From Dave Muscato of American Atheists:
As part of a joint effort amongst national groups, and in partnership with Boston Atheists and the Humanist Community at Harvard, we want to educate public officials about the diversity of their communities in times of tragedy and atheists’ desire and need to be included.
Atheists are hurting from this news as much as anyone else, and part of the grieving process for atheists affected includes things such as representation at the official memorial service and in the community response. When memorial services include exclusively religious language, and especially when public officials use terms such as “godless” as a slur to describe these attacks, atheists who are affected are excluded and shut out from the community.
We are asking you to assist us by writing a short paragraph that includes the following three things:
1) Who you are and whom you represent or speak on behalf of (e.g. Matt Dillahunty is President of Atheist Community of Austin)
2) Why you’re hurt by the exclusion from the memorial and/or use of “godless” as a pejorative
3) What’s you would like to see happen as a solution
Greg Epstein from the Humanist Community at Harvard is meeting with public officials to discuss this issue and would like to pass on responses from our community’s leaders. We also encourage you to solicit responses from members of your communities (if you run a blog, your readers; if you have a TV show, your viewers, etc) that he can include as well.
Please send your responses to me by early next week so we can make sure he gets them in time.
IMPORTANT: Please send your responses to BostonResponse@gmail.com and encourage your fans/listeners to do the same. Please DO NOT send your responses to dmuscato@atheists.org. Thank you.
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So, get those responses written and send them to BostonResponse@gmail.com. Let’s do this.