I refer to my home state of Iowa as the bluest red state there is. Even with an extremely large religious community gay marriage was legalized and hopefully medical marijuana will be legalized soon. Even with these overtures of compassion and acceptance Des Moines Area Regional Transit decided to pull advertisements from the Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers which read “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.” They had lined up the ads to run for the duration of August to try and reach the large Iowa State Fair crowds that would be riding the buses but they were pulled after they received complaints. They were told that the ads were fine when they asked if they were appropriate but now DART is going back on this saying they had never been approved. This is the same story that has played out in England and other states in the U.S. Just simply trying to let people know that atheism exists using a billboard is seen as a personal attack on people’s religious beliefs. Billboard company Lamar recently pulled atheist advertisements after saying they were too offensive. What about all the billboards I have to read with quotes from an angry god on them or billboards showing Barack Obama and the World Trade Center with “Don’t vote for a Democrat.” on it? Now that is just plain offensive. Simply asking people whether they believe in God should not be considered offensive. If anything it should start a dialog between the religious and the non-religious. The fact that most religious people instantly get all WHARRGARBL and any chance for a reasonable debate gets immediately thrown out the window is the reason atheist organizations keep putting up these ads. We have been marginalized and forced to keep our opinions to ourselves simply because we are a minority. I’ve always said there are two ways of guaranteeing that you won’t win an election. The first is to deny the Holocaust happened, the second is to come out as an atheist.

Posted by Ian, filed under Atheism. Date: August 6, 2009, 4:38 pm | 1 Comment »