'If not us, then who?'

'Us' working in accordance with like-minded people who happen to be churchgoers.

Neither one of us seems to have statistics ready, but I'm willing to bet that far, far more religious people think homosexuals should be serviced than those who think otherwise. And I have a really hard time believing that the Salvation Army has, all things considered, been a historically bad or malevolent organization. Although certainly there can be room for improvement in their operations (assuming what you've said is correct).

Why does any attack on those treatments need to come from aggregated atheists? In the end it makes the problem more religious than it has to be. Better efforts would go toward attacking the practice of service denial without bringing theistic connotations up any more than they need to be. And there is no reason that these efforts need to be taken on just by atheists; theists, as well, I'm sure will largely agree in attacking the practice.

I never denied that they're leaders.

Is secularism important? Absolutely. Should there be non-religious support networks and services available for people who could use them? For sure.

But I can't understand what some of those listed seem to think they're forwarding when they speak about it in terms of activism discrete from religious grounds.

'What are our shared values? What do we stand for? And how can we make a positive difference in the world? I’d like to see us taking action as a community for the greater good. I’d like to see us building structures (consistent with those shared values) that will take care of those in our community who are in need. And I’d like to see us become global leaders of philanthropic efforts – developing charitable giving into the fully secular endeavor that it should be.' -Noelle Gorge

Wonderful--but what does this have to do with atheism? People have been speaking on these terms for however long humans have been a species; why does atheism give a new ground for world-building (and charitable) actions? Why segregate from theistic philanthropic efforts atheistic ones? I guess I don't understand where a rejection of Gods becomes a foundation to these things. Should we not be doing them indiscriminate to our belief systems? Is that not what most atheists purport to be a very important idea?

Aside from that, I was just either being contrarian or criticizing the 'movement' as a whole without the article directly in mind.

What is the importance of uniting under a banner of 'atheism' when the goals, as expressed by those being interviewed, are varied and not always strictly related to items within theology's reach? Attitudes many in this 'organized atheism' crowd appear to be taking on are nothing more than weird distastes toward religious establishments and their members, who have largely done nothing wrong.

The movement's purpose has been obfuscated by such bad literature. In it theistic groups are accused constantly of being somehow anti-intellecual, even though next to nobody inside of them will deny the importance of empirical science. A dichotomy of rationality is being imagined on the religious and non-religious. And it's ridiculous.

I feel like people are starting to segregate against theistic communities in some kind of odd overshoot.