Has the Cardiff billboard only just gone up? Might explain why we haven’t seen any photos to date.

http://katygorman.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/humanist-adverts-go-up-in-cardiff/

Billboard on Merthyr Road, Cardiff

We’re just over an amazing 70% of the way to the BHA’s No Faith Schools fundraising target in just a few weeks – maybe Cardiff will give us  a boost to the top?!

Ok, not everyone is a critic. Some recent blog posts we noticed below. Also see BHA page on Your Support.

Left Outside: “Children are innocent, they are yet to develop the power to choose for themselves, and so it is unfair to arbitrarily label them with the philosophical beliefs of their parents.”

Always win when you’re singing: “just as most of us turn away from pushy parents, who make it impossible for a child to give up an activity, however much they might dislike it, so it cannot be right for a parent to try and force a child to follow a faith.”

Friendly Atheist: on Ruth Gledhill’s article; “Clearly, they couldn’t get past the kids’ images to read the words written on the ads. These are not Christian children. They are the children of Christian parents. Get. It. Right. And stop labeling them.”

Vraie Fiction: “I grew up in a school system that was labelling us as Catholics before we could even understand what it meant and what ideology it was defending. I wish we had then a healthy dose of secular reflection introduced in the public space, it might have freed my mind then.”

The BHA has a page called “Responses to Our Critics” in relation to the Please Don’t Label Me Campaign, on which Stephen Wang in the Times now appears.

Ed West (”journalist and social commentator who specialises in politics, religion and low culture” – and believe me his article is ‘low’ all right) writes in the Telegraph thus:

The Richard Dawkins-led anti-religious movement in many way resembles the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century, on both Left and Right, which hated religion as rival sources of loyalties, and sought to drive it out.

Ohhhh, he went there. Never mind that Hitler did use religion when it suited; never mind that Dawkins has never advocated any kind of genocidal Solution; never mind that the very making of this comparison utterly over-exaggerates the message and most importantly, that it offensively downplays the true horrors that occured under actual 20th century totalitarian regimes. Never mind all that, Ed West went there anyway. Reductio ad Hitlerum. Godwin’s law holds true again.

This teen atheist blogger (that’s a self-description, obviously!) should be given Ed West’s job. Or Ed West’s editor’s job.

Who could possibly find anything to complain about in such a message?

Well, Ed West did in this profoundly stupid article at the Telegraph, where he makes any number of dumbass errors and assumptions in between being a general twit in his November 18 article, entitled ‘Stay away from my kids, Richard Dawkins’. … Barely a single paragraph in, and already the equating of a peaceful message about not unfairly labeling kids to fascism has begun. Talk about getting to the point – and saying something stupid – in record time.

Go Joé! Read his piece here.

A bit more of the BHA’s campaigning work paid off today. Here’s the BBC’s top Education story, featuring the BHA as having led the campaign to include evolution in the pimary science curriculum and quoting our Director of Education and Public Affairs, Andrew Copson.

It shows what precision lobbying can do so we’re patting ourselves on the back.

Remember if you support the sentiments of the Please Don’t Label Me campaign then you can donate now to www.justgiving.com/nofaithschools to support the BHA’s work on children’s rights, education, reform of RE and against faith schools and compulsory worship. Spread the word!

We love you Jesus and Mo!

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2009/11/19/label/