FFRF's 'We're Atheists & We Vote" campaign launches over July 4th

MADISON, Wis., June 30, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Freedom From Religion Foundation over this patriotic holiday is announcing to the nation that there are 75 million nonreligious adult Americans who want religion out of government — and are voting that way.

"We're putting public candidates and officials on notice that secular voters are here, that WE are the true 'values voters' and that it's time that our secular viewpoint be respected and represented," says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.

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The campaign includes a renowned Native American composer, the founder of Black Nonbelievers, the founders of Hispanic American Freethinkers, nonreligious students and what FFRF calls "just ordinary, everyday atheists, agnostics and humanists who believe in the all-American ideal of true religious liberty."

FFRF, a national state/church watchdog with more than 36,000 members, is running billboard and newspaper ads over the July 4 weekend in about half of the United States, with the rest appearing around Constitution Day, Sept. 17.

FFRF's full-page advertisement, running in more than 20 dailies on Sunday, July 3 — most in capital cities, plus some larger metropolitan areas like Portland, Chicago and Philadelphia — states that nonbelievers "trust in reason, science and America's secular Constitution."

Brent Michael Davids, a celebrated Mohican composer identified as an atheist, is featured in FFRF's New York Times ad, saying, "The 'Nones' (those of us unaffiliated with religion) are now 29 percent of the U.S. population. We are the largest 'denomination' by religious identification."

Davids demands that religion be kept out of government and social policy, out of public schools, and out of bedrooms, personal lives and health care decisions — including when or whether to have children, and whom to love or marry.

"Use my tax dollars only for evidence-based, not faith-based, purposes," he urges.

The ad campaign is timely given the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, already shuttering clinics in about a dozen states and endangering access in many more. Gaylor notes that 98.8 percent of FFRF's membership supports Roe, which is consistent with a YouGov analysis showing that atheists, at 91 percent overall, are the most likely to identify as pro-choice.

Gaylor called alarming the Supreme Court trend to privilege religion and eviscerate individual rights. "That's why our secular voices must be heard."

Click to view the secular values voter campaigns state-by-state. 

SOURCE Freedom From Religion Foundation