Make no mistake: Atheists think they're smarter than you. Atheism isn't simple skepticism. It is a certainty that believers are wrong, and by extension, intellectually inferior. Religion, especially Judeo-Christian religion, is nothing more than a crutch for dupes.
But Atheists aren't content to leave religion as a mere object of ridicule. They want it cleansed from public life. And enlightened as they are, they've come up with quite the pretense for justifying the righteousness of their bigotry: they are defending the vision of our Founding Fathers from a dominionist conspiracy to establish Christianity as the state religion.
You see, for liberal Atheists, the only thing worse than religion is the Religious Right, a term they use to encompass all Christian conservatives. And what better way to siphon fuel from the Religious Right than to convince Americans that the government is perpetually on the verge of becoming a theocracy?
And "theocracy" means ANY laws inspired by Christianity even if people of other religions (and none) can and do agree with them.
Preserve traditional marriage? Protect the unborn? Religious Freedom? These are all things that people of various beliefs can support, but because Christians support them, they amount to "shoving religion down people's throats." As if there could be no rational, reason-based arguments to support these things.
In effect, Christians (and others) must park their values at the entrance to the public square. What a convenient way to exclude people of faith.