Discrimination: The Next Frontier

America has come a long way in the last 75 years. Although prejudice is far from gone, discrimination has not only fallen but has rightly become increasingly disreputable. The horrors of Jim Crow, the legal discrimination against Chinese immigrants, the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans and the crass anti-Semitism in the Ivy Leagues are bad memories. As American society has become more diverse, the vast majority of people have learned to accept people who are ethnically and religiously different.

To our enormous credit, the horrors 9/11 did not make bigotry against Muslims generally accepted. Leaders from the president down generally avoided scapegoating loyal Moslem-Americans and most people remained capable of separating terrorist psychopaths from ordinary people. We’ve come a long way.

Despite our progress, some groups still face prejudice and outright discrimination. While discrimination of gays remains a major problem, another large group also attracts a deeply negative reaction from many in society. Depending on who’s counting, between 25 and 30 million Americans do not believe in God. This group includes agnostics who question the existence of God and a smaller group of atheists who don’t think one exists.

Since the vast majority of Americans believe in God, “coming out” as an unbeliever can be painful and costly. When I was growing up in a conservative suburb of Rochester, New York, the topic of religion sometimes came up. My neighbors were happy to tell me about their faith since they assumed that everyone agreed with them. When I disagreed with them, the arguments began. They could not understand why I did not believe. The faith that was obvious to them eluded me. Although I tried to be respectful, my inability to accept their point of view usually and automatically offended them. They saw my doubts as an insult – and my disagreement was obviously a defect in my character. Others simply thought it was crazy that I did not believe. The implication was that I was supposed to agree with them – and if I did not, I was supposed to change my mind. In any case, these conversations were rarely pleasant. Unfortunately, the data show my bad experiences are norm: A 2002 Pew survey found that a 58 percent of Americans viewed belief in God is a prerequisite to morality. In contrast, just a third of Germans and even fewer Italians, British and French agreed shares this idea. Unsurprisingly, as I grew older, I found life safer in the closet. Although I admitted the truth when asked, I became reluctant to discuss religion. In the words of my friends, I became a “scared agnostic”.

Things only got worse as my interest in politics grew: I not only found that nonbelief in God attracted hostility and incomprehension on the personal level, but it sharply limited my political hopes. In other words, non-belief can undermine your political rights. If this statement seems incredible, an August 2000 Gallup poll showed that only 49 percent of Americans would vote for an atheist presidential candidate. This was a lower figure than for any other kind of person, including a woman, a Jew, an African American -- or a homosexual. By this measure, there is more prejudice against nonbelievers than any other group in society. It is hard enough to win political office anyway but when half the population won’t even consider you, it’s hopeless unless you decamp to a few urban areas. The problem gets worse: Under President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiatives, a religious group can legally discriminate against people on the basis of religion, gender and sexual orientation. So, not only is prejudice allowed but it is funded with tax-payer dollars. No wonder so many of us live in the closet.

This is not to say non-believers have been without fault – tolerance must run both ways. If we want respect, we need to understand and appreciate how important religion is to many people. We need to avoid overreaching and censoring religious speech where we have influence. If we want to be free to live in Mississippi without being ostracized, we must support Christians when they want to express their beliefs in San Francisco and New York. I say allow the Christian church float in a city's holiday parade – along with anyone else who wants to participate. We need to understand that 96 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas and respect the role religion played in creating Western Civilization. Artificially excising religion from our culture and history is dishonest and provocative to believers. In addition, non-believers can learn many good things from the Bible, even if we do not believe in the religion. In the end, the key is reciprocity: If we want to be free, we must help believers feel they are not under attack. Especially wrong headed are incidents when religion is ridiculed or unfairly attacked. These things show us to be intolerant and feeds into a cultural battle we cannot win.

What non-religious people want is the freedom to make our choices without pressure or political interference. We want to be left alone and to have the right to fully participate in political life. We believe in allowing prayer, but don’t want to be pressured into participating. We say include everything but don’t require it. We want the state to be neutral in its relations with both religious and non-religious citizens.

As we move forward, I hope that we will move beyond bigotry to our full inclusion in social and political life. There are many wonderful people do not believe in god. There is no reason for our religious friends to revile us. Many agnostics and atheists also have strong values, even if they do not come directly from religion. Our morality comes from an understanding of life, which says that it is a terrible idea to kill, steal or take recreational drugs. Whether these values come from an innate sense of right or a lot of deep thinking, nonbelievers do have principles and values – even “family” values. We love our parents and children -- and want to fully participate in society and in the political system. America has learned to accept many new ideas over the last 220 years. It hosts 1,500 different religious bodies and 360,000 churches, synagogues and mosques. Now, millions of us want the right to say “none of the above”.