In a piece for The Catholic Thing, entitled "Of Satanism and Religious Freedom," Gunnar Gundersen discusses the nature of religious liberty and whether the protection of this natural right extends to Satanism and "irreligion". Gundersen is an affiliated scholar of the James Wilson Institute. Some excerpts: "Do our laws require that Satanism be protected as a religion? The short answer is no. Never in our history, tradition, or philosophy of government has Satanism ever been accorded such protection. Indeed, protecting Satanism reflects a thought process foreign to the logic of religious freedom in the U.S. Constitution." "Satanism – either the old-fashioned allegiance to Old Scratch or the modernist atheistic version – is irreligion or anti-religion, meant to deny devotion to God. Its goal is to produce a society where religion is no longer viewed as a duty or unalienable right. Thus, granting Satanism religious-freedom protections undermines rather than strengthens religious-freedom rights by directly attacking their foundation: the existence of a Creator who is the source of unalienable rights." "Religious people today need to show that they are not seeking the freedom to do evil under cover of 'sincere' religious beliefs. We must show that we seek the freedom to do right not wrong. Throwing in our lot with Satanist will hurt that effort because it concedes that all religious truth is relative – so much so that we cannot even tell the difference between God and the Devil." We invite you to read the entire piece here.