Legislation signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in April authorizes "volunteer school chaplains to provide support, services, and programs to students" – but only if they have parental consent. Aaron DiPietro, legislative affairs director with Florida Family Voice (formerly Florida Family Policy Council), highly endorses the program that gives parents the final say.
"First of all, this bill specifically gives leverage and the final say to the local school districts whether to allow this program or not," he explains. "And then second, … if they do choose to allow the program, parents are the ones who ultimately get to make the final decision if their child participates in the program and with which chaplains their child gets to participate with and interact with as well. So, it ultimately puts parents in the driver's seat."
The Satanic Temple, however, is threatening to cause a disturbance over this. But DiPietro said the opposition is not as major as one might think.
"A lot of it was completely hyped up in terms of the opposition, the claims of … pushing one religion over another, pushing Christian nationalism. [Those claims are] just plainly not true."
DeSantis previously noted in a press conference that students have the right to pursue advice from chaplain leaders if they choose to do so. He also said satanist groups don't qualify to have chaplain programs.
"We're not playing those games in Florida," DeSantis stated. "That is not a religion. That is not qualifying to be able to participate in this. We're going to be using common sense … you don't have to worry about that."
DiPietro finds it ironic that many members of the Satanic Temple have no supernatural beliefs. In fact, they are atheists. "And this is a little tongue in cheek, but they're already in the public schools," he adds. "It's called secular humanism. It's called … naturalistic atheism and evolution in public schools."
In addition, DiPietro explains the satanic groups around the Sunshine State creating chaos aren't even the main threat to the program. Instead, he contends that would be local school boards – specifically, liberal activists on local boards seeking to get in the way of this program.
