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Card Carrying Atheists
April 5, 2002
by John Bloom
BOSTON, April 5 (UPI) -- I spent last weekend hanging out
with card-carrying atheists, and they're definitely a happier bunch than I expected. I thought all that railing against God--
whoops! "god"--would make them pretty cranky.
I wouldn't really call them festive--it's been a hard year
for people who refuse to sing "God Bless America"--but they do
know how to throw a party, and when they furrow their brows and
get all worked up, it's usually to express generalized grumpiness
about fundamentalists in the midwest trying to get away with something.
The theme of every atheist convention should be "Can You
Believe They're Getting Away With This?" Atheists are always on
the lookout for who's trying to get away with what. They've spent
ten years, for example, trying to get rid of a 104-foot cross on
public property in San Francisco, and almost that long trying to
get the government to stop giving Medicare and Medicaid to
Christian Scientist institutions that don't believe in medicine.
Now that will make you grumpy.
I was actually a guest speaker at the annual convention of
American Atheists, and they laughed at all my jokes, so now I
feel like an honorary atheist. One guy in the audience tried to
put me on the spot by asking, "Do you believe in our position?"
And I said something to the effect of, "Uh . . . no." But they
seemed fine with that answer.
A lot of the atheists are downright goofy, although I would
say each is goofy in his own way. They've overwhelmingly white,
educated, computer-literate and opinionated. I got into a pretty
interesting discussion with a guy from California who insisted
that seven-card stud is a more scientific game than Texas Hold
'Em, and of course I had to fight with him because I'm from
Texas. I guess that makes me goofy.
The number one issue--it may even be the only issue--of
organized atheism is church-state line-crossing. They don't just
want church and state separate, they want a 30-foot concrete
firewall with concertina wire installed between every church and
every state, including the ones in the Shetland Islands. Of all
the things that people try to get away with, this mixing of
church stuff with government stuff is the biggie. The latest
atheist bugaboo, for example, is Ten Commandments monuments. I
had no idea this was a national trend, but legislatures and
courthouses are evidently attempting to erect Ten Commandments
monuments all over the continent. The atheists, as you might
expect, have lawyers at the ready to strike down Moses' tablets
wherever they might appear.
You might expect the post-9/11 atmosphere to put a little
damper on atheisticizing (the opposite of proselytizing), but in
fact the reverse is true. Every other human rights and free
speech organization counseled the atheists to call off their
September 22nd demonstration at the Pakistani Embassy in support
of a jailed "rationalist." But they went right ahead, by G . . .
er . . . by human.
It's exactly in times like these, in fact, with people
getting all holy and self-righteous, that the atheists do their
best work.
"It's spectacular this year," said Ellen Johnson, President
of American Atheists, when I asked her how it was going. Johnson
is a strikingly beautiful and elegant woman--another thing I
wasn't expecting, since the American Atheists were led for 32
years by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who could be charming but was
almost always dowdy. "It's our best ever," said Ellen.
Ellen presided with a very light touch over the 230 people
present at the Logan Airport Hyatt, which is an all-time record
for the hardcore who show up at the national convention. I
expected it to be bigger, I told her, especially since the
organization is almost 40 years old.
"Organizing atheists," she said, "is like herding cats."
The problem, she says, is that, even though there are some
30 million Americans who say they don't believe in God, those who
join organizations tend to be namby-pambies who don't want to
offend anyone. "So they call themselves humanists," she says, "or
free-thinkers, or nonbelievers, or secularists, or rationalists,
or agnostics. There's even a group of Humanistically Agnostic
Life Force Worshippers. And a lot of them want you to know that
they believe that ALL of us are Really Good People, and so we
shouldn't critize anybody, even the religious that they disagree
with. They think the word 'atheist' is negative."
Well, I point out, it does mean "against theism," which is
kind of . . . uh . . . on the negative side of the scale.
"Yes, you're right, it does," she says with calm aplomb.
"But we think it's important to make clear that we are against
religion. We're opposed to the damage religion causes. Its
effects are widespread and subtle, but very direct. Religious
groups affect national policies on reproductive rights, freedom
of speech, our inability to police these faith-healing movements,
which we call 'faith-killing.' They're lying to people!"
Ellen has been on the front lines since September 11th,
fielding a constant barrage of emails and phone calls from people
who think atheism is tantamount to terrorism itself. "I answered
the phone one day," she said, "and a Christian woman told me that
because of church-state separation, we had caused God to be
removed from public places--and that's why the terrorists were
able to get away with it. Because God wasn't there. We had driven
him away. And I said 'Are you saying it's my fault?' And she said
that, yes, it was. But it wasn't just me. It happened to all
atheists. We had our patriotism questioned. We couldn't
participate in any memorial services because they were all
religious. And there were all kinds of legislative calls to
prayer, references to a Higher Power, and we were the only
organization that continued to speak out about that. Our friends
at the ACLU, at the First Amendment Center, were saying 'Just let
it pass.' But that's not what we're about."
Ellen has been part of American Atheists ever since she saw
an interview with Madalyn Murray O'Hair in 1979, wrote to her,
attended a convention, and got "hooked." O'Hair was, of course,
the woman who filed the landmark case in Baltimore in 1959
opposing public prayer in schools on behalf of her young son.
After the Supreme Court finally ruled in her favor in 1963,
O'Hair became public enemy number one of fundamentalists
everywhere, a role she relished as she founded American Atheists
in Austin, Texas, and went on to become a media gadabout and
crusader in many battles, large and small, until her shocking
murder in 1995.
She was not killed by a religious zealot, although many
people thought it was possible during the five years she, her son
and her granddaughter were officially missing. Their bodies were
finally discovered in 1999. They had been kidnapped by three
small-time thugs, one a disgruntled ex-employee of American
Atheists, who were after the association's bank accounts. The ex-
employee, David Waters, is now serving a life sentence in
Leavenworth.
Ellen drew the black bean of running the organization during
the "missing" years. "And I did regard her as missing," she said.
"I think if you ask the parents of Chandra Levy, they'll tell you
their daughter is missing. I was the same way. I thought of her
as missing until they discovered the bodies."
Even after seven years, the atheists are still somewhat in
disarray. Their extensive library has been in storage for three
years. Ellen moved the headquarters from Texas to a location
nearer her own home in Parsippany, New Jersey. And she's only now
starting, she says, to get back to activism.
"I'd like to see our organization be successful politically,
like the gays are," she says. "We're very similar to the gays--
about the same number of people--and yet they have more clout.
We're starting to run atheists for public offices, but we're
basically where the gays were 25 years ago. We don't have our
Stonewall yet. But eventually we'd like to see atheism recognized
as a 'protected' category in civil rights cases. As it is now,
you can be fired for being an atheist and you have no legal
recourse. I hate sending an atheist over to the ACLU or some
other group, because they turn it into a religious freedom case.
We don't want to say that we're another religion. We want to
argue that we have a right to freedom from religion."
In the meantime, she hopes to set up a Washington office
soon, to be able to put more pressure on legislators, and she
plans a march on Washington in September. "It's the first time
we've ever marched on Washington," she says. "It's a march of
godless people. We're inviting other groups to join us."
Even the Humanistically Agnostic Life Force Worshippers?
Yes, even them, if they want to come, although it's likely
to make a few atheists cranky that day.
© Copyright 2002
United Press International and John Bloom