Freedom From Religion group calls for President Obama to attend Reason Rally, welcome ‘nonreligious to American family’

“It is laudable for the president to embrace citizens of all colors and religious viewpoints as being part of ‘one American family’ and to caution citizens not to be ‘bystanders to bigotry,’” the letter read. “But there is one U.S. minority that has been consistently excluded from such notice: nonreligious Americans.”

“We respectfully invite you, in your final year in office, to do something no American president has ever done: reach out to secular America. Such attention from the Office of the President would demonstrate that freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and rationalists are accepted citizens.”

Gaylor and Barker asked Obama to “make a historic appearance” at the Reason Rally, an event planned in Washington D.C. on June 4 that will encourage atheists, agnostics and those unaffiliated with a faith to converge for a secular revival of sorts.

They claim that the event offers Obama “an ideal opportunity for the office of the president” to welcome and address those in attendance, claiming that atheists and agnostics fall victim to “unwarranted stereotypes, putdowns and assumptions that we cannot be good people or good citizens.”

Gaylor and Barker concluded by citing well-known religious skeptics who they said have made monumental contributions to society. They then renewed their call for Obama to attend the Reason Rally.

“By showing up on June 4, as you did at the mosque, and addressing nonbelieving Americans, you can send a signal that the marginalization of a quarter of the U.S. population is unacceptable,” the letter read. “Please use your ‘bully pulpit’ to help erase harmful attitudes toward the nonreligious minority in the United States, as you have done for religious minorities.”

Read the entire letter here.