Timothy Hughes
Annie Laurie Gaylor says voters of no faith are "just ignored" by politicians.
As the caustic 2016 election season heats up, there’s one group that feels decidedly left out.
“Nonbelievers, atheists and agnostics have to pinch ourselves to remind ourselves that we exist, because nobody is talking to us, nobody is courting our vote, trying to woo us or please us or anything,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. “We’re just ignored. And yet, we’re the fastest-growing segment in the population.”
While there are a number of reasons for this slight, Gaylor says one big one is that nonbelievers have generally been “too polite.”
But the Foundation is trying to counter that with a national campaign, “I’m Secular and I Vote.” The aim is to encourage nonreligious people to be more vocal, so as not to be overlooked by politicians during campaign season. The group will buy national ads, do outreach to college students and promote the secular Reason Rally on June 4, 2016, to be held in Washington, D.C.
“We want the public officials to acknowledge our existence, which is not a really radical notion, and yet it doesn’t happen,” she says. “Candidates feel free to totally ignore us. I think it’s because they haven’t heard from us. So we want to change that.”
A recent Pew Research survey found that 23% of the U.S. population is religiously unaffiliated. They now number more than Catholics, which make up just under 21% of the U.S. population. Only Evangelical Christians make up a larger segment, at just over 25% of the population, according to the survey.
Gaylor says the growth in nonreligious people is particularly noticeable among millennials, the generation that reached adulthood around the turn of the century. More than 30% of millennials consider themselves religiously unaffiliated.
Despite these numbers, politicians rarely address the concerns of nonbelievers, Gaylor says. Appeals to faith have become so prevalent that spirituality appears to be a litmus test for office.
“We want them to worry about their electability if they’re not including a quarter of the population that’s not religious,” she says. “All they care about is appeasing the Evangelical vote, but what about us?”
The Foundation did a survey of its 23,000 members recently that 8,000 responded to, Gaylor says. It showed that 97% of its members are registered to vote.
The group’s members run the gamut of political affiliation; however, most list themselves as Democratic, independent or progressive/liberal.
Issues that rank high in importance include abortion rights, women’s rights, environmental issues and death with dignity.
They’re also highly educated and politically engaged. “We think we’re a forgotten sector,” she says. “Any public candidate who remembers us is going to garner some loyalty.”
