Let’s get right to it. Elizabeth Dole should absolutely be ashamed of herself. I don’t know what things were like when she grew up in North Carolina, but the North Carolina I was raised in would NEVER condone this kind of personal slander. I can’t begin to tell you how upset I am that she has attacked my Christian faith…

At their core, Americans aren’t Democrat or Republican, red or blue – they’re Americans, plain and simple. We ALL love our country, and we all value the role of faith in American life.

Heman Mehta at Friendly Atheist thinks Hagan’s choice of words was unfortunate.

Let’s be clear about this: It’s not slanderous or pathetic to be an atheist. Hagan’s just saying it’s slanderous and pathetic to lie about your opponent in order to win an election.

I’m not happy with her choice of words. She could have used the opportunity to say that, while atheists make up a vital segment of this country, she is a woman of faith. In the heat of the moment and the political stress she must be under, though, I can understand why she said what she did.

Alonzo Fyfe at Atheist Ethicist has a more critical view of Hagan’s response.

Hagan isn’t making the claim that atheists are Americans too and have a right to present their views to perspective political candidates. She is not saying that the fault of Dole’s advertisement is that Dole is lying and promoting bigotry and hatred. She, in effect, endorsed the hate and answered, “How dare you accuse me of not being just as bigoted against atheists as you are! You take that back!”

Kay Hagan had an opportunity to confront the bigotry her opponent has tried to wield for political gain, but chose, instead, to validate it. She should be ashamed of herself. Those in the secular community who have lent their support to Hagan as a result of Dole’s tactics must not become apologists for this more subtle form of bigotry, and must address it as forcefully as possible. Who knows – attacks on Hagan’s campaign by atheist groups might actually help her in the polls, too.

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One problem with turning out the atheist vote is finding it. Atheists do not reside visibly in certain neighborhoods like blacks or Hispanics or gay men and lesbians. They do not turn up on the databases of professional associations like doctors or lawyers. And as nonbelievers, they axiomatically do not come together for worship.

As Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta noted:

Reading atheist blogs is fine. Reading atheist books is fine. But unless we can transform our thoughts into action, it’s all pretty useless.

I’m not sure it’s useless, but coalescing into a force for change will take more than talking among ourselves. The problem, though, is to define a central organizing theme around which the diverse nontheistic community can organize. A good starting point is to address the overt and subtle bigotry against atheists in all spheres of American society. And no better contemporary example of that is to be found than the frank anti-atheist bigotry wielded for political gain by Elizabeth Dole in her campaign for re-election to the U.S. Senate in North Carolina – and, now, with the backing of the Republican National Committee (see, for example, The Friendly Atheist and Pharyngula).

Alonzo Fyfe, writing at Atheist Ethicist, notes that such bigotry must be confronted, without condition and without apology.

The proper response to the video from the Republican National Committee is not to condemn the advertisement for attempting to link Hagan to bad atheists – because, in fact, none of the people represented in the video are bad atheists. They are atheists – and, in the mind of the bigot, all atheists are bad atheists. We should not be assuming that this association between ‘atheist’ and ‘bad’ is necessarily or even often true.

In fact, this is the association that we should be challenging.

While this view is substantially correct, we should not be oblivious to the damage done to the cause of increasing the respect and political clout of atheists by those who focus intently and incessantly on ridiculing religious belief. They are surely not “bad atheists,” but they contribute to the poor public perception of atheists, generally.

Analogies are frequently made between the atheist movement today and the state of the gay and lesbian rights movement a decade or two ago, but these comparsons fail in one very important respect; it is not simply that atheists remain closeted for fear of reprobation, or that we seek to eliminate the demonization of and discrimination against those without a belief in supernatural deities. It is that some atheists (whether called fundamentalist or militant or dogmatic) exhibit an arrogance and certitude that seems to give license to denigrate those who find value in religious practice.

Gays and lesbians did not assert the superiority of their sexual orientation, nor did they try to claim equal rights and equal protection while simultaneously seeking to prove heterosexuals wrong. When atheists do both with equal vigor, we open ourselves to suspicion and attack. It is difficult to ask for respect while refusing to show it.

This is not to say that there is no place for religious criticism, or that we can be less than vigilant in supporting the wall separating religion and government. But while Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens eloquently and forcefully make the intellectual case for atheism, we must also find effective ways to make the case for equality in our ostensibly secular society. Until the perception of the atheist movement is changed from one that appears to be anti-religion to one that seeks to end religious discrimination, members of the community of reason may remain politically impotent, despite their considerable numbers.

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