Imagine No Religion

The national Freedom From Religion Foundation is filing a lawsuit in federal court against the City of Rancho Cucamonga, California, for taking actions which led to the censorship of its Imagine No Religion billboard.

The nation's largest national association of freethinkers (atheists and agnostics) and a state/church watchdog, said City violated the Foundation's rights under the Establishment Clause and Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Foundation's pretty sign, which was evidently destroyed by General Outdoor Co. after its removal on Nov. 21, had a stained-glass window motif asking viewers to Imagine No Religion and advertising the Foundation's name and website, ffrf.org.

The Foundation had prepaid for the board and contracted for a two-month run beginning in mid-November. The Board had been up for less than a week when it was removed at the apparent instigation of Linda Daniels, Rancho Cucamonga Development Director.

The Defendants' actions conveyed a message that religion is favored, preferred, and promoted by the City of Rancho Cucamonga and its officials, despite subsequent attempts to cover up the Defendants' involvement in sending an objectively understood message disapproving FFRF's billboard, said the Foundation.

The Foundation is seeking reasonable compensatory and punitive damages and attorney's fees.

A billboard in Idaho declaring Beware of dogma is the latest example of humanist activists using advertising to promote atheism.

Several atheist groups in Idaho, including Humanists of Idaho, recently erected the billboard in Boise.

The ad was sponsored by the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which launched a national billboard campaign in late 2007, taking its religion-free messages state-by-state.

Bryan Fischer, executive director of Idaho Values Alliance, responded to the billboard in a statement saying: The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

Ironically we actually agree with the slogan, but we think the dogma Americans need to be aware of is the dogma of secular fundamentalism, which is at odds with the worldview of the Founders.

This country was founded on a fundamentally religious concept that there is a Creator and that Creator is the source of our fundamental civil liberties.
The FFRF has placed 27 billboards in 15 states so far. The organization is headed by Dan Barker, a former Christian Pentecostal preacher and musician.

Earlier this month American Atheists Inc., put up two billboards in Charlotte, NC aimed at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The billboards questioned the religiosity of the two Presidential candidates.

On Thursday, August 24th, those billboards were taken down.

Directly following an article on the front page of the Fox News website, American Atheists received hundreds of hate e-mails and phone calls according to American Atheists' Managing Director, Amanda Knief.

The reason that the billboards were taken down was not however due to any threats against American Atheists, but were due to threats made toward Adams Outdoor Advertising, who sold the billboard space to the atheist group.

Knief commented in the official Press Release:

It is with regret that we tell our members and all of those who treasure free speech and the separation of religion and government that American Atheists and Adams Outdoor Advertising have mutually agreed to remove the billboards immediately.

No subject, no idea should be above scrutiny---and this includes religion in all forms. We are saddened that by choosing to express our rights as atheists through questioning the religious beliefs of the men who want to be our president that our fellow citizens have responded with vitriol, threats, and hate speech against our staff, volunteers, and Adams Outdoor Advertising.

Teresa MacBain, American Atheists' Public Relations Director also commented in the Press Release:

It saddens me to think that our country is not a safe place for all people to publicly question religious belief. How can we grow as a nation when such censorship exists from our own citizens?