PinPonPun

I’ve been known to stubbornly remain steadfast to principles I adhere to, sometimes even to my own detriment; it thusly makes me glad to see others who do the same.

Hank Fox was a copy-editor for a newspaper; he left when the paper printed something that offended him:

Tonight an interesting story rolled across my desk. It was about a World War II pilot and his experience in the B-17 military plane, also called the Flying Fortress. The final anecdote of the article was about his plane getting shot down, and one quote the reporter used was him saying something like “My co-pilot was an atheist before, but he’s been a good Christian ever since.”

Why would this offend him? Partly because Fox is an atheist himself, but moreso it offended his journalistic integrity. Were the words “atheist” and “good Christian” replaced with any other demographic terms, he would still want the comment stricken from an article. Chance are that they would be.

Fox compares the discrimination of atheists to that faced by other minorities in this country; he notes:

Atheists today face discrimination so subtle, so pervasive, that it doesn’t even have a name.

And it’s true. Yet another thing atheists should be angry about. Atheists need to speak out against such nonsense, even if we get pegged as being “angry” or “stubborn” — if we don’t, it will simply continue.

Hank Fox worked at a place where the managing editors had something offensive brought to their attention; they chose to leave it, he chose to leave.