Criticizing religion vs. criticizing anything else

[Silent3]

Suppose I were criticizing Republican politicians or Republican policies. Try to be impartial and forget for the moment your likely (since you're on this web site) Democratic biases.

• Would you expect me to always be gentle?
  
• Would you consider scorn, satire, or sarcasm totally inappropriate?
  
• Would you expect me to carefully make sure I always mention good things done by Republicans to balance out my criticisms?
  
• If I didn't always go through the motions of mentioning that Republicans can do good things, mentioning the smart and reasonable things occasionally said by some Republicans, would you consider that "oversight" fair reason to assume I think nothing but bad things about all Republicans, in every aspect of their lives?
  
• Would you take criticism of Republican policy to be the equivalent of saying that all Republicans are stupid and/or ignorant and/or evil in every way?
  
• Would you take criticism of Republican policy to be a scathing dismissal of the very core being of each and every Republican politician, voter, and sympathizer?
  
• Would the fact that "Republican" means different things to different people cause you to raise a fuss that I'm somehow not allowed to criticize Republicanism until I've perfectly defined it, otherwise I clearly don't know what I'm talking about and should shut up?
  
• Would you be so incensed by my criticism that you would disregard or dismiss any of my attempts to be measured, balanced, fair, to try to see things from a Republican perspective?
  
• Would you call me intolerant, an anti-Republican "fundamentalist"?

Now, replace "Republican" in its various forms in the questions above with a grammatically appropriate form of the word "religion", and ask yourself the same questions.

Are the answers different? If so, why?

It's not my job as an atheist (it is, in fact, counterproductive and self-defeating) to treat religion with special kid gloves that I don't use when discussing any other human practice, concept, or philosophy. It is not a reasonable expectation of me to help others put religion up on a special pedestal where it is granted an automatic aura of respectability and expectation of deference -- especially considering that my own atheism is hardly even granted anything close to the same.

I would submit to you that, by the standards of the questions listed above, most of the atheists who post in R/T are sweet, cuddly teddy bears in their treatment of religion compared to the way Republicans and their political philosophy are handled throughout the rest of DU. Even the occasional outburst of something like, "Fuck religion!" hardly compares. I can tell from the reactions of some people that such a remark is often received as the moral equivalent of "Fuck all religious people!", but isn't that interpretation, that insistence on taking criticism personally, more a problem on the receiving end, not the transmission end, of those words?

I'm not, by the way, attempting to equate Republicanism and religion at all. Obviously there are very liberal, left-wing forms of religion. The only connection here is that, for me, Republican politics and religion are both things I disagree with and am likely to speak out against, philosophies and ways of thinking I think the world would be better off leaving behind.

You may think differently. You may think that the world is a better place because of religion, or at least because of certain forms of religion that you favor. That's OK. We have a disagreement there. Maybe you can even convince me that I'm wrong. In the meantime, however, don't expect me to argue my views with one or both hands tied behind my back, as if that's the only "fair" and "tolerant" way for my own views to be expressed.

(Note: Speaking of how "religion" is defined, I am using the word in a very broad sense here which includes much of what many might call "spirituality", any general belief in souls, an afterlife, reincarnation, in deities or any sort of "Higher Being".)