Comment by DeSwiss on September 2, 2009 at 12:34am

A billboard with the message "Imagine No Religion" is no more. Sign company General Outdoor removed the sign by the Freedom From Religion Foundation on Thursday after it received a request by the city to do so.

According to Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels, City Hall had received 90 calls of complaint since Wednesday. "We contacted the sign company and asked if there was a way to get it removed," Daniels said.

The billboard - which went up last week on the southwest corner of Archibald Avenue and Foothill Boulevard - is part of a national billboard campaign by the Wisconsin-based group advocating the separation of church and state. The foundation's co-president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, said the billboard is meant to encourage a debate on religion by using the John Lennon-inspired message.

Gaylor was shocked over the city's role in the billboard's demise. "The city has no business suggesting our billboard be censored," Gaylor said. "They're not allowed to interfere over religious controversy." It was the second billboard to come down following city request. In September, the city asked a different sign company to take down an advertisement on Foothill Boulevard advertising a vagina rejuvenation procedure.

Daniels said the city did not demand General Outdoor take down the "Imagine No Religion" sign. "We didn't say they had to (take it down), but they respected the Advertisement concerns of residents," Daniels said. The sign was the first in California for the foundation, whose members are atheists and agnostics. Gaylor said sign companies have declined business before, but no company has taken down a sign after it went up.

The group currently has signs in Atlanta, Phoenix and Seattle. "My gosh, we have a billboard in Colorado Springs right now, about a mile from Focus on the Family," said Gaylor, referring to the evangelical organization headquartered in Colorado Springs. "If we can have it in Colorado Springs, why not in Rancho Cucamonga? It doesn't speak well for the state of tolerance if you have to stifle your critics."

Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, said the city's actions are "dangerously close" to censorship and a violation of the First Amendment. "A city government has no business trying to dictate or influence the content of an advertising image, particularly one that's political and controversial as this is simply because some people don't like it and complained about it," Scheer said. "The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect speech that is unpopular, to protect the views that are in the political minority, as long as they don't cross the line and use the speech for some seriously unlawful purpose, which clearly did not happen here." Scheer said the city may not have forced General Outdoor to take down the sign, but it's obvious the company did not act independently. "It's pretty clear that if the city didn't pick up the phone, the image would still be there," Scheer said.

Comment by Paul Tourville on September 2, 2009 at 8:35am

One of the reasons I don't live in California any more. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a pro-religion billboard... and this one... Oh, no... has to come down.

More disturbing is the nauseatingly biased report by the TV News organizations.

They's a whole lot of noisy sheeple in California!

Comment by Brandon L. Mitchell on September 2, 2009 at 10:45am

this is so rediculous, how is imagine no religion offensive, its simply promoting thought, people wouldnt get all touchy if a billboard went up that said "imagine no poker club". i mean i find that most people who fallow a religion enjoy it for for its social properties than the religion itself. i mean if you brake it down religion is just a social club that allthe members across the nation meet at once a week, like poker club, or the nights that american idol is on lol

Comment by DeSwiss on September 3, 2009 at 4:21am

@Paul Tourville - They're everywhere, not just California. For example, those Gideon bibles you always see in motel rooms? I live in the town that prints them. In fact, they print more shit here than anywhere else in the world. And about 75% of it all that they print, is religious crappola.

@Brandon L. Mitchell - You've hit the nail on the head: "religion is ridiculous." So how can anything associated with it not be ridiculous itself? Impossible.

@Natalie Phox - Education, or the lack of it is the prime culprit here. Americans are basically dumb. True. They're extremely dumb in fact. And we have long since passed the point where we needed to have our own Prime Directive to avoid exposing the religious and others of the mentally-infirmed, to advanced technology and the ability to cause mass death. Its a formula that fits right in with their stupid apocalyptic fables and thus is irresistible to them. They crave annihilation of this world because they can't figure it out. It confuses them to no end. They seek a simple world where nothing is asked of them but to sing and praise another idiot. Forever, and ever and ever and ever and ever.....

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