A fairly common question when it comes to the X-Men within the comics is, obviously, "well, why do humans hate mutants, but not, say, the Avengers?' Reading through the Claremont run on Uncanny through Unlimited, I've found a surprising answer. In adaptations, being saved by the X-Men provides a turnaround for Robert Kelly. (Actual turnaround, as in the X-Men animated series and X-Men '97, or by being replaced by Mystique, as in the movies, it's still an official turnaround.)
Except... that's not how it goes in the comics. Instead, he's a happy participant in starting Project: Wideawake, and... he's not specifically anti-mutant like, say, Graydon Creed. Put him in front of a camera (at least by the 160s,) and he's a pretty consistent voice for the general public of the Marvel Universe as a whole, or at least one side of them. Namely, to the comics' version of Sen. Robert Kelly, superhumans are awful things, whether that's the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, or the Avengers. It both makes the Days of Future Past playing out the way it does believable and shows just how good of a writer Claremont really is, IMO, that there's no lockstep 'mutants are awful things, but Spider-Man and Captain America are OK' yet.