I am driven to write these posts by the common criticisms against our movement.  I will focus specifically on two:

1. Atheists do not experience major prejudice and discrimination in the United States.
2. Although atheists may experience some measure of prejudice and discrimination, it is not as extreme or openly codified into our government and culture, as it was against blacks, and therefore we have no right to call their fight a “civil rights movement” (a mostly emotional argument made by many African Americans, especially those who experienced the civil rights movement first hand).

The first argument, which this first of two posts is concerned with, has no truth whatsoever.  It is simply an attempt to whitewash the entire issue.  There have, throughout American history, and are still today many examples of discrimination, and most certainly bigotry against atheists.  Although it is not my purpose in this post to give a ton of examples (that’s this entire blog’s mission, isn’t it?), only one is needed to show that claim is patently false – that there is, in fact discrimination against the nonreligious codified into government.  Many states still technically require a religious test for public office, which is blatantly unconstitutional.  They don’t require any specific religious beliefs, only that one asserts a belief in some supernatural deity.  This clearly singles out only the nonreligious, barring them from state public office¹.  These states are:
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Russell Varner, a junior Journalism major at Elon University in North Carolina has written a great article on the difficulties of being openly atheist in the United States, focusing mostly on North Carolina and the culture at his school.  It’s well written, and I don’t think he misses any of the major points that should be touched on.

Excerpts:

“I think atheists, as well as agnostics or folks of other religious convictions other than Christianity for that matter, are disliked because so many ‘Christians’ in the south equate patriotism with belief in God,” said Tripp York, a professor of religious studies at Elon. “There is much confusion in the minds of many North American Christians as to the God they claim to worship and the tribal god established by the civil religion inherent within this nation-state. To deny belief in this god is synonymous, for many, as a form of anti-patriotism.

[sic]

“Not only are atheists the least trusted minority in America, but gays have been trying to be liberated for almost 30 years,” said William. “They have had a long time to acclimate the populace towards homosexuals and the majority of the populace is now willing to treat them as people. The fact that we are talking about true gay marriage in the mainstream rather than how AIDS and vigilantes will kill all of the gays on the news shows this. That’s why I do indeed think that it is harder to come out Atheist rather than gay in the South.”

“Ten or twenty years ago, if you came out gay, your students would see you differently and you’d be afraid the administration would see you differently and there’d be a different acceptance of you on campus, and I’m seeing a real parallel with this,” said an Elon professor who asked to remain anonymous for this article. “Since the topic of my sabbatical research (atheists in the South) became public, people have come to me out of the woodwork saying ‘I’m glad you’re working on that because I’ve always felt uncomfortable here.’”

Click the link.  Read the rest of the article.  This is the kind of insightful writing we need out of our new crop of young journalists.