by Jim D’Entremont

About the author: Jim D’Entremont is the head of the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression.

In February 1997, the goth-rock ensemble Marilyn Manson and its eponymous lead singer embarked on a circuit of North American concert venues to promote the album Anti-Christ Superstar. As embroidered accounts of the band’s performances passed into fact, the disapproval of the pious quickly spiralled into panic. The band’s musical stagings were said to incorporate devil worship, live sex, defilement of Bibles, flag desecration, animal slaughter and Grand Guignol effects of indescribably blasphemous obscenity. Circulars produced in Tupelo, Mississippi by the Reverend Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association (AFA) warned that Marilyn Manson ‘wants to put an end to Christianity through his music.’

Zealots Protest

Marilyn Manson...