They may be the most invis­i­ble inter­est group in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics: sec­u­lar Amer­i­cans who now make up near­ly a quar­ter of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion, accord­ing to recent Gallup and Pew Research polls. But atten­dees of the ​“Rea­son Ral­ly” at the Lin­coln Memo­r­i­al on Sat­ur­day, where as many as 30,00 athe­ists, agnos­tics, free­thinkers and their allies are expect­ed to attend, want to see that change.

"We're speaking up for reason."

The ral­ly will fea­ture dozens of enter­tain­ers, authors, sci­en­tists and even a few mem­bers of Con­gress — every­one from come­di­an Mar­garet Cho and NASA sci­en­tist Car­olyn Por­co to Bill Nye and mem­bers of the Wu-Tang Clan — and will pro­mote sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-based poli­cies in pub­lic life. They aim to push back against the Reli­gious Right, weak­ened after the Supreme Court deci­sion legal­iz­ing gay mar­riage but which still wields enough pow­er to pre­serve and expand anti-gay laws, fur­ther restrict women’s repro­duc­tive choic­es and keep in place fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed absti­nence pro­grams that actu­al­ly increase pregnancies.

The ral­ly aims to cel­e­brate the growth in num­bers of the ​“nones” — sec­u­lar and unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans — to almost 60 mil­lion and their poten­tial polit­i­cal clout, joined with calls to return sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence to pub­lic life. ​“We’re speak­ing up for rea­son,” says Lyz Lid­dell, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Rea­son Ral­ly Coali­tion com­posed of lead­ing athe­ist, sec­u­lar and human­ist orga­ni­za­tions. ​“We want rea­son to be the core of pub­lic poli­cies rather than reli­gious ideals.”

The pre­vi­ous ral­ly in 2012 drew over 10,000 peo­ple in the pour­ing rain to a gath­er­ing likened to a ​“Wood­stock for Athe­ists.” Like that pre­vi­ous event, this new one promis­es to be a ​“com­ing-out par­ty,” says Paul Proven­za, a come­di­an, TV host and co-direc­tor of the scabarous­ly hilar­i­ous film The Aris­to­crats, who was the mas­ter of cer­e­monies for that event and will co-host this new one. ​“We are find­ing a com­mu­ni­ty and cel­e­brat­ing to choose what we believe based on rea­son and not on fairy tales.” (Hear the full-length In These Times inter­view with Proven­za about com­e­dy, athe­ism and the Rea­son Ral­ly here.)

But there has been an impor­tant shift in empha­sis since that 2012 event —and the mount­ing attacks against reli­gious believ­ers by New Athe­ists such as Sam Har­ris — that led to a push­back even from sym­pa­thet­ic pro­gres­sives over the ​“mil­i­tant athe­ism” adopt­ed by some speak­ers, notably the influ­en­tial British sci­en­tist Richard Dawkins. He told the athe­is­tic faith­ful, ​“Reli­gion makes spe­cif­ic claims about the uni­verse which need to be sub­stan­ti­at­ed and need to be chal­lenged and, if nec­es­sary, need to be ridiculed with con­tempt” — and, appar­ent­ly by exten­sion, those who hold such reli­gious views dear.

A thought­ful arti­cle in the arts mag­a­zine Qui­etus point­ed out the polit­i­cal risks posed by the aggres­sive tone of some oth­er speak­ers, among them Amer­i­can Athe­ists pres­i­dent David Sil­ver­man, and the come­di­ans, such as Eddie Izzard, at the 2012 ral­ly: ​“Was this real­ly an attempt, on any lev­el, to com­mu­ni­cate with the the­ists this move­ment will some­how need to con­vert over the course of the com­ing generations?”

Now, even staff work­ing on Sat­ur­day’s new Rea­son Ral­ly con­cede the need to strive for more inclu­siv­i­ty. Chief orga­niz­er Lyz Lid­dell observes, ​“The 2012 ral­ly was brazen and not afraid to approach reli­gion in a straight­for­ward way.” She acknowl­edges, though, an emerg­ing dif­fer­ence in tone in the move­ment and the upcom­ing ral­ly. ​“The sec­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty has grown in recog­ni­tion and accep­tance, and the tone we’re set­ting is more coop­er­a­tive. We’re not going to treat reli­gion with kid gloves by any means, but to reach our big­ger goals of bring­ing rea­son to pub­lic pol­i­cy and cre­at­ing a rea­son­able soci­ety, we need to come togeth­er with a cou­ple of reli­gious groups.”

To demon­strate that the sec­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty’s new big-tent approach is already at work, she points to appear­ances at the Sat­ur­day ral­ly of two mem­bers of Con­gress with reli­gious ties, Rep. Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑HI), a Hin­du, and the church-going Rep. Bob­by Scott (D‑VA), and a ris­ing pro­gres­sive star, Con­gress­man-elect Jamie Raskin of Mary­land, a syn­a­gogue mem­ber. Cit­ing reli­gious ter­ror­ism and cli­mate change, Raskin, a pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al law at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, said, ​“It is time for all Amer­i­cans to stand up for our most essen­tial pub­lic val­ues against sci­ence deniers and theocrats all over the world.”

This broad­er per­spec­tive can help bring in new allies. Yet show­ing that ​“we are unaf­fil­i­at­ed and we vote” —a theme of the 2012 ral­ly — remains a key goal of the Rea­son Ral­ly Coali­tion and an allied two-day lob­by­ing effort vis­it­ing every mem­ber of Con­gress to sup­port Sen. Cory Book­er’s (D‑NJ) Real Edu­ca­tion for Healthy Youth bill requir­ing fed­er­al­ly-fund­ed sex edu­ca­tion to be LGBTQ inclu­sive and to ban absti­nence programs.

While it’s unlike­ly to pass under this Con­gress, Lid­dell notes, it’s all part of a sec­u­lar cam­paign — includ­ing this week’s ral­ly — to increase the polit­i­cal impact of non­be­liev­ers: ​“We’re real­ly demon­strat­ing the fact that the sec­u­lar demo­graph­ic group is orga­niz­ing, and I think we’re going to see elect­ed offi­cials to start to reach out to our com­mu­ni­ty, to solic­it our votes and to lis­ten to our issues.”

Iron­i­cal­ly, part of that strat­e­gy, she and Lar­ry Deck­er of the Sec­u­lar Coali­tion say, is to learn from the suc­cess­es of their polar oppo­site: the reli­gious right.

“We want to focus on issues where our demo­graph­ic agrees on desired out­comes and then mobi­lize them,” she says. ​“We can total­ly learn from that.” Deck­er is impressed by the abil­i­ty of a vocal minor­i­ty of reli­gious peo­ple — hard-line con­ser­v­a­tives — to have an out­sized impact on pol­i­cy. ​“The Sec­u­lar Coali­tion is going to take a page from the play­book of our major detrac­tors,” he says. ​“We’re going to start talk­ing about val­ues, too,” cit­ing such broad­ly res­o­nant val­ues as Equal­i­ty, Knowl­edge and Inclusiveness.

At the same time, the ral­ly will still give promi­nent speak­ing posi­tions to self-described ​“fire­brand athe­ists” such as David Sil­ver­man, author of the new book, Fight­ing God: An Athe­ist Man­i­festo for a Reli­gious World, who told the 2012 ral­ly, ​“Con­fronta­tion works” and argued for a ​“zero-tol­er­ance” pol­i­cy towards any­one express­ing big­otry against athe­ists. Yet, as Paul Proven­za points out, the aggres­sive actions of peo­ple like David Sil­ver­man to con­front big­ots and prod athe­ists to ​“come out,” has par­al­lels to the gay rights move­ment: ​“It’s like ACT UP,” the gay group that forced a wider pub­lic in the 1980s to pay atten­tion to the AIDS cri­sis through direct action. Yet that’s now sup­ple­ment­ed by Sil­ver­man’s group with an impres­sive array of law­suits to pre­serve the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. Sil­ver­man, Proven­za and a wide range of mod­er­ate and rad­i­cal fig­ures in the sec­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty also talk about ​“com­ing out” as an atheist.

And the com­par­i­son to gay pride isn’t as far-fetched as it might seem at first. In many ways, the free­thinkers are explic­it about the par­al­lels to the gay move­ment. The Open­ly Sec­u­lar web­site, for exam­ple, urges sec­u­lar peo­ple to go pub­lic with their views. On its YouTube chan­nel, not­ed enter­tain­ers and celebri­ties such as for­mer SNL actress Julia Swee­ny talk about being reject­ed by fam­i­ly and friends after con­fess­ing they were athe­ists. Sec­u­lar peo­ple in Amer­i­ca haven’t faced near­ly the hor­rif­i­cal­ly vio­lent big­otry and attacks that have long vic­tim­ized gays, but over­seas, peo­ple face harsh retal­i­a­tion and death for dar­ing to express doubts about reli­gion. In Bangladesh, for exam­ple, sec­u­lar blog­gers and activists have been killed with impunity.

Yet even in Amer­i­ca, dis­crim­i­na­tion, shun­ning and harass­ment are real and can lead to sui­cides. As the Open­ly Sec­u­lar site notes, ​“Dis­crim­i­na­tion is ram­pant against those who are sec­u­lar. Teens are made home­less after being thrown out of their homes; young activists receive death threats; peo­ple lose rela­tion­ships with friends, fam­i­ly and cowork­ers for not believ­ing the same.” The penal­ties can be espe­cial­ly severe for young sec­u­lar stu­dents oppos­ing reli­gious sym­bol­ism in the schools, such as athe­ist Jes­si­ca Ahlquist, who filed a suc­cess­ful law­suit in 2012 against her high school in Rhode Island for dis­play­ing a prayer mur­al — and need­ed police escorts after death threats against her, joined by attacks by local media and elect­ed officials.

Sad­ly, lit­tle has changed since then: In 2014, a 21-year-old athe­ist col­lege stu­dent in Mobile, Alaba­ma, Aman­da Scott, dared to lead the oppo­si­tion to the coun­ty com­mis­sion’s plan to dis­play an ​“In God We Trust” plaque in the Mobile Gov­ern­ment Plaza. After grant­i­ng local press inter­views, she received dozens of threat­en­ing mes­sages from fel­low cit­i­zens call­ing for her tor­ture and death. The coun­ty moved ahead with its plaque, but Scott stuck to her guns and was hon­ored as ​“Athe­ist Activist of the Year” in 2015 by Amer­i­can Athe­ists. ​“I was just doing what I felt I had to do, which was to stand up for the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state and the equal rights of athe­ists in our com­mu­ni­ty,” she said.

It’s lit­tle won­der that Deck­er, an open­ly gay man who recent­ly became the Sec­u­lar Coali­tion’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, has found that the sting of big­otry against non­be­liev­ers can some­times be as strong as that fac­ing gays. Indeed, after a speech he gave in a con­ser­v­a­tive South­west­ern town ear­li­er this year, a mid­dle-aged woman approached to give him a hug of thanks and then start­ed telling him about the fate of her nephew. She cried as she told him that he came out as gay at age 18 to his evan­gel­i­cal par­ents who were deeply upset, telling their son they had a big prob­lem with it and tried, over time, to fig­ure it out.

“But at 19, when he came out as an athe­ist, his par­ents cut him off,” she said. He was liv­ing out­side the home, and they declared they could no longer be part of his life. ​“Then he killed him­self,” she told him.

“Lar­ry, if he could have seen you speak today, he nev­er would have done that.” At that, Deck­er turned away and start­ed cry­ing, not want­i­ng her to see him weep­ing. ​“I knew at that moment I did the right thing in tak­ing this job,” he says.