Commissioner Art Otero recommended this logo change to voice objection to the Obama administration’s “socialist” leadership of the country. Otero said: “This nation has been moving toward more liberal postures such as homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion and the legalization of marijuana. I’m against that way of thinking. Those are not the values upon which this nation was founded. I think we need to fight for the values we’re losing.”

Kissimmee’s Mayor, Jim Swan, said he would personally pay $250 to engrave the phrase onto the wooden seal in the commission chambers. But over time the logo change would cost taxpayers about $200,000. The five-member Commission is likely to vote on this change next month.

“In God We Trust” was a latter-day motto adopted in 1956, at the height of the “Red Scare.” (Read more about “In God We Trust”). The motto excludes all nontheists and, in its endorsement of one “God,” also excludes adherents of polytheistic faiths such as Buddhism and Hinduism. This preference for monotheistic religions blatantly violates the constitutional principle of separation of state and church. FFRF recently filed a lawsuit objecting to the engraving of “In God We Trust” on the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, D.C. As in that case, Kissimmee’s “God” endorsement “excludes and treats as outsiders… as many as 15% of all adults, who are not religious, i.e., atheists, agnostics, skeptics and freethinkers, none of whom possesses a belief in a god; the mandated language diminishes nonbelievers by making god-belief synonymous with citizenship.”

Some useful talking points might include: Kissimmee is neither an exclusively Christian nor religious community; the motto specifically excludes nonbelievers and non-monotheistic religions; and the excessive cost, ($200,000), that will burden taxpayers, is outrageous and fiscally irresponsible, especially during the current recession.

Please write a succinct, polite, firm, and signed message to Mayor Jim Swan and the other City Commissioners. Letters to the Editor are also helpful. Concentrate on one or two major points, and, for maximum effectiveness, write as an individual, not as someone responding to this action alert. (Note: When you write public officials, your message becomes part of the public record, so please do not say anything that might reflect poorly on FFRF.)

Mayor Jim Swan
101 N. Church Street
Kissimmee FL 34741-5054
Phone: (407)973-5226
Fax: (407)847-8369

Vice Mayor Jerry Gemskie

Mayor Pro-Tem Cheryl L. Grieb

Commissioner Carlos L. Irizarry

Commissioner Art Otero

Media Contacts

Orlando Sentinel
Letters to the Editor
633 N. Orange Ave.
Orlando FL 32801-1349
Fax: (407)420-5286
(Note: Letters must be signed with an address and phone number, and kept under 250 words for publication.)

The Miami Herald
The Reader’s Forum
One Herald Plaza
Miami FL 33132
Fax: (305)376-8950

The News-Journal
PO Box 2831
Daytona Beach FL 32120-2831
Fax: (386)258-1577
(Note: Include name, address and phone number. “Clear, brief letters on a single subject are most likely to be published. Please include your letter in the body of the e-mail. Attached files may not arrive intact. Your address and phone number will not be published.”)

The Skeptic’s Toolbox, August 6-9 in Eugene, OR.

The CFI Western Carribbean Travel Club Adventure, aboard the Carnival Miracle [yes, the irony has not escaped us!!], Nov. 12-20

FFRF 32nd annual convention, Nov. 6-8, Seattle.

Rummy, how have you screwed us? Let me count the ways: Newly released top-secret documents from the Rumsfeld White House that slathered religion all over the war.

Followed up by:

Soldiers in a prayer group exhorted to “hunt people for Jesus.” (Proselytizing is an expressly prohibited practice in the U.S. military, but they seem to be thinking up ways to weasel out of that.)

“Do we know what it means to proselytise?” Captain Emmit Furner, a military chaplain, says to the gathering.

“It is General Order Number One,” an unidentified soldier replies.

But Watt says “you can’t proselytise but you can give gifts.”

And this, Harper’s cover story for May, about a group of soldiers who painted “Jesus Kill Mohammed [sic]” on their Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and drove around with an interpreter blaring out the phrase over the loudspeaker.

“Jesus kill Mohammed!” chanted the interpreter. “Jesus kill Mohammed!”

A head emerged from a window to answer, somebody fired on the roof, and the Special Forces man directed a response from an MK-19 grenade launcher. “Boom,” remembers Humphrey. The head and the window and the wall around it disappeared.

“Jesus kill Mohammed!” Another head, another shot. Boom. “Jesus kill Mohammed!” Boom. In the distance, Humphrey heard the static of AK fire and the thud of RPGs. He saw a rolling rattle of light that looked like a firefight on wheels. “Each time I go into combat I get closer to God,” DeGiulio would later say.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation works to expose and litigate these kinds of fundamentalist violations in the U.S. military. If you care about this issue, now is the time to give. They have a matching program going on how until the end of May.

(Note: from what I’ve read from various bloggers, including the Friendly Atheist, the response has been more mixed than the 99% in favor of the plaque the FFRF has been hearing from, but kudos to them anyway for the huge membership increase.):

The response from Christians (especially Bill O’Reilly!) to the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s Winter Solstice sign in the Washington state capitol in Olympia has been over-the-top negative and intolerant, to the point of theft and vandalism. In addition to recognizing the winter solstice, the real reason for the season, our sign says “There are no gods, no devils, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.” Although a small minority of educated believers, while disagreeing with our message, does support our freedom to express our views, the overwhelming majority considers our message to be an inappropriate affront to their celebration of the holidays and want to see it removed.

It’s almost the opposite with the atheists and agnostics we hear from. Based on the emails and phone calls I receive from nonbelievers, the support for our sign is about 95% positive. Annie Laurie, who sees more responses than I do, says it is 99% positive. Many FFRF members have asked for a replica of the sign that they can frame or display in their own yards. The Foundation has been signing up hundreds of new members as a result of this one controversy alone.

A small minority of atheists and agnostics (not all members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation) think the wording on our sign should be changed. Some think it is too strong. Others think it is not strong enough!

That wording was written by FFRF founder and president emerita Anne Gaylor, which offers a nice balance of celebration and criticism. Any one of the 13,000 members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation might have come up with a different wording, but Anne’s lovely version has stood the test of time. For the 13th year in a row, those exact thoughts have appeared in the Wisconsin capitol building, and although there was some early theft and vandalism, it has stood virtually unmolested for most of that time. We have heard that it has become a tourist attraction!

Our sign is an “equal time” protest. It would not be there if there were not religious signs and symbols in those buildings in the first place. If believers are going to use state property to promote their views, then we nonbelievers insist on a place at the table. We are not destroying their symbols or interfering with their private freedom to worship or express their views. We are simply reminding the country that there are millions of good Americans who do not believe in a god or celebrate Christmas. Christians do not own the month of December. This season of the year is a natural occurrence, the winter solstice being the day of shortest sunlight in the northern hemisphere. Long before Christianity, humans have celebrated this time of year with festivals of light, feasts, evergreens, songs, and family gatherings. Christians don’t own the franchise. We are happy to share it with them.

Some people think our sign is an insult, and that we should avoid hurting feelings this time of the year. But if our measured criticism of religion is inappropriate, then certainly the Nativity Scene, which suggests that we are so evil that we need a Savior in order to avoid the tortures of hell, is a much deeper insult to human nature. If they insist on attacking us, we will defend ourselves. If they will remove their creches and religious messages from state property, we will be happy to remove our sign.

Ultimately, what we all want is a world with less violence and more understanding. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is taking advantage of our wonderful American freedoms to educate the public about how we can achieve that, by resisting religious divisiveness and advising: “At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail.”

— Dan Barker

I honor Dan Barker’s work to call attention to the dark side of religion.  Month after month, he and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor defend kids who are tormented at school because they aren’t Christians.  They give voice to young freethinkers.  They file anti-discrimination lawsuits.  They labor to keep science classes rigorous and social services fair. They compile news articles about fraud and violence and sexual abuse committed in the names of gods—and they can show you stacks of evidence that Catholic priests are not outliers.

I honor their work so much that I support it, and I gave up my Monday evening to interview Dan for a Seattle Community Access show called Moral Politics.  But, still, I have to ask, wasn’t the first sentence enough?

Throughout recorded history, winter solstice has been a time to celebrate.  Ancient agricultural cultures gave sacred significance to the return of light, the budding of new plant and animal life, a new cycle of plenty.  Their festivals had names such as Saturnalia, Yule and Lucia.  Some of them are celebrated to this day.  It was the special significance of the winter solstice that caused the Christian church to designate it as the birthday of Jesus.  Not only did it have the perfect connotations, representing as it did, the death and resurrection of the sun, it was already established as a birthday of gods. Prior to or during the time of Jesus, the Roman Attis, the Greek Dionysus, the Persian Mithra, and the Egyptian Osiris all had their birthdays celebrated on December 25.  Solstice really is the reason for the season.

I wish that the FFRF had simply given secular voice to the wonder we all feel when, in the dark of winter, we experience the promise of warmth and beauty and new life.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation had the opportunity to contribute to a Christmas display at the Washington State Capitol, and squandered that opportunity on this callous, sententious, dogmatic piece of dissent. It’s intended as a protesting middle finger to the State for permitting such displays in a public building, but it sounds more like a Christmas speech from the fascist dictator in Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta (“England prevails, gentlemen!”) It’s a bitterly cold message.

The problem here isn’t just that atheists come off as killjoys, but that they also come off as arrogant, self-alienating bullies on a merciless mission of cultural cleansing. The nativity scene beside this plaque may represent a superstition believed only by Christians, but it’s represented through the universally positiveimage of a mother nurturing her newborn child; and of an especially humble and vulnerable beginning for a legendary community leader known for parables about compassion and kindness. Beside the manger, the FFRF’s plaque reads like a heavy-handed decree from a modern day Herod, bent on ridding culture of any influence it deems unfit. What positive message does it send? What wholesome insight does it have to offer? That there’s no god? Oh. Goody. Merry Christmas to you too. READ MORE

… while gnomerroamer adds his interesting and angrier 2¢, calling us new-agey (um… thanks?):

However, some Atheists feel the need to play into the Christians’ childish games and apologize.  But there are also those, like myself, who see absolutely no compelling reason to apologize for the sign at the capitol. First, because the sign itself was merely a passive statement of principle, and its bindingness is subject to one’s own selection, much like the advertisements to which we subject ourselves thousands of times a day with total submission and complacency. The simian, angst-ridden Christian reaction to the sign, to mere words, is the best and most abundant persuasion of an Atheist worldview. But far more importantly, contrary to other Atheists, I only regret that the sign was the least offensive among a range of other possibilities in comparison to the perennial crimes of Christianity.

However, I honestly don’t care about the Christians who object to the sign as much as I object to the New-Agey, pop-culture Atheists who apologize for it. Granted, as stated before, Atheism is inherently pluralistic. If there is no god, then except through reason and evidence there is no constraining authority to coerce one’s interpretation of the world. Not even an Atheist “group,” as that is an oxymoron. In such a way, Atheism is inherently individualistic, following from the fact that human experience is irreducibly individual. In a classical Atheist’s view, institutional organizations inevitably intend toward the extinction of individual experience and the spontaneous moral sensitivity that sustains and drives us as the marginally intelligent primates that we are. For this reason, it is offensive that some Atheist “groups” have sought to apologize or otherwise mitigate their responsibility for the sign, as their statements make the presumption that they have some magically realized ability to speak for the “whole” of Atheism, which is contradictory. They simply do not. READ MORE