My point is that if Kay Hagan were a lesbian, the NC Democratic party never would have let her run. And if Jim Neal had won the primary, I’m sure we would have seen those ads.

I know a lot of atheists contributed money to Hagan’s campaign after the ads aired. That had to have some effect (unless the radical right had just as much added contribution to Dole)

The ads aired a week before the election. There wouldn’t have been enough time for any big influx of money to make a difference. That’s why people focus so much on fundraising in August and September – that’s when it really matters.

A. Harvest – right on. We shouldn’t be looking at that race through rose-colored glasses.

Let us never forget: Organized atheism has a spin game to play, too, apparently not realizing that atheists are the ones most likely to see through that sort of bullshit.

Funny – I don’t remember hearing anything about her returning all that dirty atheist money.

1) they’re bigots.
2) they’re bigots.
3) they’re bigots.

It doesn’t even need to go beyond that.

Our opponents are not just right-wing Republicans, but liberals and moderates as well. I truly believe that being an atheist is more a liability in public politics than is being GLBT.

Future candidates will have to think twice before they use atheism as a means of attack against an opponent.

You keep making statements like this, and portraying the Dole-Hagan debate as showing that attacking atheists is poltiically dangerous, but I see absolutely no evidence for this. The whole episode points to the opposite. Dole said that it was bad that Hagan was associating with atheists, and implied that Hagan was an atheist. Hagan never said that it was OK to associate with atheists, or that there was nothing wrong with being an atheist; instead, she made a lot of noise about how Dole was being a slanderous liar, and that she (Hagan) was certainly not a horrible atheist, but a good Christian, just like all real Americans. The negative public reaction against Dole was that she had been unethical in falsely accusing her opponent of being an atheist. I heard nothing from either major person on either side saying that it was wrong to attack atheists; the criticism was all about the falsity of the attack. In what world does this translate into “Future candidates will have to think twice before they use atheism as a means of attack.”? It just means that if you’re going to attack your opponent as a dirty, filthy, evil, atheist, you better be able to back it up.

Sure, it’s better to have Hagan in office than Dole, but I’m mystified how you can keep portraying this affair as some sort of moral victory for atheists.

Liddy Dole has no respect for gay people. Had she claimed her opponent was a lesbian, she probably would have been pressured to apologize to her opponent, but I sincerely doubt she would ever have apologized to the gay community in any way.

Since Hagan recently spoke at the Human Rights Campaign Gala, I could image Dole doing something like that.