One analogy that might not have occurred to you yet is political: What about Independents? Is it wrong for them to try to persuade people it's mistaken to hold strongly to a particular party? (I'm not an independent, but I can see some merit in that argument myself.) And are independents trying to create a drab, gray, uniform political landscape?

One small nitpick, Greta: it's closed-minded--closed, as opposed to open, rather than close, as opposed to far.

Wow, Dana, you hit it out of the park with that one! That puts together a lot of things that had been bothering me about the whole situation that I hadn't been able to articulate before.

What you've said here makes a lot of sense, Greta--and in fact I'm seeing it already in one of those canary-in-a-mineshaft places, Yahoo! Answers. Every now and then I see something pretty dumb or low-class posted by an atheist there, but maybe now I should look at that as a good sign, not just something to feel embarrassed about.