Today in the USA Atheists are persona non grata, feared and reviled, mostly closeted, and considered by their fellow citizens to be unfit for public office. The Bill of Rights is the capstone of a resilient old edifice engineered to shift and flex in turbulence of the times, but not to break. That critical list of original amendments would have a snowball's chance in the heated culture wars of today. Atheists are alien species to most Americans.
Few people seem to know any atheists personally.
Of course they do, because we freethinkers average one in twenty. But folks are more likely to admit to fetishism than to atheism. How such an odd state of affairs developed is a topic too large for this essay. Instead, I'll relate the common experiences of closeted and out atheists. The Queer-Lib terminology is is deliberate, and the parallels are many.