MADISON, Wis. — The perpetually offended atheists group that has routinely targeted Alabama towns and schools in recent years has now penned a letter to President Barack Obama demanding he “do something” about the “reprehensible prejudice and ubiquitous social stigmatization” of America’s “freethinkers, atheists and agnostics.”
Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), wrote to President Obama last week after he visited a Baltimore mosque to condemn “inexcusable political rhetoric against Muslim-Americans.”
The atheist leaders say it is time the President help them overcome the hostility they claim to face on a regular basis.
“Those of us who are nonreligious daily encounter unwarranted stereotypes, putdowns and assumptions that we cannot be good people or good citizens,” the group laments in its letter. “A December 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Psychology found, appallingly, that atheists rank, with rapists, as least trustworthy!”
As a result of this negative perception, the groups says atheists are “at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to social acceptance, in comparison to a variety of minorities often typified as ‘other,’ including gays, Muslims, recent immigrants, Jews and racial minorities.”
FFRF believes all it will take for this to begin to change is for President Obama to join them for their “Reason Rally” at the Lincoln Memorial in June.
“By showing up on June 4, as you did at the mosque, and addressing nonbelieving Americans, you can send a signal that the marginalization of a quarter of the U.S. population is unacceptable,” they wrote. “Please use your ‘bully pulpit’ to help erase harmful attitudes toward the nonreligious minority in the United States, as you have done for religious minorities.”
Alabama State Representative Mack Butler (R-Rainbow City), whose area has been a frequent target of the FFRF in recent years, says he has a simpler solution for the atheist group’s perception problem.
“Perhaps people would not have such a negative perception of them if they were content living their lives how they choose and allowing others to do the same,” he said. “How Christmas parades, citizen-led prayers or football team chaplains impact their lives in a negative way is beyond me.”
Here is a rundown of several of the ways the FFRF has come after Alabamians in recent years:
Auburn University’s football team chaplain
The Auburn football team chaplain is not an employee of the University, and is not not being paid by public funds, but the FFRF insisted he is being given “special privileges and unrestricted access because he is a Christian clergyman.”
The Auburn University administration responded to the letter with a short statement.
“Chaplains are common in many public institutions, including the US Congress. The football team chaplain isn’t an Auburn employee, and participation in activities he leads are voluntary.”
The FFRF reportedly sent similar letters to several other SEC schools, including Georgia, Mississippi State, Ole Miss, and South Carolina, as well as ACC school Clemson. The group has requested documents from the University of Alabama to investigate its chaplain, as well.
Christian flag in Glencoe
FFRF sent a letter of complaint to Glencoe city hall back in March, but the flag, which flew in front of City Hall, was not removed until late June when the mayor received a second letter threatening legal action.
In an interview with Fox 6 News, Mayor Charles Gilchrist said the city attorney warned about another town that was sued over a similar matter. That town had to pay $500,000 in damages plus $50,000 in legal fees.
“That would just about ruin us,” said Gilchrist. “That’s what they do, they pick on these smaller towns that can’t defend ourselves.”
Piedmont’s Christmas parade
FFRF threatened Piedmont, Ala., with a lawsuit if it didn’t change the theme of its Christmas parade from “Keeping Christ in Christmas.”
The theme “alienates non-Christians and others in Piedmont who do not in fact have a ‘strong belief in prayers’ by turning them into political outsiders in their own community,” according to FFRF attorney Andrew Seidel. “The sentiment of ‘Keeping Christ in Christmas’ does not qualify as a secular celebration.”
The attorney’s letter told the mayor to find a “more appropriate, more inclusive, and constitutional theme” for the parade.
“It was a great theme,” mayor Bill Baker told Fox News in response. “I was totally shocked when I received the letter. It’s a small town. It’s a small Christmas parade. We didn’t think there would be any problems at all.”
The town did not back down.
The parade ended up being the largest in Piedmont history, with countless floats prominently featuring signs proclaiming the true “Reason for the Season.”
“If all the good Christian people would stick together and lift up the name of Jesus Christ and not let these atheists and non-believers scare us like they do,” one of the local parade organizers told ABC 33/40, “it would be a better world.”
Prayer before football games
FFRF also threatened Piedmont with a lawsuit if the high school football team did not stop praying before its games.
It backfired.
Rather than it being “officially” led, everyone now just comes to gather on the field before games, “and as citizens, we recited the Lord’s Prayer – out loud,” Mayor Baker said. “One week we had the entire football field encircled by people. It was really wonderful and very moving to me to see people come together and praise God and speak His name out loud.”
(h/t The Daily Caller)
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