Atheists can respond by pointing out how, in the past, activists in a variety of civil rights and progressive movements were attacked in exactly the same way: they were accused of being so rude and militant that moderates wouldn't want to work with them. You don't have to go into the past to find examples of this, though. There is currently a very good example of it in how "progressives" and "liberals" are treating advocates of gay equality for criticizing Obama because he hasn't repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" yet.
Pam Spaulding describes the predictable (and hostile) reactions:
He’s just been in office four+ months, give him a break.
The usual sit down in the back of the bus and shut up, you’re whining argument (haven’t we heard that before - “we have to get re-elected” “watch out for the midterms,” blah, blah). As if we should sit with our hands folded in our laps and let slide the utterly ridiculous non-answers coming out of the mouth of otherwise-articulate Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (the Blend files are filling up quickly) when he’s asked about DADT.
So, gays should just accept being treated as inferiors, not criticize the system which insists on treating them as inferiors, and shouldn't criticize a politician who presented himself as a friend of equality. Gays should apparently just be happy that this politician supports other causes important to them, sacrificing one of their most important interests for the sake of all the other concerns. Sound familiar?
Rachel Maddow is pushing “her issues” too hard and is being too hard on the President.
...I knew Rachel was going to be thrown under the bus pronto by the same progressives for simply applying the same standard of treatment she gives to all issues to LGBT issues. But now the progressives are in the business of defending Barack Obama from teh angry ingrate gayz.
...The problem with some in the progressive community (and obviously some in the LGBT community as well) is that they conflate Rachel’s sexual orientation and her political viewpoint when it doesn’t suit them. It seems to escape people that it is possible that she is discussing these issues as a progressive who happens to be gay, not as a person who is simply advocating a pro-gay POV because she is gay. That people go there so quickly is pretty troubling. If Rachel (or I) were straight and discussing these issues in the exact same manner, would we be seen as pushing a “personal agenda”? I seriously doubt it.
How often have you seen atheistic critiques of religion or religious beliefs dismissed in some fashion simply because they come from an atheist? How often have you seen atheists' arguments or ideas dismissed because atheists are militant, fundamentalist, or simply "can't truly understand" religion? These sorts of responses are common when a person makes a sound argument which others don't want to acknowledge; if no equally sound counter-argument is available, a popular tactic is to try to discredit the person.
It's a logical fallacy to think that the validity of an argument is related to the personal qualities or agenda of the person making the argument, but I don't think that a person who is willing to adopt such a tactic cares very much about logic in the first place. After all, they are only adopting such a tactic in the first place because they lack any sound, valid, or reasonable arguments of their own.
Liberal religious believers have proven themselves more than willing to dismiss atheists and atheists' interests in the pursuit of political power. Liberal religious believers have even threatened to abandon science if atheists persist in being mean by criticizing religion, so those making such threats can't be regarded as having a strong commitment either to science generally or the intellectual values behind science. Now, we can see that liberals — and this includes liberal religious believers — will also be happy to abandon gays and gay rights in the pursuit of political power as well.
Gays, atheists, and other minorities cannot trust the Democrat Party or even "grass roots progressive activists" to "do the right thing" simply because it's the right thing. Minorities have to constantly agitate and fight just for attention, never mind equality, and we have to expect that those who already have power and privilege will constantly insist that everyone else should stop rocking the boat, should just be patient, should wait for more important issues to be solved first, should stop making moderates look bad — they will, in short, offer every possible excuse for not fulfilling the promises they made for getting our earlier political support.
I tried bringing up Obama’s lack of movement on ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ on another forum but was shot down by Obama sycophants.
What these people don’t seem to get is this is not just a gay rights issue, it is a national security issue. It is absolutely idiotic that we are throwing valuable members of the military (and patriots who want to serve their country) out for being gay.
Like with any cause there are extremists. I think it is wrong for some of these activists to harass people who ave money to prop 8. But there is nothing wrong with standing loud and proud in opposition to things like proposition 8.
The whole “shh, you’ll scare away the moderates” bs is also always trotted out with regards to Muslims. The political and social power of moderate Muslims is infinitely less effective and powerful than that of moderate Christians and moderate Christianity.
The reality is that bad ideas are bad ideas, whether they are taken in undiluted or diluted form. There is a need for gentle reason, and a need for sharp rebuke, because current religionists differ in what will actually cause them to reduce the harm they do in the name of their religion. You can’t just have a hammer in your tool box if you are an activist.