(This was supposed to be a comment on this post on Pharyngula but it wouldn’t post for some reason so here it is…)

Face it — we do need to convert some swing voters here or we are fucked.”

Then we’re fucked, and for all eternity. Swing voters are a hopeless, witless cause.

With all due respect, this is the kind of attitude that drives me crazy around here — the intelligence of everyone that disagrees with us is always called into question.

If we want to achieve our goals in politics and public opinion we have to frame the issues in a way that allows us to succeed. The notion that all Christians are stupid is wrong, the notion that swing voters are stupid is wrong and the notion that we can continually insult the beliefs of 90% of this country and still have a thread of political power is completely fucking wrong.

I am an (almost) atheist and a raging liberal yet most of what I see in these comments is fuel to make our agenda completely irrelevant.

I don’t think we should pander to religious people but nor can we afford to alienate them. This should be self-evident. The secular movement can’t be successful without the participation of the privately religious but publicly secular.