North Carolina Pride Festival

I went to the North Carolina Pride festival again this year and had a good time. One thing that was new this year is that finally an Atheist group was represented! The Raleigh/Durham Atheist meetup had a booth there thanks to one of it's members, Alex. http://atheists.meetup.com/80 I'm a member of the meetup; I was very excited to see the event posting and helped work the booth. We had several people come up and talk to us and none of them were belligerent. We basically explained Atheism, talked about the meetup group, and passed out literature from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. http://ffrf.org

I also marched in the parade for the second time with the North Carolina Society for Ethical Culture. http://ncethicalsociety.org Someone made a sign that read "I am Atheist" and lent it to me for the march and had several people shout their support. I only had one person who wasn't appreciative, who said "God loves you anyway." I thanked him and wiped away a small tear and kept going.

I was so glad to be a part of this because so many people in the gay community, while they are skeptical of traditional religion, are still very blinded by their own particular faith. Many are even as defensive against Atheists as mainstream Christians are, despite the fact that most Atheists are some of the gay community's best allies!

I have a couple of videos of the parade up on my YouTube channel for anyone who'd like to see what it was like. http://youtube.com/user/wabes2k. I also have some pictures on my Flickr account. http://flickr.com/photos/wabes2k