I suppose that most queer people largely agree on issue such as sexual rights, adoption rights, famility rights, etc. After all, being queer refers to pattern of preferences and behaviors, while being an atheist refers to an epistemic state.
I’m not sure the situations are all that different, except that “movement atheism” is younger. (I speak here mostly of the U.S., since it’s what I know.)
Queers, for example, are significantly divided on questions of family rights. There are those of us who endorse the existing legal structure around families, for example, and want that structure expanded to include us. And there are those of us who reject the existing legal structure around families altogether, and want it eliminated.
That said, that division isn’t terribly visible from a mainstream perspective; there’s a relatively coherent political platform that gets treated as “the” queer rights movement, and most people go along with that.
I think a lot of the formalization of queer activism comes from its alliance with political parties. Because the major political parties in the U.S. have taken differentiable stances on queer rights, queer activists have de facto allied themselves with the Blues and opposed the Greens. (This causes some difficulties for queer people whose political or economic ideologies naturally incline Green. There is in fact a Green queer movement, although it doesn’t get a lot of respect from your typical queer-on-the-street.)
I suspect that if atheism becomes a differentiable Green/Blue issue we’ll see a similar pattern over the next thirty years. And it easily could… religious pluralism is increasingly becoming a differentiable Green/Blue issue in the US, which seems related.
I’m not sure the situations are all that different, except that “movement atheism” is younger. (I speak here mostly of the U.S., since it’s what I know.)
Queers, for example, are significantly divided on questions of family rights. There are those of us who endorse the existing legal structure around families, for example, and want that structure expanded to include us. And there are those of us who reject the existing legal structure around families altogether, and want it eliminated.
That said, that division isn’t terribly visible from a mainstream perspective; there’s a relatively coherent political platform that gets treated as “the” queer rights movement, and most people go along with that.
I think a lot of the formalization of queer activism comes from its alliance with political parties. Because the major political parties in the U.S. have taken differentiable stances on queer rights, queer activists have de facto allied themselves with the Blues and opposed the Greens. (This causes some difficulties for queer people whose political or economic ideologies naturally incline Green. There is in fact a Green queer movement, although it doesn’t get a lot of respect from your typical queer-on-the-street.)
I suspect that if atheism becomes a differentiable Green/Blue issue we’ll see a similar pattern over the next thirty years. And it easily could… religious pluralism is increasingly becoming a differentiable Green/Blue issue in the US, which seems related.