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You're giving these people entirely too much credit. They're not Satanists of the Anton LaVey hedonist school (which is a pretty thin reed as it is) but a political group masquerading as a religion so they can pull publicity stunts like this. As much as people complain about the encroachment of politics into mainstream Christianity, it's really just ancillary to what the bulk of the Church's activities are. For instance, on the About Us page of their website they state:
This is pretty unremarkable on its own, but when you consider that there are only three things on that part of the site, and there's an entire tab dedicated to advocacy, it's pretty clear that this so-called "religion" doesn't have that much going for it. That being said, this is really just a case of the usual religious zealots being hoisted by their own petard. The courts had already ruled that secular Christmas decorations were okay on public property and not an endorsement of religion. That wasn't enough for some of these people, who apparently needed a nativity scene in front of city hall in order to feel vindicated. Unfortunately for them we don't live in a country with an official religion, so it was difficult for courts to permit such a blatant endorsement of one religion (especially since we know what the reaction would be if a municipality decided to forgo Christian imagery in favor of Muslim). So they had to reach a compromise whereby outside groups could put their own displays on public property, provided that no religion was favored over another. And thus we get blatant political trolls like the Satanic Temple who only build these displays for the purpose of pissing off Christians they don't like. They don't care that the statue was vandalized because that's what they were expecting. Since Satanic Temple has nothing to offer members other than smug political advocacy, it would be hard to attract enough donations to pay for all of this stuff if they couldn't sell the whole business as a war against religious zealot morons who don't respect the separation of church and state. These displays would go away. But, much as we see with the continued "War on Christmas" rhetoric, both sides are incentivized to at least keep the battle at a low simmer.
A good way to meet some goth baddies and industrial music fans, in my experience.
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