Americans would sooner support a presidential candidate who smoked pot or cheated on a spouse than elect an atheist, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Monday.

Sixty percent of those surveyed said it would not matter to them if a presidential candidate had an extramarital affair, with Democrats finding it less troubling than Republicans by an 18-point margin (70 percent to 52 percent).

Past marijuana use is considered a non-factor by 70 percent of Americans, with Democrats especially blase on the topic. Seventy-six percent of Democrats said past marijuana use didn’t matter, compared with 62 percent of Republicans.

But religion is another story. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they would be less likely to support a candidate who does not believe in God. Faith is especially important to Republicans, with 70 percent saying they would be less likely to support an atheist candidate, compared with 42 percent of Democrats.

That finding has Todd Stiefel, chairman of the newly formed Openly Secular coalition, calling on atheists to come out of the closet in hopes of showing everyone that they’re normal folk.

“It’s interesting to watch politicians clamor over who is the most pious,” Stiefel said. “The belief being if you aren’t pious, you aren’t fit for office.”

Stiefel said his coalition wants to draw attention to discrimination against atheists and make it socially unacceptable. He said his group is encouraging people to be open about their non-beliefs, a coming out he likened to the gay rights movement.

The Pew survey was conducted April 23-27 of 1,500 adults nationwide. The overall margin of error was 2.9 percentage points.

