So, that bitchy bastion of vitriol, Ann Coulter, has released a new book called Godless, which, while it certainly doesn't inspire much in the way of thought, certainly gets me thinking about the general public tends to view atheism as a whole. Of course Coulter's implication that all Liberals are necessarily atheist is way off the mark, but it still half-rankles, half-amuses whenever an assertion of atheism is used as a perjorative.

I'm an atheist. And I have long wondered: how does the fact that I don't believe there's an invisible man living in the sky somehow make me an extremist?

It's a head-scratcher for sure. But I've learned to accept it. Yeah, it bothers me that down here in Texas, when someone wants to publicly slander someone else, the first thing they generally do is call them an atheist. It bothers me that people assume that atheists have no morals, even though, as I've pointed out before, atheists are way under-represented in prison populations. It certainly gets to me that atheists are routinely discriminated against in child custody cases (usually via rampant abuse of the standard "best interests of the child" clause), and specifically (albeit federally unconstitutionally) barred in many states from hold any government position or even being qualified to act as a juror in a court of law. And it makes me mildly amused to have Coulter so blatantly exposed as a hypocrite who apparently believes that the abandonment of chastity as a value is horrible for gays and liberals but just doesn't apply to her. And they have the nerve to call liberals "Elitist"!!! What a classic case of projection and denial.

The issue, of course, doesn't stem from the fact that Coulter is 44, has never been married, and is apparently unrepentently not a virgin. For anything else to be the case would be, in my mind, frankly a little unnatural. I do take some issue with the tone of the post I linked to in that regard.

But the issue is valid, and it is that she can still pretend to lament the loss of "chastity" as an American value. That makes her a hypocrite of the first order. I guess our loss of chastity is a problem for everyone but her...