MADISON, Wis. – The Freedom From Religion Foundation and its followers are tired of being “at the bottom of the totem pole of social acceptance.”

So much, in fact, that the group’s leaders asked President Obama to speak at their rally, so more people will view them and their followers as “accepted citizens.”

MORE NEWS: From Classroom to Consulate Chef: Culinary Student Lands Dream Job at U.S. Embassy in Paris

The Madison, Wisconsin-based FFRF obviously needs to learn a lesson that most parents impress on their children at a very young age:

If you want people to be nice to you, you have to be nice to them.

The FFRF has a long record of heaping scorn and antagonism on those it disagrees with, particularly Christians, whom it openly and regularly attacks with legal threats, intimidation, disdain and mocking.

Despite that sort of behavior, the FFRF’s leaders complain that they are poorly treated by too many Americans, and earlier this year asked the president to address their June 4 “Reason Rally” in Washington, D.C., to help them gain more acceptance and goodwill.

“We respectfully invite you, in your final year in office, to do something no American president has ever done: reach out to secular America,” Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker, co-presidents of the FFRF, wrote to Obama. “Such attention from the Office of the President would demonstrate that freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists and rationalists are accepted citizens.”

Obama did not attend, but the real reason he was invited to the Reason Rally is sort of amusing.

“Reprehensible prejudice and ubiquitous social stigmatization dog U.S. freethinkers, atheists and agnostics,’ Gaylor and Barker wrote. “Those of us who are nonreligious daily encounter unwarranted stereotypes, putdowns and assumptions that we cannot be good people or good citizens. A December 2011 study in the Journal of Personality and Psychology found, appallingly, that atheists rank, with rapists, as least trustworthy!

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

“The University of Minnesota found that atheists are at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to social acceptance, in comparison to a variety of minorities often typified as ‘other,’ including gays, Muslims, recent immigrants, Jews and racial minorities.

“Acceptance of religious diversity does not extend to the nonreligious. The study, published in the American Sociological Review, April 2006, even reported that atheists are the people they would least like their children to marry.”

What a bizarre complaint. It’s almost like ISIS whining because it hasn’t been invited to join the United Nations.

The lesson here is simple (and comes from the Bible): You reap what you sow.

The FFRF spends a great deal of time and money pressuring public school districts and local governments around the nation to remove and/or disavow all references to Christ or the Christian faith.

The group has pressured schools to remove historic portraits of Christ from walls, end athletic team prayers, stop a mother from praying on the steps of her children’s high school, end associations with traditional graduation baccalaureate ceremonies at local churches, stop the Gideons from giving students free Bibles in school, remove all Christian symbols from a campus memorial to a deceased teacher, stop showing movies portraying Christianity in a positive light, stop school choirs from performing at churches … and so on.

Earlier this year, the FFRF even protested at a public park in Middleton, Wisconsin, while parents and high school students were voluntarily meeting during lunch hour to pray and discuss their Christian faith. The group offered other students from the nearby high school free pizza to join their anti-Christian protests.

The FFRF has also bullied local and state governments into stopping prayer before public meetings, removing Christian phrases from the decals on police cars, removing all references to Christ from Christmas parades, ending scholarships for students to attend Christian universities … and so on.

But the FFRF’s legal bullying pales in comparison to its flagrant and constant mocking of Christians.

A video produced by the group features Ron Reagan, the son of the late President Ronald Reagan, asking people to support the FFRF. Reagan signs off with the line, “Ron Reagan, lifelong atheist, not afraid of burning in hell.”

The ad got play on Comedy Central, but was rejected by CBS due to its “words and tone,” according to the New York Times.

FFRF staff attorney Andrew Seidel denied that the video was meant to mock Christians, but went on to say, “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it is mocking. Jefferson said the only way to combat an unintelligible proposition is through ridicule. There is value in pointing out the ridiculousness of religious belief.”

People who called the FFRF office and were put on hold were treated to a recording of a song written to the tune of the Christian folk ballad “The Battle of Jericho,” but with new lyrics penned by Barker:

“I’ve heard about your hero Joshua who’s not so great. But there’s none like Thomas Jefferson and his battle between church and state.”

When Pope John Paul II visited the U.S. in 1987, the FFRF produced a radio spot that played on several large metropolitan stations, with an original song called “Stay Away Pope Polka.” The lyrics went like this: “Pope, Pope stay away, don’t come back some other day, it’s worse than a sin that we have to pay, to hear you preach against the American way.”

The bottom line is that the FFRF is extremely hostile toward a religion that a majority of Americans embrace, to one degree or another. Yet it’s leaders have the gall to complain because Americans don’t like them, and asked the president to do something about it.

Even if Obama had spoken at their rally, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Those who are not tolerant will never be tolerated.