A small town in Massachusetts painted over a Noah’s Ark display after an atheist group complained.
Officials in Ashburnham, Massachusetts agreed to cover a turning game featuring the Noah’s ark story on the library’s playground with white paint after a complaint from the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
The complaint came in a letter that also requested that the city respond with its plan to remove the turning game from the playground.
The town agreed and the mural was removed.
A Noah’s Ark display made headlines before in the city of Newark, Delaware. In 2014, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a complaint with the city over a similar turning game display in the library playground. Grandparents complained that they “did not want their grandchildren to see the Bible verses or the cartoon rendition of the Noah’s Ark story.”
In recent months, FFRF has blown the whistle on several public institutions. In Ashland, Nebraska, FFRF convinced the police department to stop posting Christian messages on its Facebook page. And, in Oregon, the nonprofit complained about church signs on display at a public school.
Yet, not all atheist group’s requests have been successful. In 2017, a panel of judges on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling that a 34-foot tall cross in Pensacola, Florida, needed to come down.