When I first saw this article, I was outraged.

Take a look:

MYSpace Exiles Atheists

By Wendy Kaminer

MYSpace has deleted the 35,000 member “Atheist and Agnostic Group” in response to complaints from people who are offended by atheism, according to a press release posted by the Secular Student Alliance. Group Moderator Bryan Pesta stressed that the atheist and agnostic group had not violated any terms of service, adding, “when the largest Christian group was hacked, MYSpace’s founder, Tom Anderson, personally restored the group, and promised to protect it from future deletions.”

What in the hell. How dare they delete a huge group on the basis that it "offends people". They have 42,521 gay related groups. When you search for "sex", there are 5,000 results. Why choose this one group?!
And what the hell for deleting a group simply on the basis that it offended someone!?
"I'm sorry, your beliefs may have offended a few people, therefore we must now delete them"? I mean, it's not like deleting the group with make them, or their beliefs, go away, it's just taking it away from those who have chosen to go and look at it.

So, I was shocked when I read it. And then, I remembered. MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch. That's right, centrist, fairness and equality (Oh, and balance!) loving Rupert Murdoch of Fox News fame.

I was remarkably less surprised after that.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns MySpace, is not the government: he is not constrained by constitutional strictures against religious discrimination, which include discrimination against atheists, (although he could conceivably be bound by a contract or civil statute;) and while the non-theist movement is growing and becoming more visible, it’s not exactly a market force worthy of Murdoch’s notice. So, if he can delete atheists from his social networking site, he can delete any religious, racial, ethnic, or demographic group that he doesn’t need to cultivate. The exiling of atheists should not be a concern for atheists alone.

Obviously, it demonstrates the perils of encouraging people to believe that they have a right not to be offended. I can’t think of a good reason for anyone but atheists to care that atheists have a presence on MySpace, but people are entitled to their sensibilities, however foolish they appear to me. The trouble is, they feel entitled to impose their sensibilities on others by restricting speech; and even, or especially, our higher education system seems partly devoted to imbuing students with this anti-libertarian sense of entitlement (a trend we often decry here at thefreeforall.)

(emphasis mine)

There are still a few Atheist/Agnostic groups on MySpace (One called "Atheist Agnostic Group III, making me wonder "Hmm...Why the III?") However, there are a lot less than any I searched for.
And just so you know, when I search for "Christian" in groups, I came up with 5,000 results. When I searched for Atheist, I came up with 359, and many of those were repeats of the same group.

I'm not trying to cry wolf here. I'm not pissed off because it's an Atheist group being removed (However, that is how I found out about it), I'm angry because a group was removed because their beliefs (or lack of beliefs) "offended" people. How inconvenient of them to have beliefs that could be perceived as offensive.

But really, could imagine all 35,000 of those people getting together and complaining about a Christian Group, and the Christian group getting deleted? Somehow, I find that slightly harder to see happening.