Okay, this is a little late, but hi, I'm back, and I'm still glowing about the fact that Barack gave a shout-out to atheists in the hizzouse on inauguration day. For those of you who missed it, he said, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and nonbelievers." I have never heard an American politician acknowledge the legitimacy of atheism. It's something that's such a taboo in the U.S. that I never even bothered to hope for public acceptance, let alone recognition. Even as I've been heartwarmed by the president's (gosh that has a nice ring to it, "the president," referring to B.O.) and other politicians' acceptance of gay people, it just never dawned on me that any pol would bother, let alone dare, to step up for the godless. Part of the credit for bringing the issue to the fore most recently goes out to go out to Michael Newdow, who sued to get god out of this year's inaugural text. (He failed, of course.) I've always thought that it was utterly counter to what we are taught about church and state that god occurs everywhere in official U.S. texts, from the money to the pledge, to swearing on a bible,to, well, everywhere. But I eventually figured out, though never accepted, that so long as no one particular religion is put forth as the official belief system, it's okay, so long as you pick one or another. Well, I've never felt that that was okay at all, and for the first time in my life, probably in all of American history, there's a tiny step in the right direction, and it meant a lot. Amen to that.
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