Today’s theme is how elated I am to not be officially involved with the atheist movement anymore:

• Secular Party of America Voter Fraud – The Executive Board of the former “National Atheist Party” committed voter fraud in order to change their name to the “Secular Party of America.” Well, there’s another atheist organization I’ll never trust again!
• D.J. Grothe threatening legal action against WTinc – After Sasha Pixlee wrote about Grothe making a joke about drugging and gangraping him, Grothe has responded by threatening legal action and holding ready-to-be-published vaccine outreach research hostage. Obviously when your image is on the line, the best thing to do is to withhold research that could save the lives of children. That will surely make you look better.
• Conspicuous Silence After the Death of Narendra Dabholkar –
  

  “Can you imagine the outcry if Dawkins, Randi, or Harris had been violently slain for their beliefs? Twitter, the blogosphere, and all major organizations would be promoting the story. For months, not a day would go by without a new piece written about their fine work and untimely or violent demise. But the community has been relatively silent following the death of Narendra Dabholkar. Hopefully as time goes on, we will all find ourselves recognizing him for the voice that he was, and for the work that will inevitably impact the country he called home.”

  You can read more about Dabholkar’s work and assassination in Greta Christina’s piece, A Martyr of Modern Skepticism: The Assassination of Prominent Atheist Narendra Dabholkar.

• Richard Dawkins under fire for ‘mild pedophilia’ remarks – Yeeeeesh. PZ and Alex Gabriel point out the hypocrisy in Dawkins’ moral relativism – he doesn’t want to judge people from an earlier era with modern principles, unless those acts were religiously motivated. Of course.
• Richard Dawkins: Retract your trivializing statements regarding victims of sexual abuse – There’s a petition you can sign to show not all atheists agree with Dawkins’ statements.
• My Time With Richard Dawkins (Or, Why You Should Never Meet Your Idols) – Dawkins refused to speak at the Reason Rally if Rebecca Watson was there. This was written before Dawkins’ latest foot-in-mouth disease, but I find it illuminating. Who’s the one making blacklists now?
• On Being Disillusioned By Heroes… or, No, I Am Not Bloody Well Happy to Hear Horrible Things About the People I Admired – Before you accuse certain atheists of having “confirmation bias” and wanting to see the worst in people like Dawkins…read this. All of this. I wish I didn’t have to type up any of the above stories. I look forward to the day the atheist movement stops being so horrible.