafe, women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term or suffer serious health consequences and even death. Approximately 13 percent of maternal deaths worldwide are attributable to unsafe abortion—between 68,000 and 78,000 deaths annually.
Non-theist Satanic activism saves lives, lowers abortions, and provides the basis for women to have choice in their lives’ trajectories and for children to be born who are more wanted than not. Therefore, those children will have more planned circumstances and, thus, contexts in which basic needs are more likely to be met.
In societies without sufficient safety nets for poorer sectors of societies, e.g., the United States of America, so their poor people, blue collar people, women, and people of colour, tend to be the most likely to suffer the most from the consequences of poverty. The severe consequences of the denial of basic rights.
The derivatives, in the cases of women of colour, felt without that which is stipulated as “first and foremost a human right” to no less than Human Rights Watch. If the consequences are known, if the affected populations are known, and if the disproportionately affected populations are known, then the consequences to specific populations is known ahead of time.
Thus, the denial of equitable access to abortion amounts to a crime against sectors of society most vulnerable to effects of said rights denial, human rights abuse. This human rights abuse happens to women; women die, women remain in poverty, women have lesser access to education and basic rights in these contexts.
The activism of The Satanic Temple has real effects here. It matters. The comedy of John Oliver has the undertone of decency and humaneness found in the work of his mentor and leader, Jon Stewart, and the work of Stewart’s mentor and leader, George Carlin, and Carlin’s mentors and leaders, Lenny Bruce then Richard Pryor. Humaneness has its roots in the examples of others.
No doubt, Lucien Greaves had his own influences too. The question for the rest of society with reduction of predictable negative health outcomes for women is if we want to act: Ethics, more or less, amounting to predictable consequences of your actions. This one is a softball; it’s not geopolitics and technological application within infrastructure of a society bound to said technology.
Oliver’s note to The Satanic Temple, obviously, was a huge tip of the hat, though a small footnote to the work. I would love to see his coverage on secular and human groups across the board: Humanism, non-theist Satanism, Unitarian Universalists, Ethical Culture, and so on. They do similar work in building community bound by similar abiding codes of ethic with sociopolitical consequences in society. Most would agree on the activism of The Satanic Temple, as with Oliver, in this case.
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