I feel like people make way too big of a deal about it sometimes. People are definitely crossing the line when they get to the point of saying stuff like "I can't drive anything without three pedals". I know a couple of people that say that kind of thing. I drive a normal soccer mom SUV most of the time, and drive my manual sports car maybe a quarter of the time. Most of the time I'm doing normal city/town driving where there's no way I could possibly drive the way I want to drive my faster car.
I could see that being the case in California if you don't have a particular preference, or something, especially if the land is especially flat. And if you live in a major metropolitan area, that's reasonable even if you do prefer manual vehicles.
All automatics without relatively big engines that I have even ridden in have had heart attacks going up major hills (I'm talking like 60+ degree incline behemoths). I also like having the extra control of not only choosing a gear, but controlling the application of power to the wheels through that gear, when starting from a stop in icy/slushy/snowy conditions. This also extends to engine braking in adverse conditions. The deceleration is then perfectly controlled without much concern of losing traction. Added to this is the fact that if your brakes completely fail on the highway (this has happened to me) you can engine brake to safely decelerate, and even still drive the thing home/to a shop. Additionally, I'm still relatively certain that manual transmissions, being far less complex than automatic transmissions, are still far more reliable/bulletproof than automatics, and I'm the sort of guy that buys a car used, for cheap (in cash), and drives it for years and years until it falls apart. I think the only possible exception to this is if they somehow made a transmission as (nearly) simple as a stick shift, mechanically, and offloaded (most of) the mechanical complexity onto the computer, although that also just adds more unnecessary software that can go haywire as well.
I do not even own any sports cars. I wish that I did. If I'm going to own anything, it is going to have a stick shift. Practical reasons, like above, are a major factor in that, but so is simple enjoyment of driving. Automatics are just boring. I can drive somebody else's car for 15 minutes, and I already feel my soul draining from my body. The transition is always a bit of a system shock as well, since I usually go at least a year or more without having driven any automatics, although that just takes some time to overcome.
I can certainly understand people who refuse entirely to drive manual vehicles, for their own very valid practical reasons, especially if they have a considerable disposable income. I cannot understand people who do not accept the inverse from others.