I’m going to try to nip something in the bud before it turns into a senseless internet war. Rather than respond to all the facebook messages and blog comments, here’s my take on the relationship between homosexuality and atheism in society. If it sounds like I’m responding to you, I probably am.
I am an unyielding advocate of completely equal rights for gays. In every respect from marriage to childrearing to medical and legal rights, I support total equality under the law. I believe anything less is discriminatory and wrong.
There is a lot of discrimination against gays in America. This much ought to be obvious to anyone who gets out every once in a while. There are a lot of places where it’s uncomfortable at best and physically dangerous at worst for a gay couple to display affection in public.
There are still hate crimes against gays, and every level of government has a responsibility to discourage all crime — including hate crime — and punish it appropriately when it happens.
Now… what about atheists?
Atheists are discriminated against, too. It’s not the same kind of discrimination, though there is certainly some overlap. There are documented cases of atheist children being beat up in school yards and locker rooms. We get nasty looks when we wear atheist T-Shirts in public. Parents don’t want their children to marry us. People don’t want us in public office. We are often silently black-balled from jobs.
Can we compare atheist discrimination to gay discrimination? Well, I suppose we can, but is there a good reason for doing so? Personally, I’m not interested in the minutia of how it’s different to be gay than atheist. (I pity gay atheists.) Gay discrimination is different than atheist discrimination, which is different from sexual discrimination, which is different from racial discrimination. If you show me a black, gay atheist with Asperger syndrome and ugly moles all over his face, I’ll show you someone who suffers all kinds of discrimination. Put me — a normal looking white guy atheist — out there in a job search, and I’ll do better than our poor object of the worst of all kinds of discrimination.
Each human on earth is a mix of lots of identities, and each identity comes with its own pluses and minuses, which are generally all environment-dependent. A gay man in San Francisco has an easier time than he would if he lived in Luckenbach, Texas. An atheist in the deep south has a worse time than an atheist in California. We can argue all day long about which is worse. But why?
How do we compare House to Captain Jack Harkness? Or Mal vs. Ellen DeGeneres? What does it mean that it’s ok for Ann Coulter to come on FOX News and rail against “Liberal Evolutionist Atheists” who are bent on destroying the very fabric of America from within? Is it objectively harder to be elected as openly gay or openly atheist?
For that matter, might it be that the reason there are a lot more legal cases of anti-gay discrimination is that there are factors preventing atheists from coming forward? I know that there are parts of the country where the only judges available are openly Christian.
Again, I’m not trying to make the point that one form of discrimination is more prevalent, worse in total, or more legally significant. I honestly don’t know. I’ve never been gay, so I have no idea what it feels like to be a victim of anti-gay discrimination. But I know what it feels like to live as an atheist in a Christian Theocratic culture. It sucks.
Rather than argue over who is suffering worse than whom, I’m much more interested in working to educate thoughtful people on the realities of discrimination as I encounter it in my life. I can only say so much about anti-gay discrimination, and anything I do say is a matter of speculation since I haven’t experienced it. But since I can and do experience anti-atheist discrimination, I can speak authoritatively on what it’s like. So that’s what I spend my time focusing on.
When it comes right down to it, I don’t care a whit whether or not one form of discrimination is worse. They’re both awful, and they’re both anathema in a truly egalitarian society. That’s what I’m working towards — building a society which minimizes group-think and outsider-bashing. I don’t know how close we can get to true equality, but I’d like to find out.
I’m not sure that it’s the disbelief in God that offends Christians, so much as the way we eat babies constantly.
We’re seen as somehow dirty, immoral, hate filled, dangerously unstable, scheming etc etc etc.
I think most Christians link belief in God with having a personal morality and that Atheism is a package deal with the breakdown of society.
It’s not true, but it’s perceived to be true.
Posted by Athol Kay: Married Man Sex Life | June 23, 2010, 5:55 pmMost Christians (and generally speaking) The Right are group-thinkers that seek comfort and solidarity thru whatever group they choose to join. Most group-thinkers are afraid of Athiests for many reasons, but in my humble opinion a main one is that most Atheists don’t do just that – group-think. There is no clear heirarchy or power structure among Atheists. When Christians/The Right rant of a breakdown of society, they are associating it with people thinking, behaving, and believing for themselves. It is pretty hard to organize and then dominate and manipulate members of society when they think for themselves, read, ask questions, and generally question a power structure that is attempting to govern them. That said, their assumption is that Atheists, “free-thinkers”, (and whatever label The Right gives), cannot organize themselves into a civil society.
The ultimate irony is that the society they have created – their model – is brutal, discriminatory, racist, elitist, and bigoted in many, many ways. I think they think we are ALL heathens and idiots – TV junkie, FoxNews-watching, group-thinking, non-readers and non-thinkers who hardly question our own brutality and lack of education and morals. I dont think they care if one group are homosexuals, one group are Atheists, one group are disabled or another group are non-white. They have the power, and the majority gives it to them.
Posted by Mike VanHassel | June 23, 2010, 7:09 pmHey Hamby,
When I wrote my response it was because I thought you were of the position that these were something to be compared. It’s clear that you aren’t, and I agree with that. What can we atheists do to improve our situation seeing that we already have legal protections available to us? Obviously, making use of these is a good thing, but these protections do not help many of the forms of discrimination you’ve discussed (e.g., being a disliked group, or parents not desiring to have their kids marry an atheist)?
Posted by MKandefer | June 23, 2010, 9:08 pmI’m just amazed at how many “civil rights groups” are only interested in their particular civil right being protected, when it’s so obvious that the more discrimination we stop, the less of it we see in general. And the simplest solution to discrimination is education, which is something that the “Right” obviously doesn’t want too many people getting…
Posted by Alex Hardman | June 24, 2010, 3:28 amMike, you gripe about Christians labeling Atheists incorrectly but how is that any different than the labels you placed on Christians. Yes there is a lot of corruption and BS inside the “Christian” community but the same holds true for all human organizations. A “TRUE CHRISTIAN” loves everyone equally and don’t seek to put themselves above anyone else. In fact, as a Christian, I very much enjoy speaking with Atheists and even have Atheist friends. I don’t try to convert them and they don’t try to convert me. Even though I choose to believe in a God, I still find the Atheist views rather intriguing. And furthermore, I hardly ever watch TV (except for when my kids are watching cartoons), especially not Fox-News, I always strive to have my own views and not blindly accept the views of others, and guess what…..I even read from time to time. : ) I say all of this not to try and convince you of converting or anything like that, simply to state that it is very sad that our society has given you a negative view of what it really means to be a Christian.
Posted by Bryan Moore | September 24, 2010, 8:54 pm@Bryan Moore, so exactly what test(s) can we use to determine the “true christian” from the false? That’s the problem, when one of you does something horrible, the rest simply say he wasn’t a true Christian.
Well, from reading your book, any of you can use it to justify anything you want and none of you can claim any better understanding than the rest, so….
I’m sure there are “some” intelligent christians, just as there are “some” stupid non-christians, but that doesn’t change the fact that all christians believe something that they can’t prove in any way. As long as they leave it there, we’d have no problems, but “many” of them use that belief to justify pushing a world view on others, and that’s where I draw the line.
Posted by Alex Hardman | September 25, 2010, 7:49 am