NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

To my politically correct friends on the left, I find the following very scary as an attitude and a solution to fighting bigotry. This is government playing thought police and long term, the very people who seek protection with this attitude will lose their right to criticize the majority they live under because the majority will demand the same.

A Church billboard criticizing atheist was censored by the government. It wasn't graphic, no cuss words, just simply a typical ignorant argument about the atheist position.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087778/Churchs-anti-atheist-billboard-banned-advertising-watchdog.html

This is not the way to handle bigotry. YOU CANNOT force people to like you or only say nice things about you.

Attitudes like this, all be it well intended, long term can hurt the very people it is trying to protect. Power shifts over time. What can happen is the government can get to something YOU want to bitch about and claim it is offensive to others. This attitude is short term and never takes into account WHO the law makers will be in the future and what their politics and or religions will be when they are in power. I think it is a bad idea to hand a loaded gun to the government because that very government may not side with you in the future.

The way to fight bigotry isn't to silence them, the way to fight it is to use the same media and free market to beat them at their own game.

I think demands of silence ESPECIALLY through government censorship create more division and resentment.

If merely being offended were justification for censorship, then people like Jefferson, Susan B Anthony, could be censored as well for their offending the church norms of their time.

With attitudes of government censorship like South Africa, websites like this, if powers like that existed here, this website could be and WOULD be deemed "offensive" by our Christian majority here.

As a minority and as an atheist I really warn atheists worldwide not to hand their respective governments the power to become thought police.