What Can Atheists Learn from the LGBT Movement?

Yep, time to out oursevles; time to protest the soft bigotry of people like Prothero.

Thanks for the love, Hemant! And I love that screenshot. Very “Talk to the hand.”

Your talk at the conference was awesome too, btw. Much food for thought. Hope the video of it goes up soon!

I think there’s one difference: at the time of the Stonewall riots, it’s not as if Americans could go to other countries where being gay was already significantly more mainstream (though there were certainly countries where it was easier). You can, however, already go to countries where atheism is mainstream. Much of Europe, indeed, is already as open to atheism as it is to homosexuality. In fact, in the early twentieth century, it was hard to be openly gay in many parts of Europe, but perfectly acceptable to be an atheist, and things have not got harder for either group. Occasionally I fear that religion will rise again, however; hopefully it’s a swansong.

Conclusion: we need more Jens and Hemants, who is up for some cloning action.

In all seriousness, thank you for posting the video, I think we all needed to see that. I know I did.

Who is this wonderful lady and why haven’t I heard of her before? Another Atheist secret that was being held from a ‘newbie’. 😉

I think the part that hit home the most with me was talking about having childcare at Atheist gatherings or more family oriented meetings. As an Atheist mommy, it’s tough to find kinship. Most mommies are Christian in my neck of the woods. And most of my family no longer talks to me since I came out as a non-believer in regards to their woohoo, including my mother. Finding a ‘soft place to land’ after jumping ship from religion is difficult for a lot of people.

Learning from a very powerful movement like the LGBT movement would definitely behoove us.

When I first happened across this website almost a year ago when I first realized I may be :::gasp::: an Atheist, one of the things that struck me was how smart and collected most people on here were. It helped hearing the strong passionate comments and the calm collected reasoning. The religious humor didn’t hurt either. 😉

Greta has made a bunch of really amazing points. And I know she is right because I was once lost, but now am found. All because I was able to find other Atheists.

I will be forever indebted to Hemant for creating this website.

Speaking as a lesbian atheist, I think there is one huge difference between the challenges queers and non-believers face. Queers are winning social acceptance, but the laws still lag behind. Non-believers are still fighting to be accepted by society, but we already have won the legal battle: establishment clause anyone?

Greta is totally my hero.

I’m especially a fan of the message that diversity, even if it is not our fault, is our responsibility. Diversity does not form spontaneously, because there is a positive feedback loop causing those in the majority to remain in the majority. It must be actively promoted.

@J. J.: I loved your post “On being a skeptic first, not an atheist first”. Too many atheist organizations focus on atheists meeting atheists without giving a damn about helping people understand why they should think atheism is true. The skeptic organizations seem more interested in truth, while the atheist organizations seem more interested in pointless socializing.

J. J. Ramsey, as I often take up the role of the bad cop (usually out of frustration), one of the things that is an added annoyance is that the good cops seem to not get the hint that my being a jerk has left them with a golden opportunity to draw out other issues.

I call myself an atheist because I heard Russell’s argument, about it being closer to my views when conveying to the common person. I called myself an agnostic for the majority of my life and I’m fine with using that but only if people know what I mean by that. I don’t want to argue semantics with anyone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to argue the best way to convey meaning. Fuck labels, I care about meaning and conveying meaning.

I get nervous when people start referring to white males. It’s fine if you think “diversity”, whatever the fuck that is, is inherently valuable, but understand that I do not value it. As much as you think that a lack of “diversity” is dangerous and self-perpetuating, I think categorizing and treating people as predefined groups not individuals is dangerous and self-perpetuating. For instance, the apparently separate “issues” of white men, females, and minorities (I am reminded of the NOFX song “Don’t call me white”). Favouritism to counteract perceived bias is wrong, it also seeks to divide people, which is strange coming from people who claim to support “inclusivity”. Go colour blind and feminist, not doing so is screwing it up.

Hermes,

I don’t argue semantics. The way you use the words they don’t overlap, but the way other people use the words they do. Words are meaning carriers. People who use the word differently aren’t wrong, there’s no correct usage of words.

The term agnostic was coined as a position about knowledge, that’s the way I use the word. So I could have a conversation with you with absolutely no trouble. However, commonly people mean something different by it. I called myself an agnostic atheist for a while but that just confused the shit out of people.

That’s basically the point of Bertrand Russell’s argument, he called himself an agnostic to fellow philosophers and an atheist to people he met on the street. Keep the audience in mind when speaking.

(BTW, as much as I appreciate Russell, I think that we can claim some ground since he was making the lecture circuit.)

I want to grow up to be like Greta.

9/11 was certainly my turning point. I had not believed in any kind of supernaturalism for a long time, but I didn’t care about it one way or the other. But that morning I realized that our very existence is threatened by the lunacy that is religion. As I’ve said before, the two towers going down were the last two nails going down into the coffin of my already dead interest in any kind of magical thinking, and my apathy. There will be more 9/11’s if we do not continue to cure ourselves of this madness.

Our Stonewall moment would be an interesting poll. For me, it was a combination of the run-up to the Iraq War and the re-election of Dubya. (I was a registered Republican until 2003 too.) It’s also what convinced me that we needed to think about atheism in terms of politics and organizing and do less philosophizing.

BTW, Andrew Sullivan has a great though these days infrequent series of posts on his blog called “End of Gay Culture Watch”, showing how the mainstreaming of gay culture means that basically gay culture is disappearing, and how that is a great thing. I think this is what GC was alluding to in her speech about not being special. I can’t *wait* until atheists are utterly unremarkable!!!

She is so on about women and people of color. As a feminist, I often feel really unwelcome in the atheist movement even though I really thought we were on the same side. Comment threads about, say, the Girls Gone Wild debacle turn nasty really fast. I see the same slut-shaming, your-privilege-is-showing, sexist BS in atheist circles as I see everywhere else…

I think just the act of becoming more organized into a coherent “movement” would do wonders for atheist and other non-believers. I also think that a clear cut platform, like the humanist manifesto, would help.

I seem to have left out the most important factor in my previous post.

INTERNET RAGE!

mai,

I think the Girls Gone Wild debacle is a perfect example of how pseudo-feminists are counter productive.

They accused people who argued that it was not or should not be illegal to film in public spaces they agreed with the “implied consent” defence, therefore supported assault on a person. Obviously people and countries disagree on consent when filming others in public spaces, and there are problems with all the approaches. I understand both sides of the argument, which perhaps the pseudo-feminists need to do. Accusing people of something they didn’t do and calling them names doesn’t exactly make them feel welcome either.

Calling people dicks because they’re not against sexual expression. Pseudo-feminists are anti-porn because they’re authoritarian on how sexuality should be expressed, to Victorian proportions and beyond. People who enjoy videos of women consensually exposing themselves are dicks? These women are being “taken advantage of” because they’re drunk? They got themselves drunk, possibly because it makes them less inhibited. What have these people got against breasts and sexuality anyway? The retort is to mention abuses that happen like in the case of GGW, but that’s a red herring, these people criticized sexual expression in general without abuses.

I haven’t seen any slut shaming in the atheist community. Have you got any specific examples? I do see sexism in the atheist community, ranging from mild to fucking egregious. The popular personalities and bloggers are clearly better than general society, they’re for equal rites and against enforced gender roles. I haven’t seen any justification of rape on an atheist site, compared to the many times I’ve seen it on other sites.

Great talk. Inspiring. Everyone should hear it.

On diversity. Here’s a suggestion for someone to ask. The Infidel Guy. Reginald Finley. I find it a bit embarrassing that he hasn’t been asked (that I know of) to speak (for example) at various atheist gatherings.

I think this is an example of unconscious racism.

Maybe I am just slow, but I don’t see how 9/11 would be similar to the Stonewall Riots at all. In my opinion for an event to be something similar for atheists it would have to specifically target atheists and the event itself would be impossible to discuss without discussing atheism and how atheists are marginalized. The terrorist attacks just doesn’t fit the bill IMHO.