You might remember Marcus Rogers from the previous times we talked about him on this site. He’s the Christian preacher who launched a GoFundMe campaign last year for $455,000… for reasons that made no sense. He also spouts biblical gibberish on Facebook and makes Joshua-Feuerstein-style vertical videos on YouTube.

After all the talk this week about removing statues honoring Confederate soldiers, Rogers, who doesn’t seem to understand why people are calling for that to happen, suggested that other unpopular statues should come down too. Beginning with The Satanic Temple’s Baphomet statue.

Since we taking down statues… you know they have been putting these up all across America. IJS

There’s so much wrong in that short statement…

The Confederate statues should come down because there’s no need to honor people who fought against the ideals of our nation. To anyone concerned that removing those statues would “erase history,” just wait till you hear about books.

The Baphomet statue, on the other hand, is a First Amendment-inspired response to Christian monuments on public property. There’s no comparison.

More importantly, Rogers is just plan wrong. Those statues haven’t gone up “all across America.” There is literally one Baphomet statue in existence… and it’s at The Satanic Temple’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts.

Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves said this to me last night:

With a total of zero Baphomet monuments on display on public property, and only one Baphomet statue currently in existence — comfortably residing in Salem from our headquarters where its mere request for approval has proven enough to close public forums from religious displays — I was alarmed to find a popular online pseudo-preacher, Marcus Rogers, calling for the take-down of Baphomets “all across America.” Further perplexing is his justification that this should be done in reply to the recent removals of Confederate memorials on public grounds. As he doesn’t bother to attempt to qualify his equivalence of the two, I can only imagine he is completely unaware of the history of either. This is the celebrated “blissful ignorance” that seems to be gaining popularity in this contentious time, further adding to our national malady.

Greaves is right. Rogers doesn’t understand that this isn’t about popularity. The Confederate statues aren’t coming down because liberals don’t like them. It’s what the statues represent: a harmful ideology that doesn’t deserve reverence.

The Satanic statue, if it ever went up in public, would represent freedom of speech as much as anything else. (Not Satan worship, contrary to popular opinion.)

Rogers’ post is both ignorant and a lie. Yet, as of this writing, it’s been shared nearly 9,000 times. Welcome to actual fake news.

