Swiss transit authorities ban atheist advertising

A bus advertising campaign initiated by atheists in Britain with the message, "there's probably no God," would be banned in many cities in Switzerland, including Geneva and Lausanne. The director of the Swiss association of free thinkers questions the policies, calls for "religious disarmament" and tells Swisster the group is raising money to run such ads in as many as 10 Swiss municipalities. A successful advertising campaign waged by atheists in Britain and spreading to other parts of the world has been stopped dead in its tracks in western Switzerland. The campaign initiated by the British Humanist Association involves advertisements on buses that say: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

The campaign provoked controversy in Britain while drawing support – more than 130,000 pounds has been raised, mostly from small donations, to display the ads on more than 800 buses in 20 cities. But in the Lake Geneva region both Geneva and Lausanne public transport authorities say they would ban similar ads from appearing, in French, on their buses or trams.
The Swiss association of free thinkers, based in Bern, has appealed to its members to raise 50,000 Swiss francs to run the advertising.

“We want to express our discontent with the promotion of religious advertising,” Reta Caspar, director of the association, told Swisster. Caspar said her 1,250-member organization was persuaded to run the ads after hearing from members of the public, as well as its own members.
“We’ve had so many calls and emails saying why don’t you do this in Switzerland,” she said. Similar ads have appeared on buses in Italy and Spain. The free thinkers’ association already had its own modest advertising campaign in German-speaking Switzerland before the one began in Britain.
It involved putting small notices inside buses in several cities that used a familiar quotation from Rousseau, “All men are born free” and provided links to a non-believers’ website.
“The authorities turned us down in Bern, Thun and St. Gallen,” Caspar said. In Bern the issue landed up in cantonal parliament and the group finally won permission to run the ads in the city’s buses – but by that time there was no space available. The group was successful in placing cardboard signs in the local train between Bern and Solothurn. 
But now it faces opposition over plans to launch the British-style campaign. Despite the canton's reputation for freedom of expression, Geneva officials say they have a policy against running advertising that offends the susceptibility of religious people.
“One cannot put just anything” on advertising signs, Jean-Claude Schmalz, director of advertising for TPG, the Geneva transport authority, told Le Matin newspaper. When asked about religious advertising that might offend atheists, Schmalz said that “atheists are not recognized as an official group and up to now we have not had any concerns raised about that.”
In Lausanne, a different policy applies. A spokesman from TL, the transport authority in the Vaud capital, said the authority had been refusing all religious, sectarian or "indoctrination" advertising.
Caspar said the argument used in Geneva, similar to that used in other Swiss cities, does not make any sense. If the feelings of religious people are being hurt by atheist advertising, how are non-believers supposed to feel about all the religious advertising apparent on buses, trams and elsewhere, she asked. “What we want is religious disarmament,” she said. “We really have to take religion back to the private sphere.”
Her organization has so far raised 3,000 francs since it decided on the weekend to launch the “there’s probably no God” advertising campaign. Caspar noted that 11 percent of Swiss residents said they were not attached to any religious group in the 2000 census, a percentage that has probably grown.
Yet, Switzerland has not yet officially separated church and state at the national level, she said. An initiative in 1980 to incorporate this separation in the federal constitution failed when 79 percent of voters said no. That means it is up to the 26 cantons to decide religious issues, making for a patchwork of policies.
Caspar said it remains difficult for a Swiss politician who admits to having no religion to be elected, and in some cantons, the government still collects taxes for certain churches. She hopes to see the British-style ads on buses in 10 cities – the plan is to run one in each – using the same phrase used in the original campaign in Britain, translated into one of the official Swiss languages, depending on the region.
That phrase is a "brand" that has become effective in provoking debate, which is what the goal of the campaign is all about, Caspar said.