I Find It Offensive; How About You

[Anymouse]

In the town I used to live, I purchased the local newspaper one day and opened to the OpEd page (the daily fights page).

In it, there was a letter written by a sixteen-year-old daughter of a father county judge and mother lawyer, exhorting readers to boycott the only coffee shop in the downtown area. That town's downtown is struggling; the coffee shop was new and the owner specifically picked the downtown area to open in. He was concerned about downtown decay and the best way to fight that is new businesses.

She pilloried the business for holding a "free-thinkers'" meeting in the store during business hours, giving free food and drink to the meeting, making it a supporter of atheism and therefore an inappropriate venue for good Christians to spend their money.

I pointed the article out to my wife. We had not heard of this freethinkers' meeting, and by this Christian teen advertising its existence on the OpEd page of the paper, she gave the meeting free advert copy.

So my wife and I called the shop, and attended the next meeting.

Then I wrote a letter to the paper in response to the teen, pointing out the inconsistencies (the freethinkers' group met after the store closed, they paid for all their food and drink), the fact that by railing against the coffee shop and calling for a boycott she was trying to stifle new commerce in an area that is now largely overrun by storefront churches that don't pay taxes, that her letter gave free advert to the shop and the group (sometimes the best method of protest is not publicly denouncing something), and she should check it out (with her parents' permission) so she could get her facts straight about the group.

I pointed out that at the meeting I went to, it was primarily composed of atheists, a few agnostics, a Baptist and a Methodist ministers, and a Wiccan. They were hardly trying to set up some "atheist cabal" to "destroy Christianity" as she intimated in her letter.

The paper ran my letter. This was followed by a call from "mommy lawyer" demanding I retract what I wrote; that I should not have "attacked her daughter" in print. She threatened libel.

I told her I would not; there was no libel; everything I wrote was true. I also pointed out that if she wants her daughter exercising her first amendment rights, she must also teach her that she cannot exercise them by getting her mommy lawyer to bully down other opinions. Click.

That girl's letter was the best plug for the freethinker's group there they ever could have gotten. By entirely misrepresenting what the group and the coffee shop were doing, she turned sympathy toward the group and the coffee shop. That shop, which used to be only open three days a week, is now open seven from the huge influx of business.

James