When I stopped by a convenience store in Slatington during the weekend, I bumped into a guy I knew from my Summit Hill days. He introduced me to his companion, who recognized my name from these Times News columns.

“Why are you writing about Satan?” she asked in a huffy tone, referring to a column in last week’s Times News.

I was tempted to respond that “the devil made me do it,” but I held my tongue not wanting to mirror her huffiness. Instead I explained how it is an important Constitutional question, interesting and controversial and a topic that has generated a lot of public interest.

In the succeeding couple of minutes she suggested that I write only good news because there is so much evil in the world, “most of it generated by Satan,” she said.

My encounter reminded me that a journalist’s job is to report the news - the good, the bad and the ugly. Since I write opinion columns, I also have an added responsibility to give my views, to which you, the reader, can either agree or disagree.

Depending on how strongly you feel about the matter, you can post a comment at the end of this column, or the editor-in-chief of the Times News will happily publish a letter to the editor telling readers what you think of my views and the topic I am writing about. I also want to emphasize that these columns are opinions, not editorials, which are the province of the management of the Times News. In fact, after each of my columns there is a disclaimer saying that my views are not necessarily shared by the newspaper’s management.

Getting back to Satan. In case you missed it, the After-School Satan Club sought permission to rent the Saucon Valley School District’s middle school to establish a club for 5- to 12-year-old area children. The district includes Hellertown borough and Lower Saucon Township in Northampton County.

Originally, the district’s superintendent, Jaime Vlasaty, approved the request, maintaining that since the district has allowed a Christian group to rent school facilities it must do the same for this organization or be in violation of the First Amendment.

After her announcement, the you-know-what hit the proverbial fan, and chaos ensued. The issue became immediate fodder on social media, and, according to police, it led a North Carolina resident to post what they said was a credible threat to the local district. This led Vlasaty to cancel classes in the district for Feb. 22.

She also rescinded permission for the club to use school facilities, saying, among other things, that it violated the district’s use-of-facilities policy by not having a disclaimer on its advertising materials noting that it is not a school-sponsored activity.

This change of heart for admittedly suspicious reasons has caught the attention of the Pennsylvania branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent a letter to Vlasaty and the district’s solicitor threatening to bring legal action if the district did not allow the club to use its facilities.

Representing the club and its sponsor - The satanic Temple, the ACLU accused the district of violating the organization’s First Amendment rights. It said that the government cannot deny access to the facilities based on the objections or reactions of others to formation of the club, citing a 2001 Supreme Court decision as the precedent.

The ACLU also said that the district’s given reason for barring the club - that the club had not clearly stated that it is not affiliated with the district is “discriminatory.”

The ACLU pointed out that the club’s sponsor included a disclaimer on its introductory parent letter and permission slips and that the Good News Club, the Christian organization mentioned earlier, had previously distributed materials without disclaimers.

“Imposing more stringent requirements on our clients than are enforced against the Good News Club or other groups that use school facilities constitutes an additional violation of our clients’ First Amendment rights,” the ACLU wrote in its letter to school officials.

That said, the ACLU agreed with me and others in our area that “threats made against Vlasaty, her family or the school district, as well as any other threats of violence made in response to the After-School Satan Club’s application were unacceptable and reprehensible.”

Regardless of the complaints from the woman in the convenience store about my writing about Satan, the Saucon Valley district is going to have a devil of a time putting this issue to rest.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.