My last blog post about Atheists being defamed by various religious figures went up at FDL, a place I usually put them to get more traffic.

As has happened with every single atheism themed post I put up over there, it attracted a set of trolls, this time a particularly egregious one name Doremus35 who implied that I was a ‘religious bigot’ because I wrote about a Rabbi calling Atheists ‘parasites’ alongside the Pope. Apparently this was meant to imply that all Jews are anti-Atheist or something; I’m not sure, I couldn’t follow the logic.

Also, the Pope apparently has no religious authority in the US.

Later in the same thread, Doremus35 attacked me for being a ‘gender bigot’ because I used a generic male pronoun to refer to them.

When I responded to the first accusations, of bigotry and possible anti-semitism, I was censored for calling Doremus’ ideas, as I recall (I can’t access my own old comments) ‘half-witted’ and ‘stupid’. Not the man/woman/child. Their ideas.

They, on the other hand, got away with calling me a bigot, implying I was an anti-semite, over and over again. For bringing it up to the Mods, I got repeatedly censored as well.

I’ve just about had it with posting at FDL. The traffic is nice, but there’s an obvious rancor toward any irreligious position or writers over there. I’ve been attacked by front-page authors in comments for pointing out simple facts about how the tax code favors the religious. One front-pager a few months back wrote a piece about, amongst other things, how Atheists have no joy in their lives or something along those lines, because we’re too uppity about standing up to religious figures, that he had to largely retract in comments. There are numerous featured writers who author pieces from an explicitly religious perspective, and not one open atheist or agnostic.

Let me be clear: I’m fine with Doremus calling me a bigot. That’s fine, it just shows that they throw around slander when confronted by their inability to read a simple blog post, or apparently, to any criticism of a rabbi. Whatever. I’m a big boy, and I get called far worse. I’d be less fine with, but accepting of, consistently applied standards regarding insults.

What I’m not fine with is a situation where *I* get to be called a bigot for calling out an eliminationist rabbi, censored for criticizing someone else’s ideas, and defamed for using a pronoun in a standard way, but my erstwhile opponent can do whatever they please. Whenever I point out this hypocrisy, the comment is removed. Criticism of the censors is not allowed.

So I’m now effectively banned from commenting on my own thread. It’s a troubling situation, from an authorial perspective. I feel like my intellectual property has been usurped, in addition to everything else. I’ll have to see how this turns out before I decide on the next step.