atheists and Democrats

An article asking why atheists align with Democrats finds a reason for the unsurprising "preponderance to be towards the left (Democratic) side of the political spectrum:"

The less religious a topic, the less atheists oppose it and the more divided they are in their opinion of it. The more religious a topic, the more atheists oppose it and the more homogenous their opinion of it. This becomes extremely clear with the following issues of women's rights, gay rights, and science [particularly evolution and stem-cell research].

The growth of atheists' numbers combined with their "align[ment] with Democratic policies and issues" has some positive implications:

As the voting block grows, there simply won't be the political support for right-wing religious issues anymore. No matter how hard they try, Republicans won't be able to ignore atheists. They can either fear them and lose or embrace them and change.

Or, more probably, they will do both. As demonstrated by the Uncle Tom Log Cabin Republicans, there could eventually be a group of atheist Republicans whose mere existence could be used as an alleged big-tent example while being demonized by the party's rank and file. The LCR problem is, of course, due to Republicans serving the Bible instead of the Constitution on LGBT issues:

The fact that Republicans immediately, in the dark of night, attached an amendment to a $51.1 billion Department of Justice and Commerce funding bill that reinforces the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) proves they are serving the Christian bible and not the Constitution. It is more evidence that Republicans are bible-inspired bigots who hate any American who is not a white Christian male and does not fit their paradigm of a good American married couple. The blatant hatred Republicans have for the LGBT community that they are willing to spend taxpayer dollars to defend discrimination and punish same-sex couples is nothing less than passive bullying. [...]

They may not be physically bullying gays like Willard Romney did in high school, but they are legislating state sponsored discrimination under authority of the Christian bible and they are breaking their oath of office to support the Constitution's guarantee of equal rights in the 14th Amendment, and failing to abide by the Separation Clause in the 1st Amendment. Their assertion that same-sex marriage is an attack on traditional marriage is fallacious in theory and practicality, but they are not known for objectivity when fear-mongering has worked so well for them in drumming up religious opposition to same-sex marriage.

The Boston Globe points out the evolution and de-evolution in presidential candidates' stances toward marriage equality. "By any objective standard," notes the article, "Obama's previous position was simply untenable:"

His administration ended "don't ask, don't tell" and stopped enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between and man and a woman. Privately, he supported gay marriage, and how and when he would make that clear was regularly discussed among his advisers and the press. But he was plainly in no rush.

"If Obama's evolution was awkward and embarrassing for a modern president," the article continues, "the same is also true of Romney's devolution:"

In 1994, he proclaimed himself "better than Ted Kennedy" on matters of gay rights. But by the time he began running for president in 2007, Romney had restyled himself, in typically heavy-handed fashion, as a staunch social conservative who favored a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- a shift in public emphasis no less expedient than Obama's.

In a sense, Obama and Romney are mirror images of one another: on gay rights, each is a cautious pragmatist trying to catch up to his party, although this entails their running in opposite directions.

Obama has progressed to meet both the Democratic majority position as well as that of the whole American people--while Romney has regressed to please Republican reactionaries in a stance that grows more embarrassing with each passing day.