Well, here’s an interesting battle of wills:
Controversial ‘atheist’ billboard is defaced
The “Under God” spray-painted by vandals onto an atheist billboard on Billy Graham Parkway over the weekend won’t be gone until just before July 4, a spokesman for Charlotte Atheists & Agnostics said today.
I’m torn over this. Part of me thinks we don’t need to stoop to vandalism. But another, more easily pissed-off part of me thinks that the fact that they very intentionally placed this billboard on Billy Graham Parkway means that they were just begging for some kind of response, so by golly, somebody should give them one.
Then again, if this was some kind of “false flag” operation, where a group is pretending to be atheists just to give the opposition a chance to look like they’re sticking it to the man, then it couldn’t have gone much better.
Of all the ways I can think of to vandalize that billboard, putting “under God” on it is one of the tamest.
That said, I’m more in agreement with the ‘not stooping to vandalism’ part. I agree putting a sign up on Billy Graham parkway is just ‘begging for a response,’ but no matter how tame or inoffensive the spray-painted slogan is, it’s still a spray-painted slogan that makes people think of teenagers with too much time on their hands. Some kind of charity competition with the atheists might’ve ended up being fun.