Last March in San Francisco, I had the honor of addressing a few highly-motivated activists who started a brand-new political party, the National Atheist Party.
As hard as this might be to believe, there were a few people who were uncomfortable with that name, many of them were atheists! I recognized their concerns, as many others did also. We argued about it a bit, and we finally voted for something better and more appropriate for what it is that we really want. At this time, I am proud to announce the results -with just over 3/4 majority.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ij4hyvFqPY
Glad to see the name change.
I’d happily have voted for an Atheist Party, but the new name does seem more to the point. (I imagine the concerns raised were First-Amendment-y?)
I imagine the concerns raised involved the stigma associated with the word “atheist.” Most atheist organizations don’t care because their mission is to spread awareness and remove this stigma, but a political party can’t afford to invoke red flags from a large ignorant population just from its name.
I noticed your page while I was searching on http://freethoughtblogs.
com/aronra/2013/07/16/the-secular-party-of-america/. How’d personally get displayed on http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2013/07/16/the-secular-party-of-america/? I’ve been concentrating on it for some time
but they still won’t respond to me. Cheers
I think that this is a very positive move. It both disarms one obvious line of attack (them thar athists just hate gawd) and immediately makes the organisation inclusive.
I see that even though the message of this organization is to welcome all faiths, your comment leads me to believe that is not true. I’m a Christian, I don’t talk like that.
Then the comment is very obviously not aimed at you. would you agree with me that there are many vocal Christian preachers ho do claim as I parodied?
You might not, but there is a very large segment of the religious population that DOES. Taking offense to this comment only serves to enable the damage they cause.
My biggest criticism of moderate Christians is the evident unwillingness to organize and denounce the Pat Robertsons and Ted Haggards of the world. I commend those that do, and this party is another chance to do so.
I like the name and the idea of “inclusion”. A secularist need not be an atheist.
Is this going to be a activist organization? If it’s what one commonly thinks that a political party is, an organization that supports candidates for election under its name, then it won’t get anywhere unless the Federal Government and/or some state governments embrace proportional representation.
I’m so glad to see the name change. I could not get behind a movement whose acronym was NAP.
Well, I’d put a tenner each way on them …..
SPA … a refreshing change.
/@
I love the name and it is, as has been said already, much more inclusive. When there is a full write-up of the SPA’s stance on the issues facing a candidate in today’s political arena, please publish it widely across as many media outlets as possible. I haven’t yet felt comfortable registering with any existing political party because I couldn’t support all, or even most, of what any one of them stood for. This seems to have the greatest potential to alleviate that problem for me. I’m tentatively optimistic.
I’d have to check with you here. Which is not something I usually carry out! I enjoy looking at a post that produce people consider. Also, thank you for allowing me personally to review!