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Make no mistake. Hitchens was a very nice and gracious person, in spite of his razor sharp wit. (I posted another response about this down thread.) That razor was pointed at those who would use religion to leverage power, wealth, etc.
But it is my position (probably Hitchens' too) that religion has such a grip on culture that it is ripe for the picking as a tool for abuse. It has become a very powerful tool for many nefarious purposes. From wrapping women in big bags to wrapping entire countries similarly to outright bilking people for their money (Robert Tilton, Peter Popoff, Benny Hinn, Jimmy Bakker, even Jack Abramoff). Or the Catholic Church sweeping a long history of priest sexual abuse under the carpet.
If religion is a good thing, it must own the hind side as well. If religion truly is an ethical framework, I see little evidence of it in practice. It is only the non-religious who are speaking out about the abuses.
Religion owns these things, my friend. And Yet we hear very little.
BTW, I love the bus touring nuns. And they are still stepping up. That's the kind of thing religion has to do to change my mind. There's not enough of it.
As always. I appreciate your perspective and your insights. You keep me reevaluating myself, always a good thing.
You know I agree with you about religion taking responsibility for the bad. Denying it is likely to lead to further abuse, and I think religious leaders have to be particularly vigilant about this.
It is most certainly not just non-religious people who speak out about the abuse. The speaking out from within has led to some of the changes that have taken place. Moral Mondays is a premiere example of this. And there is more than that going on, but the press coverage is virtually non-existent.
Thank you Religion forum posters. Learning new stuff is a good thing. Apparently my aged brain still has room for more, no matter how much junk I cram into it. 
And thank you all for help making this place like a comfy couch.
Thank you for further enlightening me.
Too many people only see Hitchens as the rabble rouser. He liked to kick some butt, but when he toured the Bible Belt during his God is Not Great book tour, debating theists all along the way, there were always packed houses and, more than once, overflows and added debates. The fact that the opposing debaters willingly agreed to it attests to the fact that in spite of his reputation, Christopher Hitchens was always a polite and gracious person. Listen to his interviews.
He also had a razor sharp wit. And he could turn a dirty limerick with the best of them.
to make the punishment worse. The very cruelest way of burning someone at the stake is a very slow fire, which effectively parboiled the victim. There were cases where the victims begged for more wood to be added, and were refused.
History of religion. Lots of little details to know. 
That the anti-gay movement hiding its bigotry behind religion is only going to result in more and more young people rejecting religion. Im not really sure if I qualify as the last of Gen X or the first of the millenials myself (born 1982) but the article does a good job on explaining many of my views or religion and their continued endorsement of homophobia just makes me that much more convinced that they are wrong.
It is like religion is against EVERY part of modern society. Evolution, embriology, astro-physics, immunology, sociology, psychology, sociology, meteorology, and even history. Basic astronomy would be on that list had they not been so completely defeated on the shape of the earth and its relation to the sun centuries ago. Science granted humankind two of its greatest wishes of all time, the ability to fly and walking on the moon; yet, still to this very day you have some religions (not all of them but a good many) digging their feet in, closing their eyes, and covering their ears and screaming "NO, I WON'T ACCEPT IT!!!"
<----felt the need to break up my paragraphs but could not think of the right smilely to put here.
But, worse than that in my opinion, they cling to outdated moralities that condone such horrid behavior. How can any generation sit there and watch what is happening in the name of god and religion and not doubt? Maybe they wont lose faith entirely but come to view organized religion as negatively as the article say they (we?) do. From the anti-gay movement here to women getting tried for adultery because they were raped against their will in Afghanistan why shouldn't they/we be cynical?
This is not to say that religion can not and has not done good, but can believers blame millenials for becoming disillusioned (or if it turns out the religion is wrong...enlightened) about religion? As the religious right doubles down on their opposition to marriage equality I foresee more and more people of generation X, Y, and Z rejecting it.
Its funny, but people like Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan, the late Jerry Falwell, Bill Donahue, and Fred Phelps could quite possibly be the single greatest evangelicals FOR non-theism that have ever lived.
What objections tend to be about lumping and being careless about being too inclusive.
I believe that progressive/liberal religious organizations and individuals are in the best position to push back against the religious right. They don't get much press and I try to promote and support them to the extent I can.
When we don't differentiate, or when people take the position that all religion is bad (e.g. Hitchens - "Religion poisons everything" , I think we undermine the very causes that we are all fighting for. And when that happens, the divisiveness plays right into the hands of our opponents.
Christian Scientist parents are often prosecuted for manslaughter, for not seeking medical care for a sick child that dies from that lack of care. Oftentimes, it is juvenile diabetes but can be other illnesses too.
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/flashbks/xsci/suffer.htm
Christian Science children have died and continue to die of diabetes, ruptured appendixes, measles, diphtheria, blood poisoning, cancer, and other illnesses that are curable or treatable with modern medicine.
Also, keeping your child from the outside world because it's "evil" means that when your child grows up he or she will have no way to deal with people from other backgrounds, making friends, making choices, or know how to deal with adolescence. That is doing a huge disservice. I have read about a girl who was a devout Christian who had been sheltered from the world. She went away to college. She came home for Thanksgiving weekend and hanged herself because she didn't know how to handle the responsibility of living in a secular world. 
If you tell your child the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Santa are all real, what makes you think your kids will believe you when you tell them Jesus is real? You can't see Jesus either.
