Letter to America from an Atheist in a Foxhole

There was a teacher who had a channel on YouTube that was outed as an atheist at his school prompting abuse from the staff and students. I’ve also heard about parents complaining about atheist teachers and trying to get them fired. I think that most of us are lucky in that our atheism really doesn’t stand in the way of anything. I can’t think of a single instance where I was challenged as an atheist in any meaningful way. I also know it’s true that this doesn’t hold for everyone.

To the Gentleman Soldier:

Thank you for serving this country and protecting ALL of her people. I for one am damn proud of you.

In America, the religious right has a stranglehold over much of the Southeast. In areas like Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina and others, teachers who are outed as atheists are at risk of harassment from other teachers and parents. These people don’t want their children taught, nor their country led, by non-believers. It’s sad, backwards, and hopefully soon to be a thing of the past as atheists like ourselves become more prominent a figure in the national and local political scene.

Hemant, there are people in the IFI who do not want you to teach their children.

That is an awesome letter, especially since the Christian Taliban thinks they can claim ownership of the US Military with their worn-out cliche.

Not only I fail to see why should they discriminate, but I don’t understand why a Christian would enlist in the military in the first place.

@Anna: Having taken American government and politics myself even as a Brit, I can tell you I wouldn’t trust the constitution to protect you. In Britain we have an uncodified constitution and I have been given more rights de facto than de jure. In the USA I have noticed the other way around. You’re given less rights de facto than specified de jure. You realise womens’ rights haven’t even been amended into the American constitution yet.

De jure, only Congress has the power to declare war. Congress haven’t initiated war since you fought Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbour. Everything after that has been initiated by the Executive. Somehow everything was overridden in war and Japanese-Americans were no longer American enough therefore where interned. That’s imprisonment and no one had anything on the individuals that they were guilty of anything apart from sharing racial heritage with the country you were at war with. The PATRIOT Act has also overridden so many rights when Dubya pushed it through. I hope you have been rid of that now though.

Can someone tell me if there’s an amendment that springs to mind that would implicitly protect political stance, e.g. socialism? Anyone understand why I asked that?

To me, too, all this anti-atheism is baffling, as well as the anti-socialism/Marxism to talk about other recent topics.

I am an Atheist Socialist with Marxist views especially on religion (not to mention my gender identity and sexual orientation are “out of the ordinary” as well) Should I ever come to the USA? Honest answers, Hermant, if you will.

Equal and equality, even when it comes to bigotry is something that religionuts, especially Christians have a problem understanding. I’m pretty sure it’s because of their reference material.

Having spent a lifetime learning from a single book that is in constant conflict with it’s self in both facts and message, is it really that surprising that your average Christian is unable to even discriminate evenly?

“Kill all your neighbours! No, love your neighbours!”

“Don’t kill anybody! Except this nation and that nation and this city!”

“Obey all the Mosaic laws! No, don’t bother, believe in me instead.”

“Cut a piece of your kids penis! No, don’t bother any more, you just have to believe.”

Give a billion children constantly conflicting messages for their entire lives and what you get is the insanity that is Christianity.

I thank you for sharing this letter, as I am in the military, too. I have not outted myself at work, yet, but I know that more and more people in the military are becoming more open about atheists. I had to give a class on Equal Opportunity one day (I’m the EO representative for my unit, go figure) and at the end, the Sergeant Major wanted to say something. I was floored when he started talking about different religious factions and mentioned atheists. The military needs more people like him. If more people in the military had open minds like he does, the military would have fewer social issues than it does and would be able to focus on what the military should be doing.

I don’t understand why so many Christians are so intent to boot out openly gay soldiers yet they don’t call for kicking out openly atheist ones. (Where’s the equal opportunity bigotry?) Maybe someone can explain that to me.

It is my understanding that opposition to openly gay soldiers serving rests primarily on the argument that bringing the issue of sexuality into the military would create discomfort and unease among men who would have to e.g. shower with their gay comrades. At least, that and similar arguments are the ones I have heard most often, and I am willing to take people at their word if they say that is why they oppose repeal of DADT.

(I still don’t buy their argument, though; to me if someone is mature enough to fight and die for their country, they ought to be mature enough to handle serving alongside homosexuals.)

I am not sure how accurate this hypotheis is, since I support both openly gay and openly atheist soldiers, and I don’t peronally know anyone who doesn’t whom I could ask for their reasoning. Nevertheless, I hope it might shed some light as to why the opposition to openly gay servicemembers is more noticable than opposition to out atheists.

Any other thoughts on this?

First off, my thanks to the solider for his service.

There’s discrimination against atheists in the military and it’s even worse for soldiers who are gay. I don’t understand why so many Christians are so intent to boot out openly gay soldiers yet they don’t call for kicking out openly atheist ones

I fully trust you are being disingenuous in order to call them on their supposed Biblical hypocrisy. I’m sure you know as well as the rest of us the real reason: the gays are “icky” and homophobes, especially the male ones, seem to have a odd idea that gay men are just itching to rip their clothes off and rape them the minute they get the chance.

Sure, if their objection was purely religious, then it would make sense to not have atheists, or jews, or muslims, or women etc. However they actually rely on “gay panic” and implying that somehow gays are going to be staring intently at other soldiers privates in the shower. It’s sort of like the Muslim bullshit about women having to cover up because men can’t be expected to, you know, not rape any woman who blatantly shows her knees. In the feverish fantasies of the homophobe, gay men are sex crazed and only need the slightest provocation to jump them.

Should I ever come to the USA? Honest answers, Hermant, if you will.

I think you absolutely could, but not any part. You would have to stick to a small subset of cities. You’d be fine in San Francisco, LA, Seattle or New York, particularly if your profession keeps you in academic settings. You will have to put up with an unbelievable amount of bullshit in the news though, and understand that the US is more conservative and a lot less used to open disdain for religion, so you would have to be ready for some odd looks, even sometimes in the liberal havens.

I can tell you why some military people they don’t want gays serving with them.

When men and women serve together in a combat zone, the same core social situations eventually come into play. Sexual attraction is one of those situations, and we all know how humans have difficulty resisting that particular urge.

Well a lot of males in the military have told me that very simply, if men and women have sex in a combat zone, and they do, then what are the chances that they’re going to stumble upon a sexual encounter between two men or two women?

The chances of that happening are good. That’s because combat typically elevates a soldier’s natural emotional drives, especialy the drives that are strongest in them to begin with. So all of the most extreme emotions people feel – they feel in combat even more.

People in combat zones do what we normally do, if at all physically possible, and sex is not difficult for adults to have. Straight sex can cause a perceived automatic breakdown in discipline, but when it’s gay sex, there’s the basic fact that a lot of people can’t handle even knowing about things like that happening among their fellow soldiers. Yes, that’s a weakness that seems to be slowly fading from our society here in the USA, but the bottom line is, for now anyway, the very idea of gay sex is devastating to a lot of people. They’ve been taught from birth about what’s normal and what’s not, and being gay wasn’t taught as normal. So it’s almost silly to expect millions of people to change their thinking on this.

They don’t mind Atheists serving right now, because when’s the last time you discovered a gay Atheist? I suppose they think that Atheism is easier to change than being gay. But I know a lot of military people who probably just think, “Not believing in God is one thing, but doing THAT…is totally different.”

“the very idea of gay sex is devastating to a lot of people.”

So it’s those people’s problem. Get used to it. Deal with it. Being a bigot is not ok. They are the ones hurting the military, not gay people.

“it’s almost silly to expect millions of people to change their thinking on this.”

They’re not required to stop hating. They just have to pretend like they weren’t bigots so discrimination can end, just like racist people do. Just like we say “Good morning” to our boss, even when what we really want to say to him is “I wish you would get dick cancer.” It would be enough in practical terms.

Steve, so applauding that. I’m a straight women who’s often perceived as gay. Shrug. Frankly, some of the women who have been interested have been a whole lot less nauseating than some of the truly repulsive (not just ugly but attitude-wise) men who have hit on me. (Sigh. How fat, old, gray, crippled and grandmotherly do you have to be to stop being hit on?) And accepted a no thank you, just not my cup of tea, far more graciously then a lot (but not all) of the men I have turned down.

So many men get beligerent when you simply say no thank you. Like there’s something wrong with me just because I don’t dig them. (And, yes, it’s sometimes been expressed as, what are you, a lesbo?) Of course, the ones who get nasty get the I was trying to be polite but if you must know you’re an ugly chauvinistic toad who I’d rather die than be with. Get lost because you wouldn’t want a liberated bitch like me anyway. Yes, I have a tendency to get pissed off and defensive if they act like I have no right to turn them down. I’ve never had a woman act that way.

Joe, that was ridiculous and if anything an argument for allowing gays in the military. I can remember when the argument against women in combat was exactly the same as the one you’re putting forth here with the added trembling, they’ll get pregnant. Geeze, now come up with something more real. (And, yes, I know some women do get pregnant in the military. Hell, one of my sisters did.) But your argument, oh my gosh, they might walk in on two people of the same gender having sex? Gasp, no. Anything but that! Man, if you’re in combat and you’re more worried about that than you are enemy fire, I’d say you are a tad obsessive and should examine why you are.

As for why religious people don’t try to force atheists out of the military…

I think there are several related reasons.

1. For many religious people, attitudes and prejudices about sex trumps attitudes and prejudices towards alternative theologies (or lack there of). Homophobia.
2. Many religious people tacitly accept that being gay is biological and can’t be changed, while being atheist is a choice… Why loose an evangelical opportunity with a “captive” audience.
3. The lawyers and courts (at least so far) have told the religious people that the 1st amendment to the constitution means that they can’t force the atheists from the military by law.
4. The bible calls homosexuality an abomination while calling atheism just “foolish”. Although they believe God will cast both homosexuals and atheists in the lake of fire, they view God as more bothered by homosexuals than disbelief. In trying to be more “God-like” they too have a greater visceral dislike of homosexuals than atheists.

Dave the Christian,

For every person like you, I know probably five other Christians who hate atheists and would have no problem saying and doing whatever it took to get that atheist out of the community. That’s life in the South and it makes some of us very wary about coming out.

It’s not right and it’s not fair but, perhaps more importantly, it tells me that they don’t take Jesus very seriously. They seem to be so wrapped up in their own version of Christianity that they don’t remember or care how he treated the sinners of his day.

I wish there were more Christians like you down here because our Southern culture could use a big injection of tolerance and compassion right now.

Skepticat,

I lived in Louisiana and Mississippi as a child; Texas and Arkansas as an adult. I have also lived in Missouri and southern Illinois which aren’t all that much different than the South when it comes to certain attitudes – like lack of tolerance and compassion.

On Facebook, I list my religious views as unaffliated heretic. That might be why I somewhat more tolerant.

Ya but didn’t that lunatic lead a campaign against you because you’re an atheist teacher? That might be what he is getting at.

Muggle,

That’s what I thought. In the words of my hero, Darth Vader, “Apology accepted.”

Joe :o)