Lucien Greaves

Lucien Greaves
Greaves at SASHAcon in March 2016
Born	~1976 (age c. 41) Detroit
Other names	Douglas Mesner
Occupation	Spokesman
Organization	The Satanic Temple
Website	dougmesner.com

Lucien Greaves, also known as Douglas Mesner, is a social activist and the spokesman/co-founder of The Satanic Temple. There are claims that other people have played the role of Lucien Greaves before Mesner. Douglas Mesner is also an assumed name that he started using before going by "Lucien Greaves". He has not given out his legal name for privacy and safety reasons.

The Satanic Temple was established as a vehicle to facilitate civic and political activism. The mission of The Satanic Temple is to encourage benevolence and empathy among all people, reject tyrannical authority, advocate practical common sense and justice, and be directed by the human conscience to undertake noble pursuits guided by the individual will. The founders publicly claim not to believe in tax exemptions for religious organizations, however they created a 501(c)3 religious charity called Reason Alliance which handles at least some of the business for The Satanic Temple. The concept of The Satanic Temple was first envisioned as a direct response to President Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, and is intended to address the encroachment of organized religion in government and politics. Neither Greaves nor Malcom Jarry, pseudonyms for the co-founders of the organization, actually believe in supernatural beings such as gods or Satan: "To us, we embrace rational inquiry, removed from supernaturalism and archaic, tradition-based superstitions. We actively work to hone our critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things. [...] Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs."

In 2012, Florida governor Rick Scott promoted a bill to allow student-led prayer at school assemblies. After the bill passed, Greaves and members of The Satanic Temple responded by holding a mock rally in support of Rick Scott outside the Florida State Capitol expressing how "we were coming out to say how happy we were because now our Satanic children could pray to Satan in school".

In 2013, The Satanic Temple conducted its "pink mass," at the burial location of the mother of Fred Phelps, founder of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church. The ritual involved same-sex couples kissing over the grave site. The Satanic Temple subsequently announced that the ceremony had turned Mr. Phelps’s mother "gay in the afterlife."