Coming Out

It was nice when Obama mentioned us in his inaugural along with Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindus. We're here and we're nonbelievers. Get used to it.

More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out.... They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs. They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public....

Polls show that the ranks of atheists are growing. The American Religious Identification Survey, a major study released last month, found that those who claimed “no religion” were the only demographic group that grew in all 50 states in the last 18 years. Nationally, the “nones” in the population nearly doubled, to 15 percent in 2008 from 8 percent in 1990.