By Jim Helton
When the Tri-State Freethinkers originally thought about adopting a highway, I could think of no better place to do it than in front of Ken Ham’s Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky. We have been cleaning the highway for four years now.
As a group, we do about 40 volunteer projects every year. By far, our members’ favorite event is cleaning the highway leading to the Creation Museum. We adopted the highway as a way for us to clean up the environment, as well as let the people know driving by that there are rational people living in Kentucky.
When Ham first saw our signs, he wrote a blog post that basically thanked us for keeping the highway clean, but also said that we were still going to burn in hell.
He also sent us the following invite: “For our part, we would be willing to meet with these local freethinkers and chat with them. Let’s establish a dialogue and have a free exchange of ideas.” We tried to take him up on his offer, but as of today, Ken Ham has not sat down with us.
To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised it took this long for someone to vandalize our signs. While we were planning the protest of the opening of the Ark Encounter last July, we were surprised to discover that the highway in front of the life-size “replica” ark was available to be adopted. So, we adopted that one as well.
We will continue to clean up after Ken Ham on the highways and in our local schools.
Jim Helton is president of the Tri-State Freethinkers.
