Richard Dawkins is attempting to challenge the dominance of religion in US politics by raising the visibility of atheists - both to give them a political voice, and so that religious Americans can see they're a) relatively common; and b) ordinary, everyday people rather than the baby-eating monsters they are commonly portrayed as. His method of doing this is the Out Campaign, which simply aims to get atheists to declare their non-belief. Kindof like the Blasphemy Challenge, only less obnoxious and not requiring the implied buy-in to Christianity.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether it will be successful. The Enlightenment seems to have passed the US by in this area, and while legally they have freedom of religion, socially they're still stuck in the pre-Enlightenment era, fighting battles over the public role of faith and the acceptability of difference which Europeans settled in the C17th. So their reaction to seeing atheists out themselves may be more oppression, rather than "my neighbour's an atheist? I never knew. I guess they can't be that bad after all". OTOH, the increased visibility of gays has resulted in greater tolerance, though slowly and with a lot of resistance from the dominant religious conservative community.
As for here, there's just no need. As a rather more recent offshoot of Europe, we inherited that C17th religious settlement, and absent a few loonies at the fringes, seem relatively comfortable with religion being a private matter between an individual and whatever spiritual entities they do or don't believe in. But its worth posting anyway, in support of the Americans, and to remind readers from there that the rest of the world doesn't necessarily think the same way as them.
