Question for Atheists: Is coming out as an atheist as hard as coming out as gay?

[No_God]

No it's not. Coming out as gay is harder.

[Mister Agenda]

Depends on the family. I've heard of gay atheists who said it was easier to come out as gay and gay atheists who said it was easier to come out as atheist. It depends on which your family finds more offensive, I imagine.

I can also imagine how it might go trying to feel it out in advance: "Dad, which would bother you more, if I were gay or if I were atheist?"

[SweetPearl]

In my opinion, coming out as an Atheist is more harder. But it of course depends on the family and their religion and the country. If I was gay and 'came out' to my family, they'd probably laugh and later they'd try to read me verses and sprinkle me with 'holy' things. But Atheism is entirely another topic.

[Brometheus]

To my family coming out as atheist would be worse. In their world-view, 'being gay' is the end of the line for the atheism train.

[Bad Wolf]

Yo bro, next time you post in a thread, look at the date of the last post. Try not to necropost.

[ObliviousCat]

I think it depends on the situation, but generally speaking, coming out as an Atheist is probably not as difficult as coming out as homosexual or bisexual. If I were to tell my parents that I'm an Atheist, they would tell me it's okay and they can't persuade me to believe in something I don't want to, but if I were to tell them that I were bisexual or homosexual my mom would look at me differently and more than likely treat me coldly, not sure about my dad. Homosexuality seems to be put down more than Atheism, so yeah..

[Razzle]

LOL, for most people I know, coming out Christian would be hard - you're assumed to be a vague-theist or less by default so there's no atheist closet to come out of, in most of England and most of the rest of the UK. Most families would be all "wait, you really take all that stuff seriously and literally? You're not gonna go all weird and happy-clappy or preachy on us are you?"

Coming out gay is DEFINITELY harder for most people here (religion is not necessary for homophobia, we have plenty of somewhat homophobic atheists and vague-theists), the exceptions mostly being immigrant families from more religious countries, especially Muslim families, for whom I really don't know which would be worse to come out as, but death threats and abuse can result from either.

[Bad Wolf]

NECROPOSTS!!!!

[QuarkDriven]

I've been reading the forums for a few days and I've come to appreciate that it is a very difficult thing for an atheist to "come out" to his or her Christian family?

Do you believe this "coming out" process to be as difficult and stressful as coming out as a homosexual?

And if so, how about this:

If you are both an atheist and homosexual, would it be better to "come out" to your parents on both issues at the same time to save on grief and surprise?

Ask a gay atheist.... he/she will be the best person to answer this type of question.... only they have experience "coming out"  as both gay and a non believer.... i can personally tell you it was really difficult to tell my girlfriend, but i cannot equate that to telling a parent/friend i am gay as i've never experienced it....

[Bad Wolf]