Ron Lindsay points out in the Huffington Post that coming out as an atheist is significantly different from coming out as LGBT.
True. Nobody is saying that being straight is based on a lot of unexamined and untenable beliefs. Nobody is saying or hoping that straightitude will wither away. A good many atheists are saying that religion is based on mistaken beliefs and that it does harm as a result, and should either wither away or become very much less obtrusive and demanding and Special.
I don’t foresee a best-selling book entitled “The Straight Delusion” or “Heterosexuality Poisons Everything.” The LGBT community wants acceptance; they don’t want to persuade others to join their “team,” and even if they had that objective, they would strive for it in vain.
By contrast, the amount of literature that has been produced in the last decade criticizing religious belief is extensive and continues to grow. Moreover, these critiques of religion seem to have had some effect.
So the fact that we don’t have two heads or spikes isn’t enough to make us acceptable, and we might as well get used to it. In fact it’s what we want. (“We” as usual are gnus, or outspoken argumentative atheists.) We want to chip away at social deference to religion, and we can’t combine that with claims to be jes’ plain folks like everybody else.
12:49. I can spend a luxurious 11 minutes eating lunch.