Atheist author Peter Boghossian suggests gays shouldn’t be proud. Is he proud to be an atheist? [View all]

Chris Stedman | Nov 4, 2014

A few days ago, Peter Boghossian—a philosophy professor, speaker for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and author of A Manual for Creating Atheists—caused a stir when he posted the following statement on Facebook and Twitter:


Many atheists, such as LGBTQ atheist author Greta Christina, responded—but Boghossian dug in and continued to defend his statement, tweeting additional statements like “Questioning that one can be proud to be gay is a leftist blasphemy.”

As a queer atheist, I too am perplexed by both Boghossian’s question and his defensive reaction to criticism—especially from someone who lists “reason, rationality, critical thinking” in his Twitter bio.

Perhaps he truly doesn’t understand why some LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) people feel proud to be LGBTQ. Rather than assume a more cynical motive, I’m going to treat his question as sincere. But when confronted by an LGBTQ-related question you don’t understand, the reasonable next step is to ask LGBTQ people. And it doesn’t take much investigating to find out why many LGBTQ people feel a sense of pride.

http://chrisstedman.religionnews.com/2014/11/04/gay-pride-atheist-peter-boghossian/