For the record, when I say atheist in this post I am for simplicity’s sake referring to the nonreligious as a whole, not necessarily only those who would self identify as atheists.  I know this isn’t very specific, but the community is not united in the way specific religious groups are because we don’t necessarily share any specific philosophy.  We simply (passive) lack belief in any supernatural deity, or (active) deny the existence of a supernatural deity.  With that said:

Clearly, the atheist civil rights movement is very much different from what is seen as the model of a civil rights movement in our country: the black civil rights movement.  Atheists are not segregated from the religious in public schools; we are not forced to sit at the back of buses; we are not barred from eating in the same restaurants as theists, using the same water fountains, etc.  This issue is used constantly to argue not so much that there is no atheist civil rights movement, but that we have no right to call it such.  This is patently ridiculous considering the plain definition of the words.  With the assumption the movement exists, is it concerned with “civil rights?”  Clearly, it is concerned with the legal and human rights of atheists.  I’m not a lawyer, or even a law student, but by what other reasonable way can we define civil rights?  Now, is it a movement?

This is a movement, but not in the same form as the black civil rights movement.  Although our goals are in essence the same, the situations, as I have discussed, are clearly not the same.  As a result, the forms the movement takes are not the same.  The same types of physical actions (civil disobedience for instance) are generally not possible.  Sitting in the front of a bus would have no meaning, nor would drinking at a water fountain a theist just drank at, and so on.  Atheists don’t march in the streets regularly, arguably because there isn’t enough bare-faced institutionalized discrimination of the same form that would push atheists to.  If we do, we certainly are not shot with fire hoses.

An argument can be made that this is simply due to the fact that, unless we all go around wearing shirts with the text “I AM AN ATHEIST” on them, it is virtually impossible to identify an atheist in this country unless you were to ask a person’s religious preference or get in a discussion on religion.  I can say that although I don’t know of any data or even an unscientific poll even designed to test this specifically, there are those who would be likely to attempt such discriminatory measures in American society if there was some way to identify all atheists quickly and easily.  This is simply anecdotal, and is not meant to suggest that all of the religious or a majority do think this way.  That would be the exact sort of bigotry I fight against.

Institutionalized discrimination against atheists does exist in this country, though, for example in state constitutions.  As I have wrote about in part 1, my most recent research shows that six states still include provisions barring atheists (and presumably some other non-Christians) from all public offices or specific public offices: Arkansas, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas.  But what is more insidious is the ingrained notion that is unfortunately instilled in many.  This is that atheists cannot be trusted, that we are not moral, and that we can therefore not be good people.  This is the big problem.  This is what makes open atheists feel like second-class citizens.  It is to the extent that the most passive expression of our views is considered an attack or arrogant.  While any religious person can generally expect not to be attacked for simply stating their beliefs, an atheist is expected to shut up – to not simply express that he lacks a belief.  Otherwise, we are arrogant “militant atheists.”

What form does our movement take?  We see this best through the many rights and special interest groups that exist.  Since discrimination and bigotry is not extremely obvious in every aspect of society and especially government as it was with the black civil rights movement, atheists are not generally stirred to march in protest, for instance.  Large marches also generally don’t happen because we don’t have any specific beliefs that would bind us together.  It has been said that attempting to gather atheists together is like herding cats.  Atheists fall along a large spectrum of different political and philosophical ideals.  We are simply grouped by something we lack, belief in a god.

This is not to say that we have never marched for our rights and the constitutionally mandated separation of state and church.  On November 2, 2002, the national group American Atheists rallied thousands of nonreligious on the D.C. mall, known as the “Godless Americans March on Washington“.  From this rally a new atheist rights group was formed, the “Godless Americans Political Action Committee (GAMPAC),” whose mission is stated as “Mobilizing America’s Nonbelievers for Political Activism.”

Other groups promote equal rights for atheists and the atheist viewpoint in all aspects of American life, from grass roots on the street activism to promoting the rights of the nonreligious in the military.  Many of these groups are not strictly made up of atheists, but include also theists who are concerned with the rights of both the religious and the nonreligious, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and the People For the American Way.

Groups that consist of mainly atheists and are concerned with mainly nonreligious rights include: Atheists For Human Rights, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the Secular Coalition for America, and The Richard Dawkins Foundation.  This is not a complete list, but gives you an idea of some of the groups out there.  You can learn more about how they support and protect the rights of atheists on their websites.