The Day of Reason
From noon to 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, May third, Minnesota Atheists hosted the annual Day of Reason rally inside the Minnesota State Capitol Rotunda. This is the seventh year that we have held this celebration of the separation of state and church to protest the Day of Prayer event held at the same time outside on the Capitol steps.
There are many ways in which the separation of state and church is violated, and this year we focused on the denial of equal rights to gays and lesbians, especially when it comes to civil marriage.
At the end of March, American Atheists, The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers and the Military Religious Free-dom Foundation held a rock concert at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. This “Rock Beyond Belief” event was held as a response to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s “Rock the Fort” concert last September that promoted Christian evangelism. The brass at the base were in a box: having approved the Christian event, they had to approve the atheist concert or it would not have been possible to deny bigotry. 
Minnesota Atheists has traditionally released an annual T-shirt design for the past several years. The color combination of shirt and logo has changed every year – blue on white, blue on gray, red on gray, blue on yellow, magenta on pink, yellow on green, white on purple, blue on wheat and orange on black. Recently a message was added to the back: “Positive Atheist in Action.” We have stuck with this presentation for quite some time…until this year.Beginning in May, Minnesota Atheists will sell a timely—and timeless—shirt depicting our support for marriage equality at a time when the state’s constitution is vulnerable to discrim-inatory manipulation on this November’s ballot.
Save the date! Minnesota Atheists is co-hosting an all-day, regional atheist conference on Saturday, August 11. The conference will be held at the Double Tree Hotel (formerly the Hilton) in downtown St. Paul. We’re still getting speakers lined up, but we have some already scheduled that includee PZ Myers, Hector Avalos, Teresa MacBain, and Robert Price. American Atheists president, David Silverman will also be a contributor.