The issue as I see it (being a secular pantheist, which means in terms of any sort of personal, supreme, anthropomorphic gods, I would be considered an atheist) is that it's well and good for people to practice their religions personally (something I have zero problem with; it's a free country, after all), but the government (as per separation of church and state) isn't supposed to side with any one religion over another (we'd have to allow equal time for every religion if we did that, and really, in schools, government meetings, and so forth, who has time for that?). And I don't see how atheists and atheist organizations putting billboards up is any different than religious groups doing it, or for that matter, any company advertising.
I hate the fact that American Christians have no idea what
real persecution is. It ranges from the
totally made up War on Christmas stuff loudmouth paid opinionheads like to drag out annually, to "we're being persecuted by losing our right to persecute others." In other words, bullcrap and hate. That's not persecution, that's the equivalent of jumping in front of cars to sue them. Meanwhile, certain parts of the globe, you get
slaughtered for being Christian. THAT'S persecution. Yeah, there are atheists that are complete jerkwads about what they believe, but that's what happens. It's reactionary extremism. One extremist side becomes to loud and powerful, and a polar opposite gets created as a result. Like how we wouldn't have had the freaking Religious Right Moral Majority minority had it not been for Hippies.
I'm going to call it. If religious types want to stop feeling "persecuted," they need to loudly, vocally, and publicly call out extremist branches of their religion and marginalize them at every cost. If atheists want to stop looking like dinks, they need to respect respectful religious types, but go after the nasty hate groups disguising themselves as righteous. Religious and non-religious types
have the same enemy. Why antagonize each other when you can join forces to discredit extremism? We're all on the same side here, we just have to give up a
little to get things to work. And that "little" doesn't mean giving up on religion. At least, not completely.
Now, that's true. And I've come to realize that WBC is getting more laughably desperate to have someone, ANYONE in the media pay attention to them (if it weren't so pathetic, it would be comical) that they insert their Insane Troll Logic-based rhetoric into any, and every, news story under the sun.
They're a joke. Hate groups find them distasteful. They're only around because they're that freaking insane and inbred with their beliefs. And like I always say, if these kinds of people are so religious, how come they pretty much forget
everything but some idiotic footnote? They have an entire way of life essentially to help shape you into a better, nicer, kinder person, but they throw it all away based on
one little freaking idiotic thing. And that freaking thing is so freaking important that all the love each other, help the less fortunate, God is the only one with a right to judge stuff goes out the window for "X is a sin. Sin is something we're told to hate. So X = hate it" logic. It's like that Indiana Pizza place that refused gay customers for those exact stupid selfish UNChristian reasons (guess they miss segregation that much they needed an outlet) that got rewarded on Kickstarter or something by other religious types that feel persecuted because they no longer can hate without looking like complete butts. Oh, forget the starving people dying on the street or in other countries, these people
willfully refuse money on the grounds of aforementioned unimportant footnote. They're persecuted just like Fox News says we are.
And while I'm on the subject, you know those violent psychos that hate the US so much they want to blow everything up? HEY! I got it. if you want to make the US look bad, why not build a society on love and tolerance and help those around you, devoted to a life of charity? Nope. Blow stuff up because something somewhere somehow sort of justifies it
despite the fact the rest of the entire religion says not to. Yep. So why do people hate religious types so much again? AH! Because they successfully destroyed anything good about their own religion. Way to go. Extremists of
any religion successfully destroyed everything that's supposed to be good and pure about religion, with the side effect of lumping anyone who's a respectful religious follower in with your batcrap insane group. Let's say there's a certain religion created by...oh... let's say a subpar sci-fi writer. And let's say that religion is essentially made to sucker money out of everyone. THEY'RE not as batcrap insane as the extremists.