The leader of an organization whose satanic altar at Iowa’s state capitol was torn down by a Christian military veteran on Thursday has dismissed the vandalism as “a real act of cowardice”. “There’s a certain point at which we need some adults in the room to tell people what … liberal, democratic values are; what their value is; why we uphold them; what they’re good for; and they need to stand up for these values or we are going to further degenerate in our polarism towards autocracy,” the co-founder of the Satanic Temple, Lucien Greaves, told CNN’s NewsNight on Thursday. The Satanic Temple obtained permission from Iowa’s government to erect a statue of a goat-headed figure at the state capitol in Des Moines along with the group’s seven fundamental tenets, which call on members “to act with compassion and empathy toward all” and declare people’s bodies as “inviolable”. The statue and its association with the Satanic Temple ignited a fierce debate over the breadth of the US constitution’s first amendment, which provides Americans their core freedoms of speech and religion. The Satanic Temple makes clear that its members do not actually worship the devil nor do they believe in either Satan’s existence or the supernatural. Instead Satan is used as a symbol of free will, humanism and anti-authoritarianism. Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds, issued a statement calling the Satanic Temple’s display “absolutely objectionable” but suggested it was one “a free society” should allow to stand. Reynolds called on “all those of faith” to pray alongside her and recognize the traditional display honoring Jesus’s birth also put up at the capitol. Reynolds met intense criticism from conservative circles who believed she should leverage her executive powers to remove the display. Conservatives staged prayer rallies and protests around the goat-headed statue, all of which are consistent with the first amendment. Tensions boiled over on Thursday when authorities said a Christian and military veteran tore the Satanic Temple statue’s head off before surrendering to law enforcement to be booked with a count of criminal mischief. In a statement on Facebook, the Satanic Temple described the damage as being “beyond repair”. “The world may tell Christians to submissively accept the legitimization of Satan, but none of the founders [of the US] would have considered government sanction of satanic altars inside capitol buildings as protected by the first amendment,” Michael Cassidy told RepublicSentinel.com, a conservative news outlet, apparently without providing citations to support his assertion. “I saw this blasphemous statue and was outraged,” said Cassidy, a former US navy pilot who has previously run for Congress unsuccessfully in Mississippi. “My conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.” The founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, hailed Cassidy as “Satan slayer” on Thursday. He also pledged $10,000 to Cassidy’s legal defense. Greaves insinuated that Cassidy’s actions were little more than “cowardice dressed up as heroism” by an aspiring politician. “It’s acting [as if] they’re standing up for us when … they’re really yielding to the whims of an uncomprehending, undemocratic mob,” Greaves said. “And they don’t have the spine to stand up for the values that they [would swear] to uphold” if they ever took an oath of elected office. The controversy pitting the Satanic Temple against Cassidy occurred about a month before Iowa is scheduled to host the caucus that customarily kicks off presidential election years.