A new national campaign, "We're atheists, and we vote," launched by the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), aims to call attention to the growing political opinions of atheists in America.
The campaign was launched officially on September 17 to honor the 235th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution. This effort is a part of FFRF's "independence from religion" campaign that started on this year’s 4th of July.
The campaign will set up billboards along the highways of Michigan, Louisiana, Missouri, and other states. The billboards would have photographs of non-religious residents with mottos like "I'm an atheist, and I vote." There will be full-page ads in the Washington Post and 44 other newspapers of atheists declaring that there are "more than 75 million secular Americans who are not religious. The "Nones" (those of us unaffiliated with religion) are now 29 percent of the U.S. population. We're the largest "denomination" by religious identification!"
This billboard in Jefferson City, MO., is part of FFRF's secular values voter campaign demanding that public officials heed our call to keep religion out of government, abortion and LGTQ laws and our public schools. pic.twitter.com/3BO6EgF3II
— FFRF (@FFRF) September 19, 2022
These ads would feature many freethinkers like 90-year-old Jim Haught, a retired newspaper editor; Melissa Evans, a South Carolinian student; Charis Hoard, a student from Ohio who recently completed her master's; former member of New Hampshire's state legislature, Charles Townsend: and Jamie Hamel, an ICU nurse from Oklahoma.
The campaign by the Freedom From Religious Foundation is a counter to the state's "growing and increasingly overt calls to Christian nationalism." To call attention to the U.S. Supreme Court's actions in the last few years that "privilege religion and eviscerate individual rights for religious reasons."
The message of this campaign is to keep religion and its influence out of the government, politics, and public education. With increasing discrimination against the LGBTQ community, the campaign also demands that religion be kept "out of bedrooms, personal lives and health care decisions — including when or whether to have children and whom to love or marry."
FFRF's co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said in a statement that "secular voices must be heard." She added that secular voters are "the true values voters.'
According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, Americans who don't identify with any religious organization or are unaffiliated now make up 29% of the U.S population. There is a significant increase in the numbers from the 2011 survey, where it was only 19%.
About three-in-ten Americans are religiously unaffiliated, a 10 percentage point rise from a decade ago. Currently, 29% of U.S. adults are religious “nones” – those who describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular.” 10/ https://t.co/DLvgQFPzsS pic.twitter.com/igdFZpUmzU
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) December 21, 2021
Another report released in 2020 by American Atheists, called "Reality Check: Being Non-religious in America," shows that non-religious people want secular public education, oppose discrimination carefully masked as a religious opinion, and advocate the rights to abortions and the necessity of contraception.
The Freedom from Religion Foundation is a non-profit organization that advocates the rights of atheists and promotes the separation of church and state. Throughout North America, the FFRF has over 38000 members and is a group of like-minded freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, and humanists.
