DISCLAIMER:  A wise man once said that Beer + Coffee = Removing the Volume Control.  You have been warned.
DISCLAIMER THE SECOND:  I am going to attempt an invasion of the South over the next week, so I will be on hiatus during this time.
DISCLAIMER THE THIRD:  Jesus was way cool.  Leave me alone.

Here in Washington-the-state-not-the-District-of-Columbia-already-land, the big stink du jour runs as follows:

"Nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change", the state government, in the interest of not being a collective dick about things, and perhaps of de-escalating the War on Xmas (TM), had agreed to allow Christmas (and also Chanukah, on the grounds that the other Jewish holidays are too hard to pronounce, and a bit abstract [i.e., not involving presents]) displays in the state capitol.  (Discussion of what a collective dick looks like, and whether it has performance issues, are postponed for the nonce.)  Atheists, feeling, as usual, a bit left out, asked for, and were granted, their own bit of real estate in the state-governmental memespace, and were - surprisingly - not killed, but allowed their own little span of Americana, in which they predictably opined that religion is, you know, lame (and also "hardens hearts and enslaves minds").

Well, this being America, (Notice my restraint in not spelling it "Amerikkka", o young turks, and learn.) a whole gaggle of assorted religious nuts shat a collective hot brick and started speaking in very, very st00pid tongues.  (Discussion of the composition and properties of collective hot bricks also postponed.)

So far as I can see, the atheists in question felt that, if religious sentiments were being promoted on land owned by the people, then they, being, as it were, people, might arguably be entitled to a piece of that.  The protesting faithful seem to bear the following message:  We feel bad; please make people stop publicly disagreeing with us.  If anyone can advise me of any other way of construing these protests, please let me know, then go fuck yourself, because you are very, very wrong.

If we can make like a basal (or rectal, depending on your proclivities) thermometer, and probe the internal composition of the two camps, we may as well be as superficial as the media, and go by their counter/protest signs.  Typical butthurt Xian sign, paraphrased:  Jesus loves you - now cut it out or He'll send you to Hell.  Typical atheist sign, verbatim:  "Get over it."

Atheists FTW.