More atheists enlisting the power of the state to punish Thoughtcrime. 

Tolerance is not enough - YOU.MUST.SUBMIT!

Freedom from Religion Foundation sues pizza parlor over church bulletin discount.

Another day in the place that used to be America...

...another example of how atheists are better at not being offended by religious symbols/texts in the public square than everyone else.

When did free-thinkers begin to favor the suppression of books?

//The order was hailed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The FFRF had filed a complaint with the military—claiming the presence of the Bible "amounts to a government endorsement of that religious text."

"FFRF is pleased to learn that NEXCOM has taken seriously its constitutional obligation to remain neutral toward religion as a representative of our federal government," FFRF Sam Grover told me. "By removing Bibles from Navy-run lodges, the Navy has taken a step to ensure that it is not sending the impermissible message that Christians are favored over guests with other religious beliefs or over those guests with no religion."

The Bibles had been placed in the rooms, free of charge, by Gideons International.

An active-duty service member contacted me and alerted me that the Bibles were being taken out of hotel rooms, and a lodge housekeeper told American Family Association the same thing.

"They told us to put them in boxes where they would be taken to a donation center somewhere," the housekeeper told AFA.//

Organized Atheism....

...protecting the right of atheists to demand conformity with atheist ideology since 2007.

Restaurant that gave a 15% discount to patrons who said grace has been forced to cancel policy because of pressure from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.

Thank you Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Thanks to your unstinting efforts to save America from the boogey-man of Theocracy...

...we may have real government informants attending church services to make sure that free speech is not committed....

...plus more selective prosecution of ungood badthink speech!

Just like the Nazis and the Pulpit Law!

//The Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Internal Revenue Service reached an agreement today (July 17) that resolves for the time being an ongoing federal lawsuit over non-enforcement of restrictions on political activity by tax-exempt religious organizations and churches.

“This is a victory, and we’re pleased with this development in which the IRS has proved to our satisfaction that it now has in place a protocol to enforce its own anti-electioneering provisions,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

“Of course, we have the complication of a moratorium currently in place on any IRS investigations of any tax-exempt entities, church or otherwise, due to the congressional probe of the IRS. FFRF could refile the suit if anti-electioneering provisions are not enforced in the future against rogue political churches.”

FFRF filed suit against the IRS shortly after the presidential election in 2012, based on the agency’s reported enforcement moratorium, as evidenced by open and notorious politicking by churches. Pulpit Freedom Sunday, in fact, has become an annual occasion for churches to violate the law with impunity. The IRS, meanwhile, admittedly was not enforcing the restrictions against churches. A prior lawsuit in 2009 required the IRS to designate an appropriate high-ranking official to initiate church tax examinations, but it had apparently failed to do so.

The IRS has now resolved the signature authority issue necessary to initiate church examinations. The IRS also has adopted procedures for reviewing, evaluating and determining whether to initiate church investigations. While the IRS retains “prosecutorial” discretion with regard to any individual case, the IRS no longer has a blanket policy or practice of non-enforcement of political activity restrictions as to churches.   //

Prosecutorial discretion is the key with this crowd.

On the Pulpit Law - see this Wiki article.

Freethinking secular humanists are prejudiced?

Impossible!

Cardinal Dolan writes:

          Here I simply want to welcome the grey, full-page ad, and thank the anonymous militiamen at FFRF for giving me yet another handout for my students when I give my next talk on “Anti-Catholic Bigotry in the United States.”

        When I used to teach a course on American Catholic history to university students, or, when I give a conference on the topic now, there will always be an early question, “We know there used to be hatred of the Catholic Church in America, but didn’t all that end in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was elected?”

        No! In fact, historians now posit that Kennedy’s election was yet further proof of the abiding, deep suspicion of the Church found in American history—remember Arthur Schlesinger’s observation that, “Bias against the Catholic Church is the most enduring prejudice in American history”—not only because Kennedy’s victory would have been much bigger had his Catholic faith not been maligned during the campaign, but because the candidate himself felt compelled to pass the very “religious test” prohibited by the Constitution, assuring voters that his faith would never have any influence at all on his executive decisions—a statement hardly considered necessary from Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, or Quaker candidates.//

An Evangelical Business Owner Prevails...

....but atheist group decides that's no reason not to engage in some Catholic-baiting.

Because if there isn't one thing that is going to get all the right-thinking kind of people freedom from religion loving people united it is uniting to condemn a Catholic majority on the Supreme Court.

Apparently, "Freedom From Religion" means having a religious-test for the Supreme Court.

And you have to note that "tolerance" and "freedom of conscience" have passed their "best used by" date when "progressive" "liberals" warn that "liberty can be endangered by the abuse of liberty."

It may be true, but it is not an argument we heard a few weeks ago when the same Supreme Court, including Catholics, struck down the Defense of Marriage Act.

The truth about some atheists is that they don't just happen not to believe in God...

...but they actively hate the Catholic Church.

I observed this correlation on a Philosophy forum where I noticed the correlation between "atheist" and "anti-catholic" and "people with peculiar personal habits that the Catholic Church defines as sinful."

Exhibit "A" as to the correlation of the first two categories is this screed from Annie Laurie Gaylor, Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation that calls on liberal and nominal Catholics to leave the Church because it has, you know, moral teachings that do not conform to the way she thinks the world should work.

It's nothing new - adherents to the Latest Great Thing have been making this pitch for the last two thousand years. In fact Ms. Gaylor's screed is nothing more than a warmed-over pitch made by the Nazis about the Catholic Church's reactionary resistance to permitting the State to get involved in the Very Best Secular Medical Policies, which in 1930s Germany was euthanizing the disabled.

And we all know how that worked out, don't we?

Let's look at Ms. Gaylor's shallow diatribe:

Dear 'Liberal' Catholic:

It’s time to quit the Roman Catholic Church.

Well, certainly, freedom of conscience, adherence to the truth and all that. No one is making anyone stay.

It's your moment of truth. Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on, anyway?

Because, obviously, prior to three weeks ago, we were living in the Dark Ages, when women were sold like chattel and forcibly made to have sex, get pregnant and bear children.

The nightmare world of January of 2012, before the Obama HHS Mandate.

It is time to make known your dissent from the Catholic Church, in light of the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ ruthless campaign endangering the right to contraception. If you're part of the Catholic Church, you're part of the problem.

Jeez, hysterical much?

The Bishop's ruthless campaign consists of (a) supporting Obamacare (stupid idea) and (b) arguing for a conscience exemption (good idea.)

I remember when liberals were big on "freedom of conscience." They would get together in these big herds and whinny about how wrong it was to make people sign "loyalty oaths" promising that they woudln't support a violent revolution against the United States.

And remember burning the flag and putting a crucifix in urine? That was the most important thing once upon a time.

But Catholics adhering to a teaching that you can find continuously taught from the First Century, that isn't nearly as important as giving Stalinists the right to become teachers.

Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club?

Can't have a reasoned conversation without a bunch of name-calling, can we?

Why are you aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly and publicly announced a crusade to ban contraception, abortion and sterilization, and to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers?

"Crusade to ban"?

Where? When?

Evidence please.

And "to deny the right of all women everywhere, Catholic or not, to decide whether and when to become mothers?"

Huh? The Catholic Church doesn't teach that people have to exercise prudence in determining whether and when to become parents? It seems it does.

It's like this woman doesn't know what she's talking about.

When it comes to reproductive freedom, the Roman Catholic Church is Public Enemy Number One. Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Church's antiquated doctrine that birth control is a sin and must be outlawed.

Think of what "acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, social evils and deaths" can be laid at the door of the Catholic Church when it stands in the way of "retroactive abortion" and defines the soon to be widespread practice of murdering children one year old or younger - who really aren't people, to some folks - the test balloon for which is now being floated by the Journal of Medical Ethics.

A backer of the Roman Catholic presidential candidate says that if women want to avoid pregnancy we should put an aspirin between our knees? Catholic politicians are urging that the right to contraception should be left up to states? Nearly 50 years after the Supreme Court upheld contraception as a privacy right, we’re going to have to defend this basic freedom all over again?

All she can say is "Jew! Jew! Jew!" (In other words, Catholic-baiting instead of Jew-baiting.)

But, seriously, guilt by association much?

Also, evidence please for the buried claim that the "Roman Catholic presidential candidate" has ever said he intends to lobby for outlawing contraception?

There isn't any.

So its back to yelling "Jew! Jew! Jew!"

You’re better than your church. So why? Why continue to attend Mass? Tithe? Why dutifully sacrifice to send your children to parochial schools so they can be brainwashed into the next generation of myrmidons (and, potentially, become the next Church victims)? For that matter, why have you put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, that excludes half of humanity?

No, liberal Catholics, send your kids to a secular school where they can become "myrmidoms" for the liberal welfare state and be molested by public school teachers, which is far, far more likely than facing a similar issue with a Catholic priest in that (a) the rate of molestation by Catholic priests was always lower than any other occupation and (b) is far, far lower than any other institution today because, unlike, say, public schools, the Catholic Church has been required to reform itself.

No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith.

Actually, no self-respecting Catholic would be a feminist, civil libertarian or progressive insofar as those terms have been defined to means "secular deniers of God who make the murder of people the summum bonum of society."

As a Cafeteria Catholic, you chuck out the stale doctrine and moldy decrees of your religion, but keep patronizing the establishment that menaces public health by serving rotten offerings.

"Stale," "moldy" and "rotten," but it "menaces public health."

Hey, the Jew-baiting analogy just got clearer, except the Nazis would have thrown in "diseased" and "poison" somewhere.

Keep working on it!

Your continuing Catholic membership, as a "liberal," casts a veneer of respectability upon an irrational sect determined to blow out the Enlightenment and threaten liberty for women worldwide. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.

Interestingly, this one comes right out of the Liberal German Kulturkampf, when the Prussian nobility aligned with liberals to deny Catholics basic civil rights after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. See my review here.

What is it about "progressives" that causes them to re-work historic bigotries and ancient cliches time after time?

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Catholic,” you are doing “bad” to women’s rights. You’re kidding yourself if you think the Church is ever going to add a Doctrine of Immaculate ContraCeption.

Har, har, har...Doctrine of the Immaculate Contraception...get it?!?!?!?!

Now, she's beginning to sound like some lunatic fundamentalist anti-catholic bigot.

*Sigh* That schtick never gets old.

It is disgraceful that U.S. health care reform is being held hostage to the Catholic Church’s bizarre opposition to medically prescribed contraception.

If they have to give in to the "papists," health care will be set back to the a time long-forgetten....about two months ago!!!

No one can resist! Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Fuhrer!

Dayum...that stuff gets your blood stirring!

No politician should jeopardize electability for failure to genuflect before the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

And now we dust off 19th Century Know-Nothingism.

(Question to ask your Bishop: Does he hold up an umbrella against the rain? Isn’t that just as “unnatural” as using a condom or diaphragm?)

Don't. Just don't.

You'll embarass yourself even further in your obvious lack of any understanding of Natural Law or teleology.

Your Church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is “an assault against religious liberty.”

No, it claims that coercing people to do or subsidize things that are an anathema to their religious principles is an "assault on religious liberty."

Weird, but there was a time when liberals claimed they were concerned about freedom of conscience.

You are savvy enough to realize that the real assault is by the Church against women’s rights and health care.

Because, obviously, by doing nothing, such as not paying for something, that's really assaulting "women's health care."

So, this woman is assaulting me by not paying my bar tab?

This is just the weirdest reasoning ever.

As Nation columnist Katha Pollitt asks: Is it an offense against Jehovah Witnesses that health care coverage will include blood transfusions?

I don't know. Maybe we should ask them.

The Amish, as Pollitt points out, don’t label cars “an assault on religious liberty” and try to force everyone to drive buggies.

And we force the Amish to pay for other peoples'cars...when exactly?

The louder the Church cries “offense against religious liberty” the harder it works to take away women’s liberty.

The louder that people cry "theft," the more they work against other peoples' ability to take their property from them.

The point is what? That if you define the other person's inactivity as an assault, then that inactivity is an assault?

Obama has compromised, but the Church never budges, instead launching a vengeful modern-day Inquisition. Look at its continuing directives to parish priests to use their pulpits every Sunday to lobby you against Obama’s policy, the Church's announcement of a major anti-contraception media campaign — using your tithes, contributions and donations — to defeat Obama’s laudable health care policy. The Church has introduced into Congress the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, ” a bill to place the conscienceless Catholic Church's "rights of conscience" above the rights of conscience of 53 percent of Americans. That the Church has "conscience rights" to deny women their rights is a kissing cousin to the claim that “corporations are people.” The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to oppose contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny contraceptive rights to non-Catholics.

How dare Catholics expect to use democracy for their protection!

Ein Volk! Ein...well, you get the drift.

But is there any point in going on? After all, your misplaced loyalty has lasted through two decades of public sex scandals involving preying priests, children you may have known as victims, and church complicity, collusion and coverup going all the way to the top. Are you like the battered woman who, after being beaten down every Sunday, feels she has no place else to go?

Lady, you don't know the half of it. I have a government that turns a blind eye to pedophile teachers, takes half my income for taxes and runs trillions of dollars in deficits and ....

Oh, wait, you weren't talking about that.

But we have a more welcoming home to offer, free of incense-fogged ritual, free of what freethinker Bertrand Russell called “ideas uttered long ago by ignorant men,” free of blind obedience to an illusory religious authority. Join those of us who put humanity above dogma.

Kill young children!

Kill the disabled!

Prevent Catholics from exercising their democratic rights!

Ein Volk! etc., etc.

As a member of the “flock” of an avowedly antidemocratic club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass.

It's a free church. The door is that way.

By the way, we Catholics are the winning side.

We faced down the Roman empire, Attila the Hun, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the French Revolution and a thousand other petty tyrants.

We survived.

We're here.

They are not.

Have fun with your new friends.

We will still be here when they are long-forgotten.