You may have heard this refrain. You may have even sung it yourself. So let's look at this question for a moment: Are atheists subjected to real discrimination?

It's certainly true that, in the United States, while atheists do experience real discrimination, it's typically not as severe as, say, racism or misogyny. Or rather, since I don't think comparing discriminations is usually all that useful: Anti-atheist discrimination takes different forms. It's not like the systematic economic apartheid African-Americans experience, or the systematic enforcement of rigid gender roles women experience. It takes other forms: such as social ostracism; bullying in schools; public schools denying atheist students the right to form clubs; religious proselytizing promoted by the government; widespread perceptions of atheists as untrustworthy; businesses denying equal access to atheists and atheist organizations; government promotion of religion in social service programs; government promotion of religion in the military. And it's true that atheists have significant legal protection in the United States: people sometimes break those laws, and those laws aren't always enforced, but we do have these laws, and they do help.

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