The Satanic Temple scored a legal victory on Tuesday when a federal judge ruled that Arkansas must remove a Ten Commandments monument from its state Capitol. The ruling comes after a nearly decade-long battle over the religious display on government grounds.
In 2017, the Arkansas Capitol erected the privately donated monument after the state's Legislature passed the Ten Commandments Monument Display Act, which authorized the installation. In response to the religious display (which was originally destroyed by a man unaffiliated with The Satanic Temple and installed again in 2018), The Satanic Temple offered to install its own statue, a 7.5-foot-tall bronze statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed creature with wings and an Iggy Pop–inspired human chest. In 2018, the group temporarily brought Baphomet to the state Capitol on a forklift to protest what they argued was unequal treatment by the state. If the Ten Commandments could be displayed on government property, the group argued, then why not show off Baphomet too?
