Stupid move, atheists.
I know a lot of people who went to the Reason Rally. (Including the people in the Washington Post picture above) I like a lot of people that went to the Reason Rally. I don't expect that they'll like this post. But I'm calling them out on it.
Wow, atheists, that was pretty stupid. For your sakes, I hope that the world ignored your Reason Rally yesterday on the National Mall. What was the point of that rally? To get respect from the nation? To protest religious extremism? To draw attention to abuses suffered by atheists?
If it was any of the above, you blew it. Spectacularly. The message that I'm seeing from the media (the more neutral toned one, not just the right wing conspiracy one) was that 10,000 people showed up on the mall with signs themed around "Down with religion!" and lulzy messages about Jesus. Again, wow. For a group that espouses that they are the champions of science, you certainly have no clue about sociology.
I've been to a couple of gay rights marches. They are a demographic that are legitimately and seriously are targeted by extremist religious groups. No one at those rallies had anti-religious signs. And I mean no one - I was keeping an eye out for them. If I had seen any, I would have politely asked the owner to get rid of it, because those signs are damaging. A couple of yahoos protesting Prop 8 used 'Jesus Sucks' signage elsewhere at some obscure rally, and their pictures went viral. The message of 'I mock your God' runs counter to the message of 'I am a human that deserves your respect', and the homophobes on the internet used those pictures to their full advantage.
Making fun of Jesus at a rally in DC to get your voice heard nationally is counter-productive in the same way that the recent Koran burning screwed us in Afghanistan. The rally wasn't nearly as serious a gaffe, but it works in the same direction. The Koran burning set a wedge between us and moderate and extremist Muslims alike, and it made us look like the bad guys. You now appear to be the bad guys to moderates and extremists alike. OK, I know that the animosity in this country between religious groups and atheists is pretty minimal when compared to the situation in Afghanistan. It's minimal when compared to the animosity against gay rights groups here. But I expect that to change if atheists groups continue on like they did at yesterday's rally. Again, that was stupid. It was throwing stones in a direction where stones did not need to be thrown.