Back in 1997, when The Mining Company (now known as About.com) was just starting up, I applied to be a guide for them. I wanted to do a freethought site. But I was informed that they had no intention of doing such a site in the foreseeable future.
I sent them a polite but pointed email, mentioning that they already had sites devoted to major religions such as Christianity and Judaism, even subsections for things such as Catholicism... even a Jehovah's Witness site. To not include sites for atheism, agnosticism, or other freethought categories sure seemed to me to be a form of religious discrimination.
Very shortly thereafter, I was offered the opportunity of applying for the position of guide for the suddenly formed agnosticism/atheism site.
Last week, I mentioned Themestream. In the first week of my being an author there, I put dozens of pieces online (virtually all of which are to be found here in the Corner). The article I mentioned last week, in fact, had been viewed 40 times in the space of a week.
On Monday, I received an email from the folks at Themestream, stating that they'd redone the category structure, and some of my articles might have to be recategorized.
So I popped over to look, and sure enough, I had some to fix. Including the two articles on freethought I'd done.
But it was kinda hard to do… since they'd completely removed the atheism and agnosticism categories.
The irony here is that the aforementioned article with 40 hits was about discrimination against atheists.
After shaking my head in exasperation, I zapped off an email to the folks at Themestream, advising them of the Mining Company story I just shared with you, and accusing them of the same sort of discrimination. After all, they've got religious categories out the wazoo, even one on Scientology! (Cults are okay, but atheism isn't, obviously.)
I was told that I could post my articles under "Alternative Religions," and that when enough articles on atheism were posted, they'd re-create the category.
This flies in the face of reality, though, as there were over 100 freethought articles prior to the recategorization, and the aforementioned category of Scientology has a whopping five articles posted.
Subsequent correspondence with them has gone unanswered.
So speak up, all you activists! Voice your disapproval of this blatant slap against expressions of freethought! Inundate them with emails of outrage!
Don't let them push around those of us who voice reason over superstition.
Today, Themestream brought back the Atheism subcategory. This was due, I'm sure, to the massive amounts of email they received from Themestream authors and readers. If you were part of that... thank you.
Update: July 18, 2002
In reading over older articles, I found the ones about Themestream. They went belly-up a while back. Just thought I'd mention it for posterity's sake.
