I hope she sues them for violating her first amendment rights.
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OMG, does that mean I can buy algorithmically generated family reunion t-shirts that say e.g. “It’s a SATAN thing, you just wouldn’t understand”?
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I am flying American on Thursday…I wonder if they will take offense to my World of Warcraft sweatshirt?
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It’s such an obvious double standard that I’m surprised they thought they could get away with it. But instead of thinking “Wait, does this fit with our policy? What if someone else was wearing a different religious shirt, what would I do then? Isn’t this just a dumb joke shirt anyway? Am I going to get in trouble for doing this?”, their thinking was apparently just “SATAN BAD PANIC PANIC”.
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Even Satan can’t hold a candle to the power of mega CORPORATIONS! HAIL SATAN!!!
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Hail Santana…Guitar god.
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On the one hand, somebody wears a t-shirt like this BECAUSE it is in-your-face obnoxious. On the other hand, the Xtian worry here is that God will smite the entire plane to get at the one devil worshiper wearing this t-shirt. Because that is the sort of incompetent asshole that they believe their God to be.
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It appears we’re all agreed that AA acted stupidly here and is deservedly reaping the bad press. That said, I wonder sometimes what goes through adults heads when they wear stuff like this out in public.
What is the best case scenario when you wear a “Hail Satan” shirt with an upside down cross in an airport, or a matching “Bitch 1” and “Bitch 2” in Dr. Suess font with your twin sister at the zoo, or a “Fuck your feelings” shirt at Home Depot? I get it when you’re a teenager and being deliberately obnoxious is your raison d’être, but it puzzles me when adults have nothing better to put on when they’re out in the world.
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While I defend her right to wear this shirt, intellectually, it is not much of a stretch to imagine that someone aligned with the very popular belief system that is Christianity, but is otherwise fairly reasonable, might be irrationally upset by this tshirt, since in their belief system, which is, once again, quite popular and widely accepted, Satan represents the most reprehensible elements of humanity and can stir up quite a bit of emotion.
I have a hard time believing that a person with any self-awareness at all wouldn’t be cognizant of the fact that wearing a “Hail Satan” tshirt in a mixed social situation such as this is deliberately provocative. It is totally disingenuous to be “surprised” when someone takes issue with it. That’s why it’s being worn to begin with.
I suppose you could argue that such tactics serve a purpose, mainly to shine a light on the general absurdity of religion(with a very specific “fuck you” to Christianity and how pervasive its symbols and idealogy are in American and other western societies) but I am more than a bit skeptical about its efficacy. Satanists often come across like smug, immature assholes.
All this being said, she definitely has the right to wear that tshirt, and worship Satan, and threatening to remove her from the plane is unreasonable.
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This. It’s like, mayyyyybbbeeee it could ruffle some feathers. And it’s not just at the grocery store . Is creating perceived hassle for everybody around you really worth it ? Society - lame rules you don’t always agree with but go along with because there are more important battles than obnoxious tshirt logos
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#Florida.
I would wager that I, a white guy, would be able to fly from Chicago, not located in Florida, wearing that shirt without issue.
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Maybe, but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t fully within her rights to wear it. If we start delineating what is and isn’t proper religious expression in the public sphere, then pretty soon, we’ll be banning all non-Christian religious expressions or any expression of a non-religious belief. Christians themselves express their religious beliefs in public all the time and they are perfectly within their rights to do so. If they get to define the public sphere with regards to religious expressions, that will mean that you’ll see Christian expressions in public, and others will be banned. That is in direct violation of the first amendment, BTW.
And it was not some indivual on the plane asking that she remove her shirt, it’s the actual airline trampling on her religious expression. I’m sure she fully expected to be challenged by someone for her shirt, but probably not being asked to remove her shirt by the airline.
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I used to have a photocopied vegetarian cookbook the cover of which was a hand-lettered HAIL SEITAN.
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Exactly. I’m accosted by all sorts of Christian symbolism EVERY day and it offends me. However, my reaction is a mental eyeroll.
Couldn’t offended Christians do the same?
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You’d think! But in some cases, their goal is not to live in a society where we all have free expression and we’re all allowed to live by our own moral code, but to create a society where they can actively discriminate against those they find offensive. They want a theocracy, not a secular democracy. Of course, that’s not all Christians, just a very vocal subset of American christians… but still, they have a strangle hold on one of our major political parties. So that’s a problem.
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Would you say that wearing a crucifix necklace is similarly obnoxious? If not, why not? Do you think people who regularly have to deal with Christian assholes trying to use the government to force their beliefs on them might find that find wearing a Christian symbol in public similarly obnoxious to how Christians see a Satanic symbol? That is presumably what they’re thinking wearing this.
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I think this part of the degree of offensiveness something has is irrelevant and it would set a dangerous legal/social norm which anything with the perception of offense would be deemed unacceptable in the public. Essentially, it would be wresting with the pig in the mud on this one. I think it’s more logical and easier to set the social norm to be more permissive of all religious displays so long as the government isn’t in the business of subsidizing one over another or at all.
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I hear that the Founding Fathers fled Europe for exactly this reason; to allow them the Freedom of Religious Oppression.
Hail, Eris!
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Honestly, I’ve rarely found that section of the first amendment hard to follow - it guarantees that the federal government will not establish or favor one religion over another, as well as allowing everyone to freely exercise their faith. I also believe that that section was likely influenced by the Pennsylvanian original colonial government under Penn, which was founded in part of religious freedom. The reality is that it has not always been followed, though.
But I don’t think the founding fathers fled europe for that reason - their families came here to make money, more often than not. But plenty of people here DID indeed flee religious persecution, and I’m sure the founding fathers were well aware of that fact and the recent history (from the time) of the violent and brutal religious wars in Europe.
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