In my local atheist group we have discussed setting up a booth at the local gay pride day event to get some new members- the logic behind it being that these people were directly harmed by religion... it seemed to make sense to me. But I sent out a newsletter saying "okay this is what we're working on right now and we need donations desperately" one of those things was the booth (among a couple other things including a billboard and protesting our local city council who have decided to pray before meetings now) and I got a huge huge backlash of people telling me that we shouldn't get involved with gay people.. it was too controversial.. that i was trying to force my beliefs on them- that i just had an agenda because i am bisexual.. we even had about half a dozen people leave. So what are your thoughts on leaving out lgbt issues and the like from an atheist group? Some people even said if we did a gay pride booth then we should do a pro life booth.. again, what are your thoughts on this? I could really use some advice.. It just seems like specifically not doing this booth is saying "oh no, we can't get involved with *those* people". I should also add that about half of the people who spoke up about it were for the booth and half were against it (it was about 45% for and 55% against).
I try very hard to have activities for everyone and I know that not everyone will want to attend every meeting- some want a social group, some want an activist group.. we have things like this booth, the billboard, the city council thing, as well as plans for a helping the homeless program, adopt a highway, etc and we also have bowling nights, movie nights, dinner nights, and backyard BBQ's for people who just want to have some social time with non religious people.