DART: Controversial Bus Ads Pulled
Officials Say Signs Never Approved In First Place
DES MOINES, Iowa --
Atheist advertising signs on Des Moines Area Regional Transit buses that created a storm of controversy when they first went up on Aug. 1 have been taken down.
Officials with DART said the signs were not supposed to be on the buses in the first place.
Rest of the article. If you're linkphobic, suck it up.
I'm part of IAF. I saw one of the news segments (Ch. 13/NBC, not Ch. 8/CBS). The woman was told DART accepted church ads, why not these. She couldn't answer.
You'd think, with DART being in hot water (with one hitting a pedestrian recently, and some of their drivers having...less than stellar backgrounds) they wouldn't want to open this can of worms.
My mother was all up in arms about THEM ATHEISTS HAVING TO BE SO UP IN EVERYONE'S FACE WHY CAN'T THEY JUST LET US BE. I politely pointed out that the ads were aimed at other atheist and were completely non-confrontational. WELL I DON'T CARE, WE ARE A CHRISTIAN NATION.
D:
That makes my piss boil with rage.
Sometimes things like this make me ashamed to be a theist.
Officials with DART said the signs were not supposed to be on the buses in the first place.
DART's advertising director said the board never approved the signs and that they were put up by mistake. The Iowa Atheist and Free Thinkers group said the advertising director told them that the signs had been approved.
"When she met with us on May 27, we showed her the ads and asked if this could be controversial and she said she didn't think so," said the group's president, Randy Henderson. "She thought it was a nice ad, a safe ad."
The ads that went up on Saturday read, "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."
DART said it immediately started to receive complaints.
"Drivers said people weren't getting on buses or getting off the buses because of it," said advertising director Kirstin Baer-Harding. "So with all the calls, it wasn't something we wanted."
The signs came down on Aug. 4. Baer-Harding said they never should have gone up.
"The ads mistakenly got put on buses," she said.
She said DART has the final say on any advertisements and its board decided at the last minute that it didn't like the content. She said the mistake slipped in amid last week's chaos with the DART-pedestrian crash and the release of its first hybrid bus.
Members of the Iowa Atheist and Free Thinkers Group said they're upset because no one from DART will take their calls. They only received a brief e-mail.
"In that e-mail, it said they've received an overwhelming number of calls and the ads have been pulled," said Henderson.
"We were just trying to reach out to our audience," said member Lily Kryuchkov. "We weren't aiming against religious groups, so we don't understand why people are upset."
"We have our rights to free speech and we feel those have been violated," said Henderson.
The group said it had planned to run the ad on 20 buses throughout the month of August in hopes of capitalizing on the large number of people riding buses during the Iowa State Fair.
The group said it was waiting to hear back from DART before deciding what it will do next. Members said they hadn't paid any money for the signs yet because they hadn't received an invoice.
I'm sorry, Jesus, but it's up to the Churrrrch Groups to defend me -- just as well I wasn't born in the days of lions and boiling pitch.
This is my first comment here! :)
Oh, wait.
Bullshit.
The problem with these ads is that they're specifically trying to create waves. It's that the ads said "Don't believe in God?" is what specifically caused an issue, because it tried to create an "opponent" with another group. It's similar to if a Jewish organization said "Disagree with the Koran? TRY JEWS!" or if a Protestant organization said "Tired of the Torah? CHECK US OUT!"
[Personally I think Protestants should reach out to youth by starting a "I got 95 Theses but a Pope ain't One" campaign but hey that's just me.]
yeah I was going to reply to this post with my own outrage but this shit made me laugh too much and made me simmer down lmao
My mom called me, all excited, when she saw the news last night. She works downtown, I think it's too much personal fun for her.
And OP, I love your icon :D
"We were just trying to reach out to our audience," said member Lily Kryuchkov. "We weren't aiming against religious groups, so we don't understand why people are upset."
Although I do understand why people got butthurt, they really shouldn't have. So ridiculous.