To the editors:
“Atheist & Son” seemed to be a libelous smear, which consisted of 39 false statements embellished by 106 negative innuendos. Virtually every characterization about my objectives and my personal life were false, just as the writer intended. Perhaps I should sue the Reader for libel, but since I’ve always liked the Reader and its policy of letting the little guy place free classified advertisements, I’ll skip the lawsuit and go with this response instead. Your free classified advertisement policy goes along with my personal philosophy of doing a good deed every chance one gets with no regard to having the favor returned. That philosophy is why I have, throughout my entire life, volunteered time and money to not-for-profit organizations, such as American Atheists.
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Glab’s article begins with a series of negative innuendos which falsely imply that I regularly bring my son along to media appearances such as interviews at radio stations. The truth is that I avoid including my son in media relations whenever possible. This is my battle, not my son’s, and he is not being asked to fight this battle for me. The WGN situation was due to the fact that my son had accompanied me downtown that day on personal business. I had picked him up at school when class let out so that he would not be home alone. What a bad father I am to place my kid’s needs ahead of my own! The WGN producer reached me on the car phone after we were already downtown and asked if I could stop by the station in a couple of hours to be interviewed live in the studio. There was not enough time to drive from the Loop to Buffalo Grove through rush-hour traffic and return, so my son happened to go with me to the radio station on this one rare occasion. Glab implied that this rare occurrence was part of a regular pattern of supposedly turning my son into a puppet for atheism. Neither my son nor I are interested in having him put on a stage.
Glab insinuated that I am attacking the constitutionally guaranteed civil rights of citizens to freedom of religion when he falsely stated that American Atheists and I are “trying to stop people from praying in schools.” In fact, I am doing precisely the opposite. All American Atheists and I are doing is insisting that government officials not force atheists to pray. Every person is free to pray in public school any time the person wants. We just don’t want the government to tell people when to pray, what to pray, how to pray or even if they should pray. In contrast to Glab’s insinuation, my office has frequently received telephone calls from children and parents whose right to pray has been obstructed by school officials. The victims of this discrimination know that I am a champion of the Bill of Rights, not an attacker of the Bill of Rights. I have on several occasions informed school officials on behalf of these parents and students that children have a right to pray any time they want, so long as they are not disrupting classroom instruction. These school officials have been told by me to leave those kids alone.
Glab was so desperate to smear me that he even invented a “tenuous bond” between my parents and me. Dragging a false story about my parents into the article is a low blow. I have a normal, loving relationship with my parents. My parents have, however, said that they do not wish to comment to the press about my activity. It is a dirty smear to imply that their desire to not comment on my activity implies a tenuous relation.
The article about me in the Reader demonstrates just how widespread anti-atheist bigotry is in our society. Even a respectable newspaper like the Reader feels that it is acceptable to print a smear job if the subject is an atheist. The same edition of the paper had a cover story about a Jewish family. Since Judaism is now politically acceptable, the story was written in a sensitive manner with a favorable photograph. Since the government is constantly attacking atheism, people feel that it is OK to engage in bigoted attacks on atheists. The sooner the government begins to respect the wall of separation between state and church, which is required by the Constitution, and the sooner that the government begins showing equal respect for atheists that it shows for god-believers, the sooner that anti-atheist discrimination and bigotry, as epitomized by Glab’s smear, will subside.
