This book came out of a long, professional relationship between myself and Hemant Mehta, who writes The Friendly Atheist blog. We started to see religious arguments against the movement for transgender rights and it seemed like a good time to talk about how these two groups ‐ atheists and the LGBTQ community ‐ receive outcry from organized religion in a very intense way and to talk about how they can best be allied and what’s at stake when we don’t work together to address our common goals.

So many of the most significant issues facing LGBTQ people can affect atheists in some way, like violating the principles many atheists hold dear. When we see laws that seek to give business owners the right to discriminate against LGBTQ customers based on their religious beliefs, that’s state-sanctioned privileging of one belief system over another. ... The laws that target LGBTQ people could also be used against atheists.