Why can't I be banned in Oklahoma? Look, I know I haven't actually been invited to give a talk there, but that's not the point.
I've tried to get banned, tried so hard - insulted the religious believers here, insulted creationists there, insulted climate change denialists another day, said that I would rather have a monkey as a grandfather than an evangelist, suggested that children be vaccinated against the disease of religion at a young age, said that believers in Noah's Ark should be forced to sail on one to Australia. How much ruder can I be? But do they pass resolutions in the Oklahoma legislature condemning me and asking that my books be burnt, my blog be wiped from the server's hard disc, my identity expunged from Huffington Post? No they don't. But they do try to ban Richard Dawkins.
Is Richard a better atheist than me? A truer unbeliever? Someone with less faith in invisible friends in the sky? Someone more convinced than I that from May 1859, the origin of the Origin of Species, it was impossible for an intelligent person to be religious? I think not. Are not all atheists evolved equally? So this must be just prejudice, and I demand my right to have my freedom of speech trampled on too.
If China can put blocks on words like freedom and Tiananmen, and fundamentalists put bans on words like sex and condom, then why can't Oklahoma put a total block on words like evolution and chimpanzee and speciation and Dawkins and Horton? Just block it all from crossing the electronic border into the land of tall corn and short elephants.
My "published statements on the theory of evolution and opinion about those who do not believe in the theory" are just as "contrary and offensive to the views and opinions of most citizens of Oklahoma" as those of the good Professor Dawkins. So come on Oklahoma legislators, this is not the time for wimps, demand that every computer in Oklahoma has a block on The Watermelon Blog. And hurry up, or next thing you know young Oklahomans will start thinking for themselves, and then where will you be? Kansas?