Billboards Boost Atheists During Holiday Season

It’s the flip-side of the “War on Christmas” coin: more militant closed-minded Christians would prefer to make non-believers feel like outsiders during the season of giving. One group has decided to speak out:

The Greater Sacramento Chapter of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has paid for 55 different billboards this year, all of which will go up in Sacramento, Calif., the Monday after Thanksgiving, according to local station News 10.

“It’s because atheists are starting to speak up and they’re beginning to identify each other,” chapter president Judy Saint told the station. “There are a lot of non-believers and this time of year, they feel like they’re all alone. This is not directed to people who enjoy their church, who enjoy their religion. That’s fine. But we’re talking to people who don’t know that atheism is okay.”

The billboards, all featuring area residents sharing messages like, “I worship nothing and question everything,” or “Science. It works,” are part of the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation’s overarching campaign to try to get atheists to “come out of the closet,” Fox News reports.

“The whole month of December is taken over in a celebration of the religious beliefs, in particular Christianity,” FFRF co-president Annie Laurie Gaylor told Fox. “And it’s just as if the whole month turns non-believers into outsiders.”

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.