IT’S CURMUDGEON TIME: THINGS THAT REALLY GET SO FAR UP MY NOSE, IT STINGS MY HYPOTHALAMUS

One of my biggest peeves is that xtians seem to believe they’re so ‘persecuted’. Maybe in other countries: sure as hell not in this one. All us nasty ole atheists want to take their ‘stuff’ away. You know, like the right to shove their beliefs down our throats, take away fundamental freedoms like what we can do with our own bodies, dictate the terms of how we live our lives, that sort of thing. Or the fact that we object to them being in charge. Or that we don’t appreciate being told we’re amoral cowards, religious zealots, being equated with communists, unpatriotic, being members of the ‘losers club’, all that folderol that is just that: folderol. Crap. Trash. Smack. Pick your noun, any noun.

Leave me to my own devices, and I’ll leave you to yours. If I want to accessorize my life with your trappings, I’ll ask. Otherwise, sod off.

Here’s a few items, from the land of the free, no less.

Atheist Discrimination Lawsuit Dismissed
A $250,000 religious discrimination suit against Associates Commerce Solutions was dismissed by a judge. Carletta Sims alleged that she had been fired because she was an atheist; the judge, however, found that the vice president who made the termination decision did so based upon misleading information supplied by two other employees and that means that his decision wasn't discriminatory.
Technically, the decision is surely fair - after all, the vice president didn't deliberately discriminate. It is disturbing, however, that Sims wasn't given her job back and the other two employees fired because they surely engaged in discrimination and prejudice - harmful prejudice, too, because they got a woman fired simply because she didn't follow their religion. “


http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/03/antiatheist_dis.html

“Eugene Volokh has just written a law article (PDF file here) on how atheist fathers and mothers are routinely discriminated against in child custody cases. He cites over 70 recent cases across the country - and these were only the ones which were appealed, so they probably represent a fraction of the actual cases. Volokh recalls how Percy Byshe Shelley was the first father to be denied custody because of his atheism - but his dilemma doesn't belong to a different time and place:
"That time and place, it turns out, is 2005 Michigan, where a modern Shelley might be denied custody based partly on his 'not regularly attend[ing] church and present[ing] no evidence demonstrating any willingness or capacity to attend to religion with [his children],' or having a 'lack of religious observation.'  It's 1992 South Dakota, where Shelley might have been given custody but only on condition that he 'will agree to present a plan to the Court of how [he] is going to commence providing some sort of spiritual opportunity for the [children] to learn about God while in [his] custody.' It's 2005 Arkansas, 2002 Georgia, 2005 Louisiana, 2004 Minnesota, 2005 Mississippi, 1992 New York, 2005 North Carolina, 1996 Pennsylvania, 2004 South Carolina, 1997 Tennessee, 2000 Texas, and, going back to the 1970s and 1980s, Alabama, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Iowa, Montana, and Nebraska.  In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered a mother to take her child to church each week, reasoning that 'it is certainly to the best interests of [the child] to receive regular and systematic spiritual training'; in 1996, the Arkansas Supreme Court did the same, partly on the grounds that weekly church attendance, rather than just the once-every-two-weeks attendance that the child would have had if he went only with the other parent, provides superior 'moral instruction.'"
Of course, this is an outrageous attack on religious liberty. Imagine if Christian parents were denied custody because of their faith. O'Reilly would have weeks of programming. But atheists? Naah. When Christianists declare that they are fighting for religious freedom, bring this issue up. It will determine whether they are in good faith, so to speak, or not.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_atheists

“In the United States, there is widespread disapproval of atheists. For example, according to motherjones.com, 52% of Americans claim they would not vote for a well-qualified atheist for president. [3] More recently, a 2006 study at the University of Minnesota showed atheists to be the most mistrusted minority among Americans. [4] Notwithstanding such attitudes, atheists are legally protected from discrimination in the United States. They have been among the strongest advocates of the legal separation of church and state. American courts have regularly, if controversially, interpreted the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state as protecting the freedoms of non-believers, as well as prohibiting the establishment of any state religion. Atheists often sum up the legal situation with the phrase: "Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion." [5]
In the 1994 case Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet, Justice Souter wrote in the opinion for the Court that: "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion." [6] Everson v. Board of Education established that "neither a state nor the Federal Government can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another". This applies the Establishment Clause to the states as well as the federal government. [7] However, several state constitutions make the protection of persons from religious discrimination conditional on their acknowledgement of the existence of a deity, apparently making freedom of religion in those states inapplicable to atheists. These state constitutional clauses have not been tested. Civil rights cases are typically brought in federal courts; so such state provisions are mainly of symbolic importance.”


“It is his personal story about the ordeal he and has family have been swept up in after their daughter, Nicole, refused to join a prayer circle during a basketball game at their local high school. Nicole, instead, recited the "godless" Pledge of Allegiance.
From there, events went out of control. Chester Smalkowski and family members attempted to hold a conversation with the high school principal. That turned into a physical altercation, Mr. Smalkowski was arrested under a battery of charges, and the authorities offered to dismiss the case if the Atheist family fled the state.
American Atheists joined in the subsequent criminal case, and Chester Smalkowski -- battling incredible "Bible Belt" odds in the courtroom -- was found innocent of the charges. News of that can be found on the American Atheists web site..”


http://gods4suckers.net/archives/2006/07/09/jeebus-macht-frei

“Despite threats of litigation from the ACLU, one Delaware school district has made it abundantly clear that they will not surrender America’s Christian heritage without a fight.
For years, the Indian River School District (IRSD) Board of Education of Sussex County, Delaware, has opened with an invocation. Recently, they received a threatening letter from the Delaware chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) demanding that they discontinue their tradition of prayer.
School Board Takes a Brave Stand
After seeking legal counsel, a meeting was called, and community residents gathered at the Frankford Elementary School. In response to the ACLU’s threats, IRSD board president Harvey Walls asked board member Dr. Donald G. Hattier to deliver a prayer. Amid the crowd’s loud cheers, Hattier rose and recited George Washington’s prayer which was offered during America’s fight for independence…”
“The Delaware Daily Times added:
…Many begged the school board not to take Jesus away from their children. Others read scriptures from the Bible citing instructions given by Jesus…”

On the evening in August 2004 when the board was to announce its new policy, hundreds of people turned out for the meeitng. The Dobrich family and Jane Doe felt intimidated and asked a state trooper to escort them.
The complaint recounts a raucous crowd that applauded the board’s opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him “take your yarmulke off!” His statement, read by Samantha, confided “I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy.”
…A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might “disappear” like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. She disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.
The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to “go back up north.”
In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.”

Goddammit, anyone else see the disconnect here?

Unless I woke up in 1941 Berlin, newsflash people: This is the United States of America. This bullshit will not stand. We ask for equal consideration, and are shouted down. We ask for a seat at the table, to be told sit at the childrens’. We ask that we be left to our own, and we are invaded. It permeates this culture, this nauseating, inconsiderate, UnAmerican attitude, that somehow, we are the lesser people, we are the inferior people, and we are the dregs of humanity, because we’re godless. We’re accused of all sorts of rhetorical dreck: from satanic worship to baby eating. From self-worship to imposing our viewpoint on others (raven.crow.black). We’re shit on, marginalized, dehumanized, any other kind of –ized you can think of.

And then we’re accused of being negative. We’re accused of whining. It’s a finger-pointing festival of acrimony. We’re told to shut up, we’re accused of being unappreciative of what we have.

Small wonder, then, the rage. I’m mad as hell: how about you?

You all know the drill. You’ve heard all the routines. All the mindless drivel, the seemingly endless carp that these religious folk dribble out of their mouths, the drool of imbeciles made poison.

I can’t speak for other atheists, only for myself: I want what’s mine, my birthright, as an American citizen. I will not be silent: I will not be shamed. The heel of the boot to my neck shall not triumph. I will be slave to no man, regardless of religion, regardless of majority.

“The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy. “
Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774

You can have what’s yours. Understand, though:
That’s not everything under the sun. Regardless of what book you use. Despite the endless propaganda, the brainwashing.

I will be free. I will not be silenced. And if I think your opinion is foolish, it’s my right as an American to fucking well say so.

And if you want to take it to the next level, my reply is this: you’d better be good, bucko.