America's Most Hated
What's worse in the minds of "typical" Americans than a half-black, half-Hispanic, seventy-two-year-old Jewish woman who's in her third marriage to her Mormon lesbian lover? Apparently...an atheist:
Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for president who happened to be [see below], would you vote for that person?
Here are the summarized results of a February 2007 Gallup Poll in which the categories below were inserted into the question above:
| Yes | No | Unsure | |
| Catholic | 95% | 4% | 1% |
| Black | 94% | 5% | 1% |
| Jewish | 92% | 7% | 2% |
| A woman | 88% | 11% | 1% |
| Hispanic | 87% | 12% | 1% |
| Mormon | 72% | 24% | 4% |
| Married for the third time | 67% | 30% | 3% |
| Seventy-two years of age | 57% | 42% | 1% |
| A homosexual | 55% | 43% | 2% |
| Atheist | 45% | 53% | 3% |
For a moment — just for now — let's set aside the fact that everything about these results makes us want to distance ourselves (by several parsecs) from the incredibly clueless who answered "No" (or even "Unsure") to any of these questions. Keep in mind that the scenario presented was of a well-qualified candidate whose only stated "shortcoming" was being a part of whichever group is referenced. With the possible exception of the question regarding the candidate's age (since there could certainly be a legitimate concern about someone's health failing while in office), this poll reveals ultimate and uncompromising bigotry, folks, plain and simple. All of the other factors have been removed from the equation; so, by design, a negative response here can be based on only one thing — bigotry against the specified group. It doesn't get much more clear than this.
In addition, let's also set aside the fact that it looks like the trend since Bush took office has been away from tolerance. Judging by the polls over the last few decades — which you'll need to follow the link to see — tolerance across all of these groups peaked in the late 1990s (you know, when that E-ville adulterer was in the White House), and then fell off during the divisive neo-con reign. This also speaks volumes about the direction that our country has been moving in ever since these Individuals took office, but we digress....
If you've been thinking that homosexuals are the most hated group in America today, think again — they are a full ten percentage points above atheists. Hell, even in 1958, blacks — you know, the folks who couldn't drink out of certain water fountains for a while? — outpaced atheists by a 20% margin, and that gap has widened considerably to almost 50% today. And hey, that's great for black people, as well as the other groups who have managed to increase their standing among the general population. But how do atheists get this pride of place over and over and over again? What is it about atheists that inspires such hatred? Shit, they're the only group for which more people responded "No" than "Yes." That's fucking incredible. And this is far from being a new result. These findings just reinforce the results of other recent studies that also showed that atheists were lower than the shit that pond scum scrapes off the bottom of its shoes. Take the results of this study, for example:
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society." Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.Even though atheists are few in number, not formally organized and relatively hard to publicly identify, they are seen as a threat to the American way of life by a large portion of the American public. "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years," says Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study's lead researcher.
Below Muslims? To a large portion of the country, the word "Muslim" is synonymous with "terrorist," and yet atheists are more distrusted? Don't get us wrong, we are not agreeing that Muslims are all terrorists, we're just pointing out that the view from the stupid seats is that they are...and still, atheists are seen as worse. How the fuck did this happen?
Is the Religious Right really doing that good a job of painting atheists as evil puppy-raping monsters who want to ban bibles and silence prayers? If so, they seem to have been doing that good a job for fifty years, and we find it hard to imagine that's the case. So what is it? What makes more than half of Americans hate atheists so much?
One obvious explanation that we can come up with concerns exposure. One of the pillars of bigotry, it seems, is a lack of exposure to the hated "others." It's much easier to demonize an entire demographic if you don't actually know any representative members. But as soon as you meet these individuals, as individuals — at work, in your neighborhood, at school — then, assuming your hatred isn't so deep-seated that you never allow yourself to get to know them, you eventually find that they aren't any different from any other group of people. Are there vile, loathsome atheists out there? Absolutely — we've met some, and we can't stand them. Just as there are vile, loathsome blacks, Jews, Catholics, women, Mormons, et cetera, et cetera. There are also people from all of these groups who are quite nice, wonderful folks who we'd very much like to share a steak with (though admittedly, we're overly fond of a good, rare steak). The point is pretty simple: once you get to meet some of these people, you start to realize that they should be judged on their individual merits, their words and deeds, and not on their totally arbitrary race, upbringing, or gender. The Source of this unique piece is from www.twopercent.com.
