Are Atheists Really Hated in the US?

[Anymouse]

It's bad in the south. Living in the south, among these irrational un-thinkers is what makes me feel alright when they tell me I won't see them after we die, because I'll be in hell, and they won't.

@ TheDarkestOfAngels: Thank you for the Clarance Darrow quote in your tagline, a poignant reminder of censorship at work. And I used to live in Florida, I will not miss it (nor my ex-wife, who still lives there).

@ Miss Aleialoura, I have lived in nearly every region of the USA, primarily as a Wiccan, but now as an atheist.

In -every region- I lived in, I was condemned (and in Virginia Beach my home publicly picketed and my wife and baby son's lives threatened) for being a Wiccan.

At the height of the Persian Gulf War, as a Navy Recruiter I had anti-nuke (not anti-war) pickets outside my station in Pittsfield, Mass. (world hq of General Electric, which at that time owned Martin-Marietta, purveyor of fine nuclear weapons for the USA). (I don't know why they didn't picket GE on the other side of town, they picked on me.)

But at my home three blocks away from my station, I was not being picketed as the evil recruiter for the techno-military-industrial complex. I was picketed for being Wiccan. (I was given early transfer orders out of Mass. to Rota, Spain over that.)

And damn, recruiting in the uber-wealthy Berkshire Mountains of Mass. was not exactly a spring picnic with a war on. No help from the rah-rah patriots, they were too busy damning me for my religious faith, whilst my Commander-in-Chief was condemning atheists and Wiccans and saying we should have our citizenship stripped.

Yes. There is discrimination, for anyone who does not believe -exactly- the version of Christianity in force in a particular location.