I’m always at risk of overreacting to stories like this because as an atheist myself I hate the fact that tools like this purport to speak for me. That caveat aside, here’s possibly the single dumbest example of atheist identity politics we’ve seen yet, and we’ve seen some doozies. The sheer efficiency of its loathsomeness is amazing: In one fell swoop it reduces skepticism to a quasi-faith, trades “free thinking” for a pathetic need to feel “included,” and of course embraces the hallmark prostrate grievance posture of the victimized group. I’m not surprised that Dawkins sits on their Advisory Board, but to know that Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Salman Rushdie do too is depressing.

The chief executive officer of the Democratic National Convention Committee, the Rev. Leah Daughtry, has planned an interfaith gathering as the opening event of the Democratic National Convention on August 24, 2008. While it is designed to showcase the “diversity” and “shared values” of the party and achieve a “spirit of unity,” it will, in fact, marginalize those Democrats who do not practice religion…

Tens of millions of American voters are nontheists with no god belief, and millions more who practice some religion bring secular values to their political choices. Based as it is on the premise that all values are necessarily derived from religion, this year’s Democratic convention leaves atheists, agnostics, humanists and other secular voters feeling increasingly isolated and voiceless. By accepting Brown’s offer, the Democratic Party can signal to this constituency that it is serious about being inclusive and tolerant.

In other words, celebrating your religion is “marginalizing” to people who choose not to celebrate religion. Or, as one independent-minded skeptic now reveling in the comfort of faux-discrimination put it, “By reaching out to people of faith, they have shown the back of their hand to those who do not believe.” Exit question one: By that logic, does reaching out to gays or blacks constitute showing the back of one’s hand to straights and whites? And exit question two: Allahpundit, self-hating atheist?