The Satanic Temple displays anti-corporal punishment billboard in Texas
A billboard promoting Satanist organization’s campaign to protect children from violence was placed in Three Rivers, Texas, where school reinstated corporal punishment.

October 26, 2017 – Commuters passing through Three Rivers, Texas on Route 281 will likely notice a new black billboard emblazoned with a red inverted pentagram framing a goat’s head underneath, which reads: “Paid for by The Satanic Temple.” More prominently, the primary message states: “Our religion doesn’t believe in hitting children.” A website is listed below: www.protectchildrenproject.com. It’s an advertisement for The Satanic Temple’s campaign to offer religious exemptions from corporal punishment and other forms of abuse in public schools such as the use of solitary confinement (aka seclusion rooms), physical restraints, and restricting access to the bathroom.

Placement of the billboard in Three Rivers is meant to draw attention to the Three Rivers Independent School District, where corporal punishment was just reinstated for use against Students.

“Hopefully, our billboard will give pause to passersby who will be forced to confront the fact that the school district is being operated by depraved and ignorant sadists who have no business being in education,” Greaves said. “The billboard should be a wakeup call that the school district trustees, who voted 6 – 0 for corporal punishment, need to be replaced by competent and humane members of the community who have children’s best interests at heart.”

According to The Satanic Temple spokesperson, Lucien Greaves, “There is no empirical support for the notion that punitive beatings delivered to children act as an effective corrective to problematic behavior. In fact, the opposite has been proven to be true. We find it sad and irresponsible that the Three Rivers Independent School District would be backward enough to re-introduce this barbaric and counterproductive practice into their schools.” According to the Department of Education, over 110,000 children are hit in schools each year. Remarkably, many people are unaware that this practice persists.

Greaves continues, “Three Rivers Elementary School’s campus behavior coordinator, Andrew Amaro, is reported to have proposed the new corporal punishment to district leaders, which suggests to us that he is grossly unqualified for his job or any job where he might have contact with children. The district claims that parents may opt out of having their children beaten, but courts have ruled that schools do not have to abide by those exemptions. In addition, some parents are abusive and have no problem with school officials who hit their kids. We offer children who share our religious beliefs to opt out of suffering physical abuse.”

“We hold among our tenets that ‘The body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone’. As such, we have launched a campaign to offer an exemption against corporal punishment and solitary confinement to any student who shares this deeply held belief. We have set up a website (www.protectchildrenproject.com) where students can register, whereupon The Satanic Temple will put the child’s school board on notice that subjecting that student to abuse is a violation of their civil rights. We are claiming a religious exemption on behalf of the student under First Amendment Protection.”