ALERT - Des Moines Bus ad controversy

Posted Wed, 08/05/2009 - 21:17 by Dave

Good evening everyone.

Some of you are already aware of the controversy that was stirred up by our bus sign campaign. The latest news is because of an "overwhelming" number of phone calls DART has pulled our ads from their buses. We were informed of this yesterday.

Representatives from all three of our local networks stopped by our meeting tonight and interviewed Lily and Randy. Please watch the 10:00 news of your choice if you have a chance.

Obviously this is a very upsetting turn of events. Our experiences dealing with the people at DART were very positive until now. We have a signed contract and they printed the signs for us.

We would like our members to please contact DART either via telephone or email. They can be reached at 515-283-8111 or at dart@ridedart.com. Please be polite, rational, and non-threatening. We do ask all members to speak only for themselves and that all organization-related inquiries be forwarded on to Lily or Randy.

Our ads were deliberately chosen to be as inoffensive as possible and this is discriminatory behavior. Any church can (and many do) advertise on DART, which means that we should be able to as well.

I'm posting this to the Meetup and the IAF message board as well. Please comment there if necessary as emails will not be forwarded to the group.

Thank you,

Dave

‹ Media Coverage Update IAF on TV!! ›

The governor of Iowa weighs in

by Craigc - 08/06/2009 - 11:47

From Radio Iowa: Chet Culver, the Governor of Iowa weighs in with this doozy: "I was disturbed personally...by the advertisement, I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent. But, we'll see how it unfolds," Culver says. Culver would not say whether he felt the atheist group had a free speech right to have the messages on buses.

Culver says:" I think it's a great question for the attorney general and for legal scholars to kind of sort through that, that balancing act between free speech and the type of message that is being sent. But I do again understand that people were actually not wanting to get on the bus, they were so disturbed by the message that was being sent."