Monthly Archives: May 2020

Despite the rise of the religiously non-affiliated (aka The Nones), being a non-believer is still a social taboo. This was recently confirmed by the American AtheistsReality Check: Being Nonreligious in Americareport, which compiles results from the organizations Secular Survey conducted last year. Out of the 34,000 respondents, almost half said they hid their non-belief from co-workers and people at school due to negative experiences. The survey also found that LGBTQ non-believers are more likely to hide their beliefs from family than straight/cis non-believers, and the 43 percent who were out said their parents werent supportive.

Im thankful to have understanding parents because my time in atheist spaces has taught me other queer/trans atheists arent so lucky. At best, relationships with their religious parents are awkward, but sometimes their parents disown them simply for who they are, which is whyhomelessness ratesin LGBTQ youth are so high. Even when theres no trouble at home, the constant bombardment of messages about how being queer and trans is a sin is detrimental to LGBTQ peoples mental health. A 2018 paper by theAmerican Journal of Preventive Medicinefound that queer people who regularly attend religious services are more likely to be suicidal than straight people.

Yet I rarely see room in LGBTQ spaces for non-believers. As several religious institutions became more LGBTQ-affirming and more LGBTQ people of faith made peace with God, theres been an increase of religiosity within the LGBTQ community. Many LGBTQ people do find solace in religious traditions, as well as motivation to fight for liberation, but the overemphasis on queer spirituality comes off to me asrespectability politics. Focusing the spotlight almost exclusively on LGBTQ people of faith is another way of appealing to the cis/straight gaze, and the result is less visibility for LGBTQ non-believers.

Back in January, before the pandemic lockdown, I flew to Dallas for the annual Creating Change conference to co-present a workshop on humanism with my friends Diane and Ashton. The event was fun, but there were only three spaces there for non-believers: our workshop, a caucus for non-believers, and a caucus Diane and Ashton led centering LGBTQ non-believers of color.

Even the Many Paths interfaith spacedespite advertising with various religious symbols, including theHappy Humanwas very Christian-centered. Because religion causes so much trauma for many LGBTQ people, there should be more spaces for LGBTQ non-believers as well.

The atheist community has gotten better about providing a safe space for LGBTQ non-believers over the past few years, although theres room for improvement. Thanks to trans atheists like Callie Wright and Marissa McCool, there have been a lot more conversations about trans issues that have made the atheist community more trans-inclusive. However, transphobic atheists still exist; they may be a small minority, but theyre vocal. All it takes is one Twitter dogpile from transphobic atheists to make a trans non-believer feel like theyre not welcome in the community. This leaves the trans atheist in a tough spot: not feeling welcomed in atheist spaces for being trans, and not welcomed in LGBTQ spaces for being a non-believer.

The spaces that do exist for LGBTQ non-believers are overwhelmingly white. Thats why last year Diane and I created Centering the Margins; a one-day conference held in DC for LGBTQ non-believers of color. Only about 50 people attended, but they all thanked us. It may seem like identity politics to some to have a space only for secular LGBTQ people of color, but given the intersection of racism, anti-LGBTQ bigotry, and anti-atheist bias many LGBTQ non-believers of color experience, there are certain conversations that cant happen if the space is majorly white.

According to the Secular Survey, non-believers involved with secular communities are less likely to battle with depression than those with no community. This is why there needs to be more attention for LGBTQ non-believers. Not safe spaces as in stereotypical recovery rooms for college students offended by different opinions, but places where LGBTQ non-believers can be authentic. Countless studies show theres power in having a chosen familya group of friends and loved ones someone can turn to for the support their biological family and peers never gave themand this chosen family can be the reason another LGBTQ person chooses to stay alive.

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Safe Spaces in Trans Atheism - Splice Today

Are the nonreligious a marginalized group in America? When I brought this question up to a friend who lives in New York the other day, he was skeptical. Practically everyone he knows is an atheist, he says, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. As someone who grew up in central Indiana and Colorado Springs, where I was sent to evangelical schools, his attitude both bemused and concerned me. The disconnect just serves to illustrate that how one answers this question may vary wildly depending on where one sitsin some cases quite literally.

According to a new report from American Atheists* called Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, those living in very religious communities reported substantially more discrimination in employment, education, and other services than those living in not at all religious communities.

Visual from Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, courtesy of American Atheists.

The Secular Survey, from which the report was drawn, includes data from 33,897 nonreligious Americansthose who self-identify as atheists, agnostics, humanists, skeptics, freethinkers, secular, and/or simply nonreligious. The surveys designers consider a lack of data on nonreligious Americans an obstacle to effective advocacy for the needs of this group, which the report describes as an invisible minority.

In a webinar for journalists and advocates, American Atheists vice president for legal and policy, Allison M. Gill, stressed that most data we currently have fail to distinguish between the various stripes of the religiously unaffiliated (i.e. nones). Nones may retain some religious beliefs or consider themselves religious without belonging to a formal institution, but this is not true of the nonreligious proper, as the report defines them. As Gill observes, this can sometimes obfuscate the needs of our community.

According to Reality Check, Participants analysis of community religiosity aligned well with geographic expectations. In other words, regions youd expect to be highly religious were reported by participants to be so. In addition, While nonreligious beliefs may be casually accepted in states like California and Vermont, nonreligious people living in states like Mississippi and Utah have markedly different experiences.

Stigma and Community Religiosity by State chart is from Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, courtesy of American Atheists.

Indeed, the 554 survey respondents from Utah rated their state more religious than respondents from any other state, although Mississippians reported a slightly higher degree of stigmatization of nonreligious people. The study measured stigma using a scale based on nine microaggressions targeting nonreligious people, and respondents were asked to note whether and how often they had experienced each one over the year prior to taking the survey. Per the report:

Nearly two thirds of all survey participants were sometimes, frequently, or almost always asked to join in thanking God for a fortunate event (65.6%). Nearly half (47.5%) of survey participants recalled sometimes, frequently, or almost always being asked to or feeling pressure to pretend that they are religious. Nearly half of participants were sometimes, frequently, or almost always asked to go along with religious traditions to avoid stirring up trouble (45.3%), and nearly two in five (37.9%) were treated like they dont understand the difference between right and wrong.

Of participants, 26.3% reported that sometimes, frequently or almost always others have rejected, isolated, ignored or avoided me and 17.3% reported sometimes, frequently, or almost always being excluded from social gatherings and events because of their nonreligious identity. When RD recently spoke with American Atheists Gill over the phone, she also noted that her organization and others like it hear from constituents every day who have complaints about their children facing discrimination and bullying in school, how theyre at risk at work for talking about their beliefs, how theyre not able to access government services.

Stigmatized minority or bullies without a pulpit?

The representation of nonreligious Americans as a stigmatized minority is bound to be contentious, particularly when the Secular Surveys respondentsa convenience sample recruited through secular organizations rather than a representative sampleskew so disproportionately white (92.4% vs. a U.S. Census Bureau estimate of 76.5%, including white Hispanic/Latinx) and male (57.8% vs. 49.2%), a profile that inevitably recalls elevatorgate and the racism, misogyny, and alt-right views that have come to characterize far too much of visible movement atheism in recent years.

If ones primary associations with being nonreligious are people like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and their vocal and all too often abusive fans, its only natural to find it absurd and even offensive that such privileged and powerful men could be considered in any sense marginalized. But before we jump to too many conclusions, in addition to recalling the disparate geographic experiences noted above, we should also note that Secular Survey respondents skew disproportionately LGBTQ (23% vs. an estimated 4.5% of American adults as noted in Reality Check). In addition, Reality Check takes care to note disparate outcomes among African-American, Latinx, ex-Muslim, and LGBTQ respondents, the intersections of whose racial, ethnic, sexuality, and gender identities can affect their experiences as nonreligious Americans.

After reading Reality Check, I recently decided to test the waters on how the politically engaged, broadly progressive public might relate to the representation of nonreligious Americans as a stigmatized minority. I did so, as a queer nonreligious American myself, by posting a 24-hour Twitter poll in which I asked respondents, Can the language of coming out properly be used by anyone forced to conceal an aspect of identity, or does it belong only to the LGBTQ community?

I noted that the question was inspired by the new report on the Secular Survey, which found that many respondentsparticularly those in very religious communitiesare forced to conceal their nonreligious identity. The Twitter poll results are, of course, unscientific, but the replies were passionate and deeply divided in ways that matter for the kind of public discussion the Secular Survey is intended to spark:

While some respondents insisted that being nonreligious is a choice in a way that ones experience of ones gender and sexuality is notand even some self-identified atheists replied to the effect that they dont consider their atheism an identitythe fact remains that in many parts of the United States, being recognized as an unbeliever can come with severe social consequences. In addition, although ones beliefs about the nature of reality should ideally be a matter of conscience, children have no control over the beliefs theyre raised with or the communal norms that surround them.

If we recognize that forced religious conversion is an act of violence, then we should recognize that living in a community where its unsafe to disagree with the prevailing religious consensus and to refuse to participate in religious activities is also to experience violence. As a transgender woman and ex-evangelical, these issues are very relatable to me, as they are to many who have left high-control religious groups, and its my fervent conviction that they need to be part of our public discourse.

According to Reality Check:

Nearly one third (31.4%) of participants mostly or always concealed their nonreligious identity from members of their immediate family. Nearly half of participants mostly or always concealed their nonreligious identity among people at work (44.3%) and people at school (42.8%).

Family rejection can come into play as well, with the Secular Survey finding that 29.2% of respondents under 25 whose parents were aware of their nonreligious identity had somewhat or very unsupportive parents. By including questions about loneliness and isolation, the survey was able to suggest that such situations result in higher likelihood of depression, and it also showed that lack of family support for nonreligious Americans resulted in lower educational achievement. The reports prediction of likely depression corresponds well to recent social scientific findings on the psychological harm that comes to people who consider leaving their high-control religious communities but choose to remain.

In addition, some atheists are at risk of physical violence over their lack of religion. Only .8% of survey respondents reported being physically assaulted over their unbelief, although for African-American respondents the number is 2.5%. Meanwhile, 12% of respondents experienced threats of violence, and 2.5% experienced vandalism (14.2% and 3.2%, respectively, for Latinx respondents).

None of these facts make the experience of coming out as nonreligious the same as coming out as LGBTQ, but they do nonetheless show that disclosing ones nonreligious identity can be fraught and risky depending on ones social environment. While the report itself did not use the language of coming out, its framing is recognizable as that associated with social justice advocacy. The reports inclusion of intersectional analysis is also particularly noteworthy for an atheist organization, but is unsurprising given the diversity of American Atheists national staff and the organizations willingness to partner with religious organizations to work toward the common good, as the pluralism inherent in democracy demands.

With respect to the terminology of coming out, one of the qualitative responses included in Reality Check, identified as coming from a female respondent in Kentucky, reads in part, Joining an atheist/humanist meetup group helped me have the courage to come out with my secular beliefs. Prior to having a social group, I felt alone without a way to overcome judgement from religious family members. American Atheists Utah Director Dan Ellis also recently commented, When I came out as an atheist, I experienced discrimination from family members, adding that he lost friendseven ones who werent particularly religious.

Gill, herself a transgender lesbian, noted in our phone conversation that the Secular Surveys questions about identity concealment were indeed meant to get at a coming out experience, though the survey deliberately did not use that language in order to avoid possible confusion.

Asked whether she thinks the phrase coming out belongs only to the LGBTQ community, Gill remarked, I would vehemently disagree with that; I think it belongs to everybody. And I see a lot of similarities between being nonreligious and being LGBT. She stressed that this does not mean that the stigma and discrimination faced by nonreligious people and members of the LGBTQ community are the same, but observed that the process of coming to awareness of ones identity and beliefs and revealing it to other people and facing possible rejection is similar.

The use of the terminology of coming out outside of LGBTQ experience will likely remain contentious. But the hardships that many nonreligious Americans face for being nonreligious, while distinct from those faced by LGBTQ Americans, are still very real. Christian privilege and supremacism are pervasive in the United States, and much work remains to be done to render them more visible so that, along with white supremacism and patriarchy, we can work more effectively to dismantle them.

*Full disclosure: I am in regular contact with the leadership of American Atheists, and I was slated to speak at the organizations 2020 convention before it had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Yes, It Can Be Hard to Be an Atheist in America; Now We Have the Data - Religion Dispatches

May 11 (UPI) -- A new report says atheists in the United States face such widespread stigma and discrimination that many of them conceal their nonreligious identity from relatives, co-workers and people at school.

Atheist residents of "very religious" communities are especially likely to experience discrimination in education, employment and public services such as jury duty, according to Reality Check: Being Nonreligious in America, a survey released this month by American Atheists, a Cranford, N.J.-based nonprofit that advocates civil rights for nonreligious people.

The report says that although the percentage of Americans who consider themselves religious has been declining for decades and the diversity of religious beliefs has increased, nonreligious people "continue to live in a culture dominated by Christianity."

"Like religious minorities, nonreligious people too often face discrimination in various areas of life, as well as stigmatization, because of their beliefs," the report says.

Survey results

The report was based on the U.S. Secular Survey, which was created and managed by Strength in Numbers Consulting Group in New York. Nearly 34,000 participants age 18 or older who self-identified as atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers, skeptics or secular people responded to the survey between Oct. 15 and Nov. 2.

"The Reality Check report reveals how widespread discrimination and stigma against nonreligious Americans is," American Atheists said in a news release. "Due to their nonreligious identity, more than half of survey participants had negative experiences with family members, nearly one-third in education and more than 1 in 5 in the workplace."

The percentage of survey respondents who mostly or always conceal their nonreligious identity from members of their immediate family was 31.4. The percent for co-workers was 44.3 and 42.8 for people at school, according to the report.

Among respondents under age 25, 21.9 percent reported their parents are not aware of their nonreligious beliefs. In that age group, 29.2 percent of those with parents who know about their nonreligious identity said they were somewhat or very unsupportive of their beliefs.

"We found that family rejection had a significant negative impact on participants' educational and psychological outcomes," the report says. "For example, participants with unsupportive parents had a 71.2 percent higher rate of likely depression than those with very supportive parents."

Geographic differences

The experiences of nonreligious people vary dramatically in different parts of the nation, Reality Check says. Nonreligious beliefs might be causally accepted in some states, including California and Vermont, but the stigmatization and concealment were higher on average in states survey participants reported as "very religious."

To reach those conclusions, survey participants were asked to assess how religious the people are in the community where they live and to rank the frequency -- never, seldom, sometimes, frequently or almost always -- that they had encountered nine types of "microaggressions" in the past year. Those experiences included being asked to go along with religious traditions to avoid stirring up trouble; being bothered by religious symbols or text in public places; being told they are not a "good person" because they are secular or nonreligious; and being asked by people to join them in thanking God for a fortunate event.

"As might be expected, participants from rural locations (49.6 percent) and small towns (42.7 percent) were more likely to say their current setting was 'very religious' than those from other settings (23.7 percent)," the report says. "Stigmatization and concealment were higher on average in states that participants reported are 'very religious.'"

The survey ranks Utah as the most religious state based on 80 percent of survey participants who live there calling their community "very religious." Mississippi is second with 78.7 percent.

Mississippi ranks as the worst state for stigma against nonreligious people and as the state where they are most often forced to conceal their beliefs. Utah is ranked as the second worst.

Sarah Worrel said she had friends of many faiths while growing up in Long Island, N.Y., and "you didn't presume someone was religious or of a particular religion until they told you." It's different in Mississippi, where she's lived since age 12.

"There's so little cultural diversity that it's assumed that you are some form of Christian unless you state otherwise," Worrel, the American Atheists assistant state director for Gulfport, wrote in an email. "I've met many atheists, pagans and other non-Christians here, but I usually don't find that out until I've gotten to know them well."

Worrel said she's had encounters with strangers trying to push religion on her and is always honest about her lack of belief but has not faced any serious discrimination. However, a friend lost a job for being an atheist, she said.

Questioning religion

Dan Ellis, the Utah state director for American Atheists, also is open about being an atheist.

Ellis said that as a child, he couldn't square what he learned in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with stories of a Biblical flood that destroys everything. His teacher couldn't explain why a loving God would kill babies in such a cruel way, he said.

Ellis, who was never a firm believer, also was unable to get satisfactory answers to his questions from church leaders and as an adult, he eventually became a "Jack Mormon," a term for an inactive member of the LDS Church.

For a long time, he thought it was wrong to be a non-believer. He wasn't sure how to refer to himself until he was in his mid-20s and a co-worker revealed that he was an atheist. Ellis began using that label for himself with close friends and family.

At the time, people he knew linked atheism with satanism, he said. Ellis lost friends and angered some relatives, who cut him out of their lives.

"There's a lot of discrimination and recrimination in Utah against atheists," Ellis said, adding that many atheists can't be open about being nonreligious for fear of losing their job.

Overlooked viewpoint

Other survey findings include:

Nick Fish, president of American Atheists, said in a news release that the struggles of nonreligious people are often overlooked.

"Thankfully, the U.S. Secular Survey has revealed the discrimination our community regularly faces," Fish said. "With that well-established, we need to find solutions and work toward ending the stigma faced by our community."

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Survey: Atheists face discrimination, rejection in many areas of life - UPI News