Friday morning February 26th, 60 representatives from the Secular Coalition of America met with White House staff to discuss three issues of concern to it’s members which consists of non-religious Americans. Those three issues included protecting children from religiously motivated neglect and abuse, ending proselytizing in the military and working to ensure that various faith based initiatives don’t cause religious discrimination to individuals in need.

While that agenda seems fairly benign and something most individuals regardless of faith or lack thereof would agree with, that didn’t stop the right wing smear machine from spreading fear and lies about the meeting. Apparently the idea that non-religious Americans should be treated with the same respect all other citizens expect from our government is enough to cause right wing hysteria. Sean Hannity of Fox News was found to have made at least 4 factual errors in his quick statement about the meeting falsely claiming that this meeting in some way meant that the nonreligious were getting special treatment from the Obama adminstration. Sean’s statement was nowhere near as inflammatory as what occurred in the right wing blogosphere, which basically labeled the groups participating in the Coalition as hate groups. For perspective on this issue, it is important to realize that one of the groups runs a summer camp and another one is the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers.