=WHAT THE HELL IS "THE SATANIC TEMPLE"?=
So, if that's what The Satanic Temple is *not*, well, what is TST really?
As of 2022, TST is a collection of at least six corporations, four for-profit and two non-profit, with only one of those being a tax-exempt church.
The Temple and its two owners, #CevinSoling and #DougMisicko, describe that church in contradictory ways depending on the venue and most expedient excuse at that moment.
But in March 2012 when the web domains TheSatanicTemple .com and .org, were registered, TST was just a twinkle in the eye of Cevin "#MalcolmJarry" Soling as he imagined a prank documentary about "the nicest Satanic Cult in the world".
Along with friend and collaborator David "Nicholas Crowe" Guinan, Soling used his own company Spectacle Films, Inc. to begin producing this "nice Satanists" movie with the first stunt a public prayer event in Tallahassee, Fla., in January 2013.
Soling had brought his friend Doug Misicko (a.k.a. "#DougMesner"), a self-identified Satanist, in on the project to be an expert and add verisimilitude.
Originally intended to be a role shared by Guinan, Soling, and Misicko, it was Misicko who would eventually step into the "#LucienGreaves" role full time after the first actor—and stunt— flopped.
Through 2013, #TheSatanicTemple muddled through a number of different stunts and contrary postures from "Adopt-a-Highway" to Misicko "teabagging" the grave of the Westboro Baptist Church leader Fred Phelps' mother, which got coverage from Vice, HuffPo, and others as a "#PinkMass"
Finally, at the end of the year, Guinan, Misicko, and Soling landed on the stunt that would bring them to lasting national prominence: the promise that they would install their own Baphomet statue opposite a public monument to the 10 Commandments in Oklahoma.
Tens of thousands of dollars in donations followed; the fact that TST never actually sued anyone and the ACLU won the case without any help from the Temple mattered not at all.
The Satanic Temple also made sure that this specific statue design was officially TST's intellectual property and a registered trademark they could sue over.
The Satanic Temple made sure their statue got them into lots of headlines and proceeded to fundraise off of the idea they could counter Christian monuments with the threat of their own statue arriving to guarantee religious plurality was preserved; more money poured in.
In reality, as the prank doc drifted into a project with no end date, #DavidGuinan eventually left it.
Cevin Soling and Doug Misicko embarked together on creating first a for-profit corporation (United Federation of Churches, LLC d/b/a The Satanic Temple) then a 501c3 nonprofit (Reason Alliance Ltd.).
Soling would then create another for-profit he solely owned (64 Bridge LLC d/b/a "Salem Art Gallery") to house the statue and charge $8-$12 tickets to come take pictures with it.
You see them on social media all the time, and that's why.
In November 2020, as part of the official depositions for a lawsuit against the city of Belle Plaine, Minn., TST revealed that these ticket sales had since July 2017 brought in at least $182,000.
And that came *after* Misicko got caught lying about an invoice that revealed just how much fundraiser money Misicko had paid himself for the Belle Plaine stunt.
https://queersatanic.com/this-invoice-reveals-the-inner-workings-of-the-satanic-temples-finances/
