Religious Liberty and Equal Treatment

Hoisted from the draft queue from 3/5/14:

Via this interesting write-up in The American Conservative of the foofaraw over American Atheists' attempt at diplomacy toward the conservative movement at the American Conservative Union's annual Conservative Political Action Conference, here's the atheist group's political pamphlet that was distributed at CPAC, also hosted by The American Conservative.

There are apparently four items on their public agenda:

-rectify the injustice of unequal IRS treatment between religiously-affiliated and non-religiously-affiliated organizations seeking tax-exempt status
-ensure equality of government treatment between religiously-motivated and non-religiously-motivated uses of public land
-religious exemptions to generally applicable laws should be minimized in number and in scope
-religious policymakers should not impose their beliefs on citizens and should not base their policies on beliefs of faith alone.

Where they lose me is on the third one: that religious exemptions should be minimized in number and in scope.  Sure, limiting or eliminating a religious exemption given to people of faith is one way to make sure that the non-religious retain their equal rights and are not discriminated against by the government, but another way of doing so is getting any exemption afforded to religious claims extended to non-religious but similar types of claims, like conscience for example, as well.

My guess is that fighting to extend an existing benefit to a new set of beneficiaries is easier than fighting to take it away from the original ones, so they're picking a harder fight than necessary to achieve their overall goals.  The first two points both call for equal treatment, without specifying whether by extending religious advantages to the non-religious or reining in religious advantages, so they already have good examples too.