I understand but...

*note: I'm writing this while drunk so excuse any spelling mistakes*

I understand the faithful.

I mean, I understand irrational beliefs. I have a phobia of spiders (and a little less so of needles, I can rationalize that one away with effort long enough to get a shot if I need it, not enough to donate blood)

Doesn't matter how irrational it is, doesn't matter how much I try to think it through and explain it away and not make it bother me. Doesn't matter how much I know or how safe some may be. I see a spider and there will be a freak out. I can't stop that instinctive flight or fight response, the chattering of teeth the crawling of skin I just can't. Hell even reading Charlotte's web creeps me out.

I understand faith must be something like that. Doesn't matter if it works or not some part of you believes, or hopes to believes, or just enjoys it so yea, it makes you're mad when someone dismisses your belief (or my fear) as you being irrational or a baby or stupid.

But the faithful of any religion or creed, especially those who may also belong to a minority group have to understand the "secular" point of view. We are fighting a lot of your privilege and just by fighting that, you already find us borderline obnoxious.

If you talk about your faith, someone may disagree with you for having the wrong faith, but rarely will you find arguments against having faith at all. Open any newspaper and you'll find entire sections dedicated to your or another varying belief. Walk into almost any store and you'll find at least one book or magazine or item dedicated to faith of some kind or another. Look at a map and you'll find places dedicated to you marked out, talk to enough people and you'll either find a quick throw together group of others of your faith or yell from a street corner long enough and you'll eventually gather a group willing to learn of your faith.
Even at home we are not safe from the various faithful as some religions will hunt us down in an attempt to convert and if we tell them to leave because of our lack of faith we are pretty much always the bad guy regardless of how polite we tell them to leave.

Heaven forbid we try to voice our own beliefs (or lack thereof) in the same manner that various faith try to profess their own, try to make jokes at the expense of the faithful, try to develop our own communities and like minded groups and expect NOT to be harassed.

Certainly since what we are is a very subtle difference and can be easily hidden behind a "Don't ask Don't tell" life policy that unlike the real DADT doesn't harm us psychologically or emotionally by having to hide it.
So it's no where near the hardships that other minorities face. But the Faithful of whatever type be it a major religion to a passing belief in ghosts to power crystals have privilege that the secular, at least in that part of their life, just don't have.

Our existence is already something the faithful don't like and every obnoxious protest by the religious, every street preacher, every knock on my door while I'm in the bathroom, every insensitive accusation that my existence somehow caused worldwide disaster, every disease spread or person harmed directly or indirectly by the irrational beliefs of the "faithful" is a gauntlet thrown.
And while I feel bad for the spiritual or rational believers of various faiths who are caught in the crossfire and I can understand the feelings of the religious who want the militant atheists to leave them alone, I'm sure people who think a lot like those nice faithful who want us to back down and be gentler are using the same thinking pattern that those who want homosexuals/transgendered/women/minorities/anyone else they don't agree with to just back down are using.