Satanic Statue Gets New Home in Detroit

A good day for the devil's disciples? The statue that Satanists wanted to erect outside Oklahoma's Capitol building has found a more welcoming, but apparently temporary, home in Detroit. The 9-foot, 2,000-pound statue of winged, goat-headed idol Baphomet was unveiled just before midnight on Saturday at a private ceremony in a Detroit industrial building, where some of the crowd of hundreds shouted "Hail Satan," reports Reuters. The Satanic Temple had sought to erect the statue in Oklahoma to protest the presence of a Ten Commandments monument and give the state a chance to show it espouses "the basic freedoms spelled out in the Constitution."

Detroit has more Satanists than most American cities, according to the Christian Science Monitor, though the director of the local chapter of the Satanic Temple says there's a lot of confusion about what Satanism is, and the group's website defines Satan not as a supernatural being but as "a symbol of man's inherent nature, representative of the eternal rebel." Hundreds of people attended a Catholic mass to protest the statue's presence in the city. It's expected to stay in Detroit while the Satanic Temple tries to get it erected in Arkansas, where another Ten Commandments monument is planned at the statehouse, the AP reports. (Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has rejected a state Supreme Court ruling ordering the removal of the monument.)