"You atheists are so strident!"

For 1700 years or so, Christians have been claiming their religion is being attacked.
This has rarely been the case.
For most of those 1700 years, Christianity has been growing to become the biggest religion on the planet but it never outgrew the claims of religious persecution.
They claimed persecution during the dark ages, during the Inquisition, during the witch hunts, during the Crusades... during their entire history.
Why do you suppose that is?
I think it's because of a simple maxim; never drop a winning strategy.
Christians will continue to whine, whinge, and beat their chests loudly, all the while screaming their outrage at being persecuted for their beliefs... because it works.
And they will continue to persecute all others while they scream of their own persecution.

Now Muslims have adopted the tactic with, "Islamaphobia!" whenever anyone calls them on the latest terrorist attack or beheading or female genital mutilation or flogging a rape victim for being raped.

But if an atheist asks, "Please keep your religion to yourself?" we are called strident in strident tones.
We are accused of censorship as a means to censor.
We are called bullies as we are bullied.

This is not a matter of religions feeling slighted, offended, or persecuted.
It is a planned and executed attack on the freedom of all peoples.

When are we going to wake the fuck up and stop coddling these fucking evil people?
For some reason I don't know, governments will not stand up to them.

It's up to us. It's up to the people.
Our most powerful weapon is the freedom of speech that allows us to tell the truth about religions. And this is what cries of religious persecution and Islamophobia are all about; reducing your free speech... little by little, in pieces you'd hardly notice... unless you put all the pieces together and saw how much was already taken away.

First we defend free speech because all freedoms come from free speech... even the right to claim persecution.
If you think free speech is important, then use it because we face the very real possibility of losing that privelege.

And you can't complain about losing any other freedoms once you've lost freedom of speech.