The Atheists are coming! Oh My!

The White House (official White House photo)

Friday morning February 26th, 60 representatives from the Secular Coalition of America met with White House staff to discuss three issues of concern to it’s members which consists of non-religious Americans.  Those three issues included protecting children from religiously motivated neglect and abuse, ending proselytizing in the military and working to ensure that various faith based initiatives don’t cause religious discrimination to individuals in need.

While that agenda seems fairly benign and something most individuals regardless of faith or lack thereof would agree with, that didn’t stop the right wing smear machine from spreading fear and lies about the meeting. Apparently the idea that non-religious Americans should be treated with the same respect all other citizens expect from our government is enough to cause right wing hysteria. Sean Hannity of Fox News was found to have made at least 4 factual errors in his quick statement about the meeting falsely claiming that this meeting in some way meant that the nonreligious were getting special treatment from the Obama adminstration. Sean’s statement was nowhere near as inflammatory as what occurred in the right wing blogosphere, which basically labeled the groups participating in the Coalition as hate groups.  For perspective on this issue, it is important to realize that one of the groups runs a summer camp and another one is the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.

The response from the Freethought movement has been excited.  All the groups involved put out press releases to announce their participation to their members. Activists shared links and information about the meeting throughout the day.  Participants such as Greg Epstein, a Humanist Rabbi and Humanist Chaplain at Harvard told his friends on Facebook how privileged he felt to have participated in such a historic meeting.  Amanda Metskas, organizer of Camp Quest and participant in the upcoming Humanists of Florida Association Conference was equally effusive.

What had everyone excited was that this was the first time members of the Freethought community had been able to meet with a presidential administration explicitly as freethinkers. There are obviously many freethinkers involved in various public policy initiatives around the country, but rarely do they do their work explicitly as freethinkers. In that respect, this meeting was historic and marks a turning point in the visibility of the movement in society as a legitimate constituency within the body politic.

Rick O’Keefe, acting executive director for the Center for Inquiry in Tampa, which is home to the Council for Secular Humanism, one of the organizational participants in the White House meeting said that this meeting was important. “Face to face interactions remind them (elected officials) that they are being watched, and will be held to account. Freethinkers are a minority, although a powerful one, with our constituency being about 14-16% of the population.” He went on to say that “Most of us are well-informed voters.” And that “our ethics compel us to make our interests known.”

Secular Coalition of America advisory board member Daniel Dennett highlighted the significance of the meeting, noting, “The category ‘no religion’ is the fastest growing category in America, and it is high time political leaders begin to take us seriously as a voting group whose approval they should hope to deserve.” According to the Secular Coalition of America, “secular Americans, numbering in the tens of millions, are a constituency that must be included.”

For more information on the Secular Coalition of America, visit their website at: http://www.secular.org/