Hooray -- we made it all the way to New Years. Our sign was still there when we went to collect it and store it for next year. Or course, it was the second sign. The first was stolen.

    Two days later the sign, three supporting posts and even the light provided by the parks department had disappeared. About the same time, our organization’s web site was attacked and filled with profanity.

    The internet version of the local newspaper provides a comment section following each local news story, "Letter to the Editor", and “Its Your Call”, a column of anonymous telephoned rants and complaints. Two items, including one giving the date and location of the next Skeptics meeting, brought out the religious zealots. For instance:

    “I want to know how (such) a group…can hold a meeting in a public building such as the Rolling Hills Library. Especially since it is a tax payer funded facility.
    “It also sickens me that this group was given a display in Holiday Park this year. While their message was not a bad one, what they state on their website has a certain connotation about it. I will post the quote. ‘As this was our first attempt at displaying our beliefs (or lack of them) we felt subtlety was called for. All in all, the work seemed worthwhile.’ ”

    More than one comment did say that stealing the sign was a “shame” and it “diminishes everyone.” But one person suggested that we stole the sign ourselves to become martyrs. Others indicated that members of the Skeptics were a “group of gays”, none had jobs, and the members had “self-righteous attitudes”.

One of the Skeptic members posted:

    “The sign said “Be Good For Goodness Sake.” This is not only a line from a Christmas song, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”, it also expresses a different belief: You don’t need reward or threat of punishment to be good. It can come from intellectual understanding of your place within society.
    “As the theft of the sign illustrates, promise of future reward or punishment does not seem to work, so maybe doing the right things should be simply a personal choice.”

    It wasn’t surprising that drew little comment.

    Undeterred, and aided by a $150 donation from the American Atheists' sign fund, the St. Joseph Skeptic Society erected the second sign, a duplicate of the original. Why the second one went untouched is unknown. But it is most likely that the amount of publicity the Skeptic Society received from the theft of the first one was not what was hoped by those who wanted to make it just “disappear”.