A 14-by-48 feet billboard went up this week in Denver on the corner of Lincoln Street and Eighth Avenue featuring young atheists with the message “I’m an atheist and I vote.”
As anticipation mounts for November’s mid-term elections, these billboards serve as timely reminders of the importance of getting out to vote and holding elected officials accountable to making reason-based policy decisions.
“The best way to fight back and protect civil liberties is through the ballot,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “We need freethinkers to get out and vote like their rights depend on it – because they do!”
Current Pew surveys reveal that a quarter of adult citizens and more than a third of Millennials qualify as “None,” either specifying atheism, agnosticism or no religion. Since 1990, the number of Americans with no religion has nearly tripled, from about 8 percent to 23 percent. With this trend projected to continue, “Generation Z” is primed to be the least religious generation yet, with about one-fifth claiming to be explicitly atheist or agnostic. There are now more “Nones” than Catholics, and by 2035, the Nones are projected to outnumber Protestants.
The billboards will be on display for a month in Denver - one of America’s top 30 nonreligious cities. The campaign is a joint venture between FFRF and FFRF’s Denver chapter.
“It's high time candidates start wooing those of us – the nearly one-quarter of Americans who are nonreligious and that will only happen if we turn out at the polls,” says Claudette StPierre, president of the Denver Chapter of FFRF. “We care about improving this world and we need to be heard.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation and its membership work to promote the viewpoint of freethinkers, including atheists and agnostics, and to protect the constitutional principle of separation between religion and government. FFRF has roughly 32,000 members and several chapters all over the country, including more than 800 members in Colorado and chapters in both Denver and Colorado Springs, 97 percent of whom are registered to vote.