Popular scientist Richard Dawkins proposes we start using the word “brights” to refer to atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and humanists. Mostly they are naturalists as opposed to supernaturalists. (With emphasis especially on “as opposed to.”)
Dawkins and his fellow “brights” hope to use the word in the same way that the homosexual community used “gay” as a tool to overcome prejudice. Take a word with a positive connotation, get everyone to start using it instead of words with a negative connotation, and watch your group suffer less persecution. All in all, a good strategy.
But I have two problems with it. One, “brights” are not persecuted or oppressed, unless by “oppressed” you mean that they are less likely to be the high school quarterback than the president of the honor society. Unless by “persecuted” you mean that they are mocked for wearing Vulcan ears to the Star Trek convention. I could support the term simply on the basis that its easier than saying “atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and humanists,” but “oppressed” they are not. True, they never quite claim out and out oppression, but the comparison to the gay community implies it, and they do say things like this:
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JERUSALEM—After being away for nearly two millennia, Jesus Christ triumphantly returned Monday to pick up some of His old belongings. “I realize this isn’t exactly how the world’s Christians were imagining it, but I left a really comfortable pair of sandals in Galilee, and I wanted them back,” said Christ, who died for our sins. “Also, I’m pretty sure I lent [Apostle] Simon Peter my best goblet at the Last Supper.” This marks Christ’s first return since 76 A.D., when he thought he’d forgotten to turn off his coffee pot. (From 
In an effort to make MyIrony more accessible, I’ve switched the site over to an “em”-based style sheet from a pica- and point-based style sheet. For those of you who don’t speak CSS (and I don’t encourage you to do so), that means that when you shift the text size in your browser (in IE, View>>Text Size) the entire site shifts to accomodate. And by “shifts,” I mean really shifts. Yet another (tediously completed) milestone in the march of irony.
What do you get when you cross the Masons, Promise Keepers, and Washington powerbrokers? Answer: ‘
