Are there any<\/i> Presidential candidates who will campaign for the atheist vote?<\/p>\n
It’s a question that needs to be asked.<\/p>\n
Presidential candidates pander to the religious vote.<\/p>\n
John McCain called Washington, DC, “the city of Satan”<\/a> yesterday at a campaign stop, explaining that it’s difficult to get “the Lord’s work” done there.<\/p>\n “The Lord’s work”? What does that even mean<\/i>?<\/p>\n Or take former candidate Mitt Romney. I wasn’t inclined to vote for Mittens anyway<\/i>, but his speech that “freedom requires religion<\/a>” struck an ill chord. What does that mean?<\/p>\n What does “the Lord’s work” mean to an atheist? From where I sit, there is<\/i> no “Lord.” And because I’m an atheist, am I somehow not<\/i> free under Romney’s construction?<\/p>\n Even Barack Obama’s political rallies have the cast of a religious revival.<\/p>\n It reminds me of the post-9\/11 world, when President Bush was going around making speeches about how religion was a sign of a civilized people.<\/p>\n There are millions of atheists in the United States. We don’t want to feel belittled by our political leaders, or made to feel like lesser Americans.<\/p>\n Can a political candidate reach out to the atheist community and make them feel welcome?<\/p>\n I don’t know.<\/p>\n A Republican probably won’t. Why antagonize the Religious Right?<\/p>\n A Democrat? I don’t know.<\/p>\n The social stigmas still attached to atheism may make reaching out to the atheist community a negative, something that can be exploited by an unscrupulous or opportunistic opponent.<\/p>\n Yet, I can’t help but think that the atheist community can<\/i> be an important voting bloc.<\/p>\n There’s millions<\/i> of us.<\/p>\n And no voter wants to be marginalized for who they are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are there any Presidential candidates who will campaign for the atheist vote? It’s a question that needs to be asked. Presidential candidates pander to the religious vote. John McCain called Washington, DC, “the city of Satan” yesterday at a campaign stop, explaining that it’s difficult to get “the Lord’s work” done there. “The Lord’s work”?Continue reading “On Securing the Atheist Vote”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,119],"tags":[4104,4108,402],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-politics","tag-atheism","tag-politics","tag-presidential-election","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}