A study in contrasts

Positive advocacy for secularists:




Negative provocation (mild though it be):



The first message is unassailable: it asks a question and states a fact. No insults, no vitriol, nothing that can justifiably work up the ire of someone on the other side. I am now hearing of a bus driver who recently refused to drive her bus because this particular billboard was on the side. She was suspended. She argued that the message clashed with her belief system, but I'd have to get more information before I could offer sympathy for her plight. I feel that this billboard meets and exceeds the requirements of respect in the dialogue between religious and nonreligious people, so there's really no problem here.

The second billboard, however, does present a problem for me. It's not a mean message, but I guess one has to look at it from a you give as you get standpoint. If we as secularists expect others to ingest an eyeful of our opinions about no-god on public billboards without complaint, then fair play demands that all of those public displays of Ten Commandments and Jesus is Lord and so on be palatable to us. The Double Standard should be universally condemned by all sides. The net result of all of us tossing opinions at each other on public billboards, then, would be zero.

My advice would then be to return to a point of advocacy, as with the first billboard. I would love to say that such is a no-brainer, but my experience tells me otherwise.