It’s been 25 years since Salman Rushdie published his novel Satanic Verses and Iran’s head of state, the Ayatollah Khomeini, responded by charging him with blasphemy and placing a death sentence upon his head. Not surprisingly, Rushdie went into hiding when he heard the news.  Th

Recently my face was on a billboard with a slogan that read: “I am a secularist and I vote.” I sent a photo of the sign to a friend in Canada, thinking she’d be amused. Instead, she emailed to ask if I wasn’t afraid to identify myself as an atheist. Given the rise in conservat