Unless, of course, the Rapture comes.

Maybe then -- with all the Christians gone to their reward and the rest of us left behind folks doing battle with the Antichrist -- maybe then we'll have an openly Atheist US president. Even then, not fucking likely. I imagine it would be a long shot to have an Atheist county supervisor even here in Portland.

There's an article at Slate today on the likelihood of other minorities making it to the highest office in the land. Here's the money quote:

When the lion lies down with the lamb, when the president is a Republican Muslim and the Democratic speaker of the House is a vegan Mormon lesbian, when the secretary of defense is a Jain pacifist from the Green Party, they will all agree on one thing: atheists need not apply. A 2007 Gallup poll found that 53 percent of Americans would not vote for an atheist for president. (By contrast, only 43 percent wouldn't vote for a homosexual, and only 24 percent wouldn't vote for a Mormon.) As Ronald Lindsay, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, told me in an e-mail: "Atheism spells political death in this country."

Or am I being too optimistic?