I think it takes awhile for people to forget once someone or a group of people act in that sort of spiteful way I described. You know how people call up to cancel their internet service and they get that guy who won't let them cancel so they record to the call and release it on the internet for all the world to hate on? For a really long time after that people who never even had Comcast or AOL might have a bad taste in their mouth about those companies because of the way they were represented by a few call center employees. It takes people awhile to accept that things have really changed for the better.
Also, what I've noticed in my 40-something years is that things tend to run in cycles. There was a time when it was very "in" to proclaim to friends that you were taking some kind of herbal remedy for your cold or that you sought our Reiki treatment for something. I knew people who were taking lessons from supposed shamans in order to become a shaman themselves. People thought that was just the coolest thing ever. That was the 90's. Then it became popular to debunk all things "spiritual" and become atheist. Now it's becoming popular to put the brakes on all the vehement atheism and turn against it. I accept that this sort of behavior is just the nature of human beings and I sit back and wonder what will come along next.
I think everyone should be able to voice their opinion, but the behavior of a lot of atheists over the past few years has been mean and mocking towards the religious. Now they poke back and that reaction is being called mean and unneeded. The point I'm making is sometimes you poke your neighbor and your neighbor remembers that and pokes back. Mean, unneeded, or whatever you want to call it, that's how humans work. It's not that atheists shouldn't be able to mock, criticize, or express whatever opinion they want, it's that there are consequences to actions and sometimes those consequences are ones we don't like.
So voice your distaste. But remember, atheists aren't protected from mocking any more than theists are.