The blogs and the commenters and the media that results from all that was your big stick.

I honestly don’t know what a non-vindictive statement means in this context and I’m not being deliberately dense. I have learned to never assume things about other’s assumptions about atheists. They can be quite unexpected. Often I find that people’s beliefs about non believers are more bizarre than their religious beliefs.

The news that Campus for Christ was denied is interesting but we should not necessarily assume that a similar issue was the cause of their being denied. Only they and the administration know I suppose, and as you say it is probably not worth caring about at this point.

The interest from other Campus Clubs members is encouraging. Could it be that this whole controversy has actually increased your potential membership? I wish you much success. Persevere.

I think a statement about non-vindictive attacks (which, by the way, I think you know the meaning of), would have been a non-issue if not that during the negotiations a snide comment I made a while back about Muslim extremists didn’t surface from the group’s Facebook page. Now, regardless of it’s validity or it’s nature of being a personal communication to Tyler, the Facebook group page was representative of us as a club and they asked to get it removed and put it a line about tactful criticism when it’s expressed in a public sphere.

By the way, I should point something out to you, which some members of the Campus Clubs recently admitted to me – some of their key people are themselves atheists who are very interested in participation in the club or very liberal “cultural” theists who frankly don’t care, so you cannot claim that religion was a problem for them.

If not, then why not? If not, then why is the desired behavior of the religious groups taken for granted (or not required) while the atheist group must make an overt promise to adhere to that behavior?

If there is a recognized group for African Americans on campus, were they required to include an overt promise to not be “vindictive” to other races? If there are Republican or Democrat groups on campus, have they had to promise to be inclusive and non vindictive to each other as well? Do stamp collectors have to promise not to beat up coin collectors?

It’s not a question of whether or not the LFA will behave decently on campus. Of course they will. It’s their having to assuage the ignorance-based fears of the WLUSU administration that I find objectionable. Having to say they won’t be vindictive only reinforces the supposition that atheists are vindictive.

“Inclusive” is pretty obvious, but what the hell is meant by “vindictive” anyway? What are the fearful fantasies of the administrators or members of the religious groups? Physical attacks? Burning churches?

If there are such discrepancies then the bigotry against the atheist group is still officially sanctioned by the WLUSU because of the unequal requirements of the various groups’ core values statements. Not that I think anything will be done about it, I’m just pointing it out.

Hopefully groups like the LFA will over time be able to dispel the idiotic fear and loathing that has resulted in requiring the extra promise that they will be nice.

Thanks man, really, for all the help you did. You and the Friendly Atheist blog is an inspiration for everyone who still believes in basic principles of tact.

We’re actually been in the local television news as well, first Tyler, today at 6:30 pm and me, a bit later today, at 11:30 pm.

And for your readers out there who believe we might have compromised some of our core values, I’ve read over our new constitution and will put it on my blog when I get a copy of it. Basically it came down to this: Adding two lines, one stating that we would be inclusive to any religious person who would want to have meaningful religious discourse (not a problem, our stance all along), and two, stating that we would not engage in any vindictive assaults on religion – only logical critique (again, not a problem).