IAF Condemns Violence and Hate against the LGBTQ+ Community in Colorado

By: Chris Freeman, Director At Large

The weekend of November 19, 2022, brought an all too familiar scene back into the national spotlight. A man, and confirmed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, entered Club Q in Colorado Springs and repeatedly shot into the crowd, killing 5 people and wounding at least 19 others.

The shooting looks very much like a "bias-motivated" crime - a hate crime. Club Q was seen by the local LGBTQ+ community as one of the few places to express their identity without fear. In addition to the loss of the individual people who were murdered, that community is almost certainly grappling with the loss of something many of us take for granted - a sense of safety.

If you look through the hate crime statistics from the FBI (https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/hate-crime), an uncomfortable trend is unavoidable. The top five most common types of bias offenses against LGBTQ+ people is overwhelmingly violence against their person. Bias offenses against various Christian groups are overwhelmingly property crimes. In this country, and probably the world over, the dominant group does not have much to fear from any of the oppressed groups no matter what their propaganda says.

The vast majority of anti-LGBTQ+ violence is a direct result of religious radicalization. And as Martin Niemöller claims in his poem "First They Came", we are in this together. The Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers group recognizes that we have a duty to show up whenever civil rights are attacked.

We mourn the loss of Daniel Aston, Kelly Loving, Ashley Green Paugh, Derrick Rump, and Raymond Green Vance. We did not know them, but our lives are enriched by people just like them. They are our sons and our daughters, our friends and our neighbors. Our hearts go out to their families, who are dealing with a loss most of us never have to even imagine.

But we don't stop at "thoughts and prayers". There are many ways to provide support, directly and indirectly.

Club Q has chosen Colorado Give 365 (https://www.coloradogives.org/donate/COHealingFund) as the official donation site.

Blood donation is another effective way to ensure emergency services are properly equipped.

Call your legislators to fight against laws which remove legal and social protections for vulnerable populations.

And in your daily life, take a stand against minor injustices.

Columbus Day, 2022

Every year, as October approaches, I anticipate the arrival of Columbus Day. And, I’m always

reminded of an old Peanuts cartoon. Charlie Brown is watching his little sister do her report on

Columbus Day. Her idea was that the Queen said she would give Mr. Day three ships because

he was a very brave man. “Good luck,” says Charlie as he walks away.

Columbus Day is a holiday that atheists should observe. 530 years ago on October 12, 1492,

three ships landed on an Island in the Caribbean ocean. In early 1493, Columbus returned to

Spain to report to Isabella and Ferdinand that his prediction was correct — by sailing west, he

had reached the coast of India (Columbus went to his grave think that). Word of the voyage

spread quickly around Europe. Among those who heard the news was a young Polish student

(Nicholas Copernicus) who was attending University in Bologna. Already, while still a student,

Copernicus, along with some others including some of his professors, was questioning the

widely accepted Ptolemaic earth centered model of the universe. Copernicus spent the rest of

his life, using simple instruments that he made himself, developing his heliocentric (sun

centered) model. Literally, he spent the rest of his life on this problem. He died on May 24,

1543, the very day that his magnum opus De Revolutionibus orbium celestial was rolling off the

newly invented movable type press. See, Copernicus’ Secret, How the Scientific Revolution

Began, by Jack Repcheck.

That was was only the beginning of the story, however. Not everyone was convinced that

Copernicus got it right. One reason for that doubt was that no one could figure out why the

planets appeared to stop in their orbits and reverse course. It was one of those mysteries that

just baffled people. About a hundred years later a Danish nobleman by the name of Tycho

Brahe built an elaborate observatory on an Island off the coast of Denmark. He made

meticulous observations of the positions of the planets, particularly the planet Mars. Like any

good scientist, Brahe made detailed notes about his observations. In the end, Brahe came up

with a hypothesis in which the earth remained the center of the solar system. Everything else

revolved around the sun, and that system revolved around the earth.

The king of Denmark died and, to make a long story short, Brahe got cross ways with the new

king and had to flee for his life. He sought refuge in the city of Prague. The emperor, Rudolph,

if I remember correctly, received Brahe and gave him a palace known as Belvedere. There was

only one hitch, he had to share it with the court mathematician, Johanas Kepler. Shortly after

Brahe died (that’s another story in itself), Kepler managed to have a good look at Brahe’s

observations, and saw a pattern — the planets only appeared to stop and reverse course if you

assumed they traveled in a perfect circle. When Kepler adjusted the equations such that the

planets traveled in an elliptical rather than a circular orbit, suddenly everything fell into place

and the mystery was solved. Copernicus was was correct after all. It was also during the life

time of Johanas Kepler that Galileo was peering through a home made telescope and having

the first look at the moons of Jupiter. Kepler and Galileo never met face to face, but they did

correspond. See, Tycho and Kepler, the Unlikely Partnership that Forever Changed our

Understanding of the Heavens, by Kitty Ferguson.

About a hundred years later, Sir Isaac Newton developed calculus and the laws of motion that

are still valid today. In 1859, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, independently,

formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection. James Clerk Maxwell and Michael

Faraday learned how electromagnetism worked. And in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

it was discovered that our planet is part of a solar system on the edge of a galaxy which

contains billions of such systems (although it is only in the last few weeks that other planets

have actually been seen). Edwin Hubble discovered that the Milky Way is only one of billions of

other galaxies all speeding away from each other.

Using the equations of Einstein and other physicists, Georges Lemaître, S.J. discovered that

the galaxies are speeding away from each other because the fabric of spacetime is expanding

at faster and faster speeds. December 25, 2021, the James Webb Space telescope was

launched providing us with a view of the heavens that Columbus Day, Nicholas Copernicus,

Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Sir Issac, Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaître, etc etc could

only dream about if they had any idea at all that such a thing might be possible.

And it all started in the 15th century when it occurred to Columbus that if the earth is round —

which no one doubted — then it was not necessary sail east to reach India. The fact that there

are two previously unknown continents in the way was completely unknown to the Europeans

of that time.

I don’t know that anyone has proposed a date on which the scientific revolution began, but in

my opinion October 12, 1492 is as good a date as any. Can you imagine what will be common

knowledge 530 years from now? In a few months Lawrence Krauss will publish a book which

discusses problems scientists are attempting to solve — those are questions to which we don’t

know the answers. I predict that the answers to those problems will lead to new questions. In

the meantime it is up to us to solve the problems of global warming and nuclear destruction —

two problems that, if they are not solved, will doom life on the planet earth unsustainable.

Columbus Day pushed open the doors of science, let’s resolve that they don’t slam shut.

Good luck, indeed.

Michael Messina, Education Chair

Should IAF Erect a Billboard?

Eleven years ago, IAF sponsored a bus ad campaign that said, “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone.” DART removed the ads four days later based on complaints by offended Christians. Governor Chet Culver commented on the ad, fueling the controversy, saying that he "was disturbed personally by the advertisement and [could] understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message".  The ACLU got involved and IAF ultimately prevailed when DART finally reinstated the original unaltered ads. Overall, it was a huge win for IAF, which doubled in size as a result.

IAF has been declining for a while.. Our FaceBook page has over 1500 members but our dues-paying membership keeps decreasing. Christian theocrats, on the other hand, wield more power in our government than at any other time in the nation’s history. We need to do that something about that folks. We need a project, a big win like that bus ad campaign to reignite the spark that kept us going for the last ten years.

With all that in mind, I propose that IAF should put up a billboard in metro Des Moines. It should be something in-your-face, attention-grabbing, and pointedly aimed at Christian Nationalists.

Here is my idea:

In a large font: “Theocracy is Un-American.” Underneath in smaller text, ”iowaatheists.org.” All of that would be set against a picture of the US Capitol Building with a huge crucifix shoved through the dome.

It is short and to the point. It leaves no doubt about our target audience or our message. It reclaims patriotism for nonbelievers and supporters of reason. And the sight of it would induce wannabe theocrats to froth at the mouth.

So what do you think? I’m open to any suggestions for improvement, criticism, or possible alternatives. (It’s not like I know anything about marketing.)

Also, this is just a trial balloon. Whatever billboard ideas we come up with would still have to be researched, polished, and then approved by the IAF Board.

p,s. if anyone out there with better photoshop skills than me could put together a mockup of this I would be eternally grateful.

By Robert Cook

Activism Chair

Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers

Comments! We Have Comments!

There have been some questions about how to post comments on the blog posts here on the IAF website. I just figured out how to do it. You have to click on the title of the post to open it in its own separate window. Then if you scroll down to the bottom you will find a box for comments. I look forward to hearing your feedback.

By Robert Cook

Activism Chair

Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers