It is anti Christian in context.
On what basis? Atheism is in disagreement with Christianity, sure, but so is every non-Christian Religion. This remains the case 365 days a year.
I didn't say it was anti Christmas
And yet your objection relates to it occurring specifically during Christmas. Do Christians cease to exist during the rest of the year? Are Christians
more offended by an atheist billboard during Christmas?
I didn't say that was what made it tasteless. I said the timing and the calculated trading on that did. A bit different.
I was under the impression that the timing is what elicited the negative response and/or outrage (the foreseeable sentiment..), no? If not then what significance does the timing have exactly? An ad for Turkey before Thanksgiving "trades on the season" as well, no? Where are you drawing the line?
But then you treated it as though it was the answer, which is disingenuous.
It was
an answer, to which I gave
a response. If the answer, only works in conjunction with some other point, you should indicate this; Otherwise I'm going to dissect your statements in the manner that you dissect mine.
No, I said the timing was, repeatedly.
Well, no, actually you said:
"I'm not particularly moved by the claim of an infringement of speech here since
the tasteless billboard in question..."
You may have indicated that the timing is what made it such, but I'm not going to quibble over semantics here.
The iphone attempt wasn't a parallel in any meaningful sense. It was only parallel in that it was an example of something you might find on a billboard. I wasn't objecting to billboards
You are missing the point here. The hypothetical "Buy the new iPhone" ad is used to demonstrate that many of the supplied reasons you presented for why you found the atheist billboard tasteless were so broad that they could have applied to virtually any billboard.
If the argument you are using applies both to a thing you accept and a thing you reject, it is an invalid argument by virtue of counter-example. Thus I am using what I will call the
iPhone Principal to determine which objections are specific to the atheist billboard and which would apply to any billboard under identical circumstances.
Rather it's what the timing says about the placement, what their intent was in choosing that particular and that's where my wedding analogy comes in.
Except that as you've already agreed, atheism is not anti-Christmas, so the analogy does not work.
I'd differ with the billboard whenever it went up, but placing it, like that sign in my actual parallel, inside the particular context and willfully, calculatedly is both insensitive and tasteless.
To my mind, you still haven't given a convincing reason for that. If people see a billboard targeted at atheists as being insensitive to Christians, I think that says more about them then it does about the billboard.