Florida School Board Moves to Change Policy to Keep Satanist Coloring Book out of Schools

WPTV: Worried about facing national ridicule if a Satanic group is allowed to give out coloring books to children, the Orange County School Board moved Thursday toward preventing any outside group from distributing religious materials on campus.

The current policy has allowed groups to distribute Bibles and even atheist materials at district high schools in recent years.

The board discussed the issue during a workshop Thursday. The earliest it could vote to change the policy would be late January or early February, officials said.

“This really has, frankly, gotten out of hand,” said chairman Bill Sublette. “I think we’ve seen a group or groups take advantage of the open forum we’ve had.”

But a spokesman for The Satanic Temple, the group the group that wants to give out coloring books featuring cartoon children performing Satanic rituals and drawing pentagrams in school, said it is the School Board that is acting in bad faith.

“It strongly implies they never intended to have a plurality of voices,” said Doug Mesner, co-founder and spokesman for The Satanic Temple, who also goes by the pseudonym Lucien Greaves.

An evangelical group called World Changers of Florida has given out Bibles in Orange schools three times. “We’re looking forward to doing it again,” said World Changers Vice President Greg Harper. The group has purchased materials and is gathering volunteers to give out the New International Version in 18 district high schools on Jan. 16, he said.

However, district counsel Woody Rodriguez said the Satanists are the only group to have submitted a request.

Harper said he considers the possible policy change an attack on Christians. “They seem to be moving against the interests of a large part of the community,” he said, likening it to the district’s August decision to ban football chaplains at schools. “The Bible will open somebody’s heart, somebody’s mind, and cause them to pursue answers.”

Board member Christine Moore also seemed to struggle with the effect of a policy change on Christian groups. “Everyone’s upset about the Satanists and the atheists coming,” she said.

But another group involved in the debate sees an upside. “It’s a bit of a relief,” said David Williamson of the Central Florida Freethought Community. His group distributed atheist materials in 2013 as a protest against Bible distributions.

Rodriguez said the district was bound by the terms of a federal consent decree that required Collier County schools to allow the same group to give out Bibles.

“Given that there’s a potential change in the policy, we won’t be allowing distribution,” he said. “We’re going to wait.”

DCG