Yesterday, a student spat tobacco juice on the American Atheists bench in front of the Bradford County Courthouse in Florida, took a picture of it, and sent it to AA:

He added on Facebook:

AA said they would file a police report.

Today, that student has apologized:

Whether he was sincere or pressured into it doesn’t matter — hopefully, he learned a lesson from all this. That’s pretty much all we can ask for.

American Atheists has accepted his apology and urges people not to harass the student:

The vandal, Zach, has sent us an apology, which we have accepted. We appreciate everyone’s support and completely understand and agree with your feelings about this — what he did was hurtful to our community and just reinforces the untrue idea that atheists are second-class citizens, worthy of contempt and ridicule, just because we do not believe in gods. The vandal is just a teenager and he made a mistake. We ask people NOT to call or text him (his phone number has been leaked); two wrongs don’t make a right and this is not appropriate, either. Thank you for understanding. We have asked him to clean up the monument and send us another picture of him with it to show us that he holds no ill-will against us. We’ll let you know when we hear back. Thank you again for your support. – American Atheists

Perfect response from them. It would be nice if this is the worst thing that ever happens to that bench… but I’m not holding my breath.



