I did however have some very specific thoughts about the article.

I was blogging at that time as well (I was blogging before there was such a term) and stamped out a lengthy response to Mr. Shortell’s article.

Before publishing my response I began to understand that a much shorter and to the point response was required. I then deleted my response and made the above icon as my sole response to the article.

In specific the button/icon refers to the following portion of the Shortell article:

On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying – like bad taste. This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.

As you can see, the above paragraph alone could generate a lengthy rebuttal.

The response the icon is to represent is simply that if the term ‘moral retard’, which so far as I know Mr. Shrotell coined, is to be defined as he defines it… then I am proud to be a moral retard.

I invited other bloggers and websites to use the icon in their sidebars and asked them to simply link back to my explanation of the icon or to the Timothy Shortell article.

From time to time I will see how many sites are still making use of this icon as I find it interesting.

There are still at least 105 blogs and websites making use of it.