The Illinois Family Institute — they actually italicize the word in their name to emphasize the hypocrisy — is out to get Hemant Mehta. He’s an atheist, you know! And a school teacher! Shun him! You’ve got to appreciate the quality sliming while acknowledging his right (for now, until they get more power) to not believe in gods.

He absolutely has a First Amendment right to promote any feckless, destructive, offensive, and immoral ideas he wants via his blog, but, as I mentioned in my earlier article, parents have the right not to have him as a teacher and a role model for their children.

Yeah, right. Remember, Hemant is the friendly atheist, the nice gentle guy with a blog, and they want to see him fired. There is absolutely no incentive to not be the snarly loud atheist, is there?

Among the trumped up reasons to call him immoral is that some of his commenters discussed polyamory (again, they should witness the decadent discussions about bacon that go on here to acquire some perspective), and that he once linked favorable to Dan Savage. Like I just did. I think Dan Savage is terrific, and I would hope any gay students anywhere would be reading him regularly to get a healthy, positive perspective on their sexual orientation. Should they be getting advice from Tony Perkins or Ted Haggard?

So this Family institute is calling on parents to yank their kids out of Mehta’s classes. If you’re a parent in Neuqua Valley district 204, maybe you should call up the district and throw some praise his way…or try to get your kids in his math classes.