Anti-atheism billboards in Times Square and San Francisco

[longship]

41. Well, that's what the First Amendment says.

And the way it has been interpreted.

I am really not saying that people shouldn't be offended. But they are really saying more than that, aren't they? They are saying people shouldn't say offensive things.

That's where I disagree with them.

As I added to my previous post here, "Have at it, Hoss! Say whatever you want so everybody can sort you out. You want to slut shame women. That's fine. I just hope you aren't running for Congress or anything."

Free speech, even free offensive speech, is an essential to a free republic, as both Jefferson and Madison understood.

What is offensive and not has changed over my very lifetime. Some of what was socially inoffensive in my youth is now grossly offensive. This is enforced by social change, not laws. Fortunately I was brought up to be tolerant and adopted many of today's social norms early on.

It is no longer socially acceptable to be misogynistic, racist, and many other things that were quote prevalent in my youth.

Religion is different. I don't want to get into the benefits of belief or non-belief here. But this is an important battle because there's a lot of mess in its wake. Just as Thomas Paine, Susan B. Anthony, Martin Luther King, were all deliberately provocative, non-believers may today be deliberately provocative.

I know that it's a tact I often use in these very forums. As I am among friends, I hope they will not consider my posts to be insulting. Or, at least I must assume that is so. I at least try to stick to the issue.

In the end, these billboards are part of a battle front for the ever-growing community of non-believers to make themselves known. That's good. Because we are nearly universally reviled and we are much more numerous than anybody imagines.