Gideon's Bibles

Edward Baker, in his blog "In Defence Of Reason" suggests a petition for the removal of Gideon's Bibles from hotel rooms in the UK.

As I read his piece my thoughts went through a strange process:
1. No, leave them there, then we can insert atheist literature or just keep taking them home.
2. Rather, lets have atheist literature in the rooms as well.
3. No, let's not, where will it end?
4. Yeah, let's sign this petition.

I participate on an Ex-Christian forum and this very topic came up recently. At Friendly Atheist the topic has also been recently blogged. Some people advocate taking the bibles home and dumping them. At the very least it costs Gideons some money.
Someone pointed out the irony that the scoiety is named after a very nasty piece of work. By today's standards, Gideon would have hung alongside Saddam for war crimes.

You can get warning stickers for bibles here and here

Which got me wondering why we couldn't petition to have atheist or humanist literature in hotels. But then all hell would break loose as we'd then have to have the Koran, Book of Mormon and god knows what other crap filling the bedside drawers. Each hotel room would have to have its own mini library of religious bullshit, in the name of equality and balance.

So I've come round to the idea, either leave things as they are, Gideons in the rooms, and feel free to mess with them as you wish, or remove all religious crap from the rooms, including Gideons bibles. Go sign Ed's petition.