A quote from Mitchell Cohen

"In my view, a secular state needs a humanist basis. Yes, that means that I think secular humanist culture should be privileged in liberal democracy (or in what I would prefer, social democracy) but not religion. The reason is that it can encompass religious lives, whereas religious culture cannot do the same for secularism and atheism."

-- quoted in "The New Atheism" for the Winter 2008 issue of Dissent