{"id":3341,"date":"2015-04-30T22:07:10","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T03:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2015-04-30T22:12:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-01T03:12:03","slug":"kudos-to-justin-vacula-and-nepa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/04\/30\/kudos-to-justin-vacula-and-nepa\/","title":{"rendered":"Kudos to Justin Vacula and NEPA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As already mentioned at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/friendlyatheist\/2015\/04\/28\/aclu-of-pennsylvania-files-lawsuit-over-banned-and-completely-inoffensive-atheist-bus-ad\/\" target=\"_blank\">Friendly Atheist<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/freethoughtblogs.com\/dispatches\/2015\/04\/30\/aclu-sues-over-refusal-to-accept-atheist-ad-on-buses\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dispatches from the Culture Wars<\/a>, the folks <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meetup.com\/nepafreethoughtsociety\/\" target=\"_blank\">NEPA\u00a0Freethought Society<\/a>\u00a0have been pressing a legal fight with\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aclupa.org\/our-work\/legal\/legaldocket\/northeastern-pa-freethought-society-v-county-lackawanna-transportation-system\/\" target=\"_blank\">help from the\u00a0ACLU<\/a> to gain equal access to the\u00a0buses which have previously allowed advertisements from several churches and at least one highly controversial blog.<\/p>\n<p>Most any atheist organizer can tell you that we tend to get shut down in the public square. If you doubt this, just Google &#8220;atheist billboard rejected&#8221; or something along those lines for a litany of examples.\u00a0The Coalition of Reason had to shop around here in OKC until they found a willing vendor, and this sort of problem\u00a0isn&#8217;t exactly unique to the Bible Belt.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_2888\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2888\" style=\"width: 1024px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2014\/10\/1500x500.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-2888 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2014\/10\/1500x500-1024x341.jpg\" alt=\"1500x500\" width=\"1024\" height=\"341\" srcset=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2014\/10\/1500x500-1024x341.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2014\/10\/1500x500-300x100.jpg 300w, https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2014\/10\/1500x500.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2888\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Public\u00a0feedback about\u00a0this incredibly innocuous sign was not generally\u00a0positive, as you may have guessed<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The great thing about a government-sponsored designated public forum is that, unlike private vendors, they cannot arbitrarily reject messages which they find distasteful. The other thing about such a forum is that it exists (or not) on account of a pattern of government behavior, merely disclaiming an official intent to create a forum is not enough to shut it\u00a0down. As the ACLU contends in their <a href=\"www.aclupa.org\/files\/3814\/3022\/8317\/COLTS_Complaint_04-21-2015.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">complaint<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[The transit system] through its longstanding practice of accepting all advertisements for placement, including advertisements that would violate policies in place at the time they were published, created in its advertising space a designated public forum.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This raises the obvious question of whether your local municipality or county have been engaging in the\u00a0same sort of content-neutral\u00a0advertising\u00a0which\u00a0Lackawanna Transit System is alleged to have undertaken\u00a0in Pennsylvania. If so, you may have an opening. Keep an eye out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As already mentioned at Friendly Atheist and Dispatches from the Culture Wars, the folks NEPA\u00a0Freethought Society\u00a0have been pressing a legal&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":2328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}