Tony Win
The folks who lead the Freedom From Religion Foundation are used to drawing heat.
In a move opposed by liberal and conservative religious leaders alike, the Madison-based group challenged a federal law that gives clergy tax-free housing allowances. Under current law, ministers can deduct housing costs from their pre-tax salary -- including mortgage payments, property taxes and homeowners insurance -- if the money is designated specifically as a housing allowance.
The group, which defends the constitutional separation of church and state, won its case in federal circuit court in 2013, but the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit in November, ruling the organization did not have standing.
Undeterred, co-presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and her husband, Dan Barker, a former evangelical minister, plan to prove they've been damaged by the clergy-only tax exemption by applying for it themselves. Once denied, they will file their lawsuit again.
"As far as I can tell, every single church in the United States is against us on this, including the Unitarians, Universalists, American Baptists -- they're all gunning for us on this," says Gaylor, a short, slender blond who speaks in a high tone with an explosive vocabulary and unwavering conviction. "The ministers and churches sure don't want to give up their perks and privileges."
Gaylor is used to being the lone wolf on issues of church and state. Even some progressives wonder whether her group should concern itself with crÃches in public parks or Christmas trees in capitol buildings.
Or, for that matter, with restaurants that offer discounts to customers for praying in public or showing they are otherwise church-goers.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in mid-December, took the foundation to task for complaining about a diner in Winston-Salem, N.C., that offered a discount for public prayer. It was not a sympathetic spin. "You're a dick," the correspondent told Barker.
Barker says he doesn't mind. He used the large platform to make his point -- that so-called church bulletin discounts violate the federal Civil Rights Act because they discriminate against nonbelievers.
"When it comes to civil rights, there are indeed some issues that are more drastic than others. Lynchings and racial discrimination are clearly more horrible than being refused a discount because you don't pray," he says. "But where do you draw the line? Do we allow a little bit of discrimination because some people feel it is only petty?"
Gaylor's group is not the only national organization dedicated to the separation of church and state. But it does take the cause a step further by making a case for "nontheism" and reason over religion.
In recent years the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which bills itself as the country's largest group of freethinkers, has tried to empower nonbelievers and counter unflattering images of atheists in popular culture. In 2010 it launched a billboard campaign that featured local and national individuals who "came out" about being atheist or agnostic.
And just last week, the group announced a contest seeking an original sitcom or web series featuring a likeable atheist. It's the brainchild of an FFRF member, entertainment attorney Pamela Koslyn, designed to improve the public perception of nonbelievers, says Gaylor.
"Gays have made great strides in popular culture. There have been seminal moments in TV for women, for black Americans, etc., and now it's time for that seminal moment for atheist or agnostics."
Gaylor says that many Americans believe that nonbelievers are unsavory characters who can't be trusted.
"Atheists tend to be demonized," she says. "We don't see the kind of violence that's been directed at individual gays, but there's always a rumble of threat against us. It's continual in the crank mail [we] receive daily and [on] social media. So of course positive images, any images at all, really, are helpful."
Religious overreach
On the morning of Jan. 7, 12 people were massacred at the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo by masked gunmen in retaliation for the satirical magazine's depiction of the Prophet Mohammed.
The religiously motivated violence provoked worldwide condemnation, though some, including religious leaders, said Muslums were right to be angry.
Gaylor says terrorism in the name of God is a "very stark reminder of the harm of religion."
"People are always more important than dogma," she adds, "but religious fundamentalists and extremists believe the opposite is true. That's what makes them so dangerous."
The foundation condemned the violence and sent the magazine $20,000 from its "Atheists in Foxholes" support fund.
Gaylor says the donation was meant to address the needs of the victims and to show international solidarity with other atheists. "We felt the U.S. secular movement needed to make a grand gesture to reach out to the keepers of secularism in France, to show support," she says.
The support fund was started in 2012 to support nonbelievers who find themselves "in the crossfire" after taking a stand on atheism or the separation of church and state, says Gaylor. The first recipient was Rhode Island high schooler Jessica Ahlquist, who was "attacked from all sides" for winning a federal court victory to remove a prayer banner from her school auditorium. Gaylor says it was anticipated that Ahlquist, who was going to school under police escort, would need educational options -- which was the case -- and security measures.
Increased religious overreach into government and a blurring of once-distinct boundaries has meant more requests for help and action from the foundation, says Gaylor. The group's legal team received around 3,300 requests for help last year, up from just over 2,400 in 2013.
The size of the group has grown accordingly. Paid memberships just topped 21,500 -- the highest it's ever been and a surge of more than 140% over the past seven years. Staff size has also grown, and the group recently built a large addition onto their downtown headquarters which quadruples their former cramped, outdated office space.
Says Gaylor: "I can't think of a time that we've been busier or when we've been more needed. It's the best of times, it's the worst of times."
Blurred lines
In recent years, some of the biggest fights over the separation of church and state have revolved around access to birth control and abortion. Social conservatives deem it a battle over "religious liberty" because they believe, contrary to estabished medical science, that some forms of birth control are abortifacients. Controversy over insurance coverage for birth control was one of the biggest Obamacare battles, with a federal challenge going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gaylor says there is an an ongoing, dangerous and sometimes rapid erosion of the separation between religion and government.
"We used to conceive of separation of state and church as a clear line -- now it's so blurred," explains Gaylor. "We've lost a lot of ground. What used to be simple -- a wall of separation -- has become convoluted."
Bible clubs meeting in schools, religious prayer before government meetings and nativity displays on public property -- all once at least technically forbidden -- are now allowed at times, thanks to court rulings.
"Now, it's 'discrimination' against religion to observe such strict neutrality," she says, adding that recent court rulings require that "religion [be] treated like everything else instead of something from which public support must be prohibited. If your school has a chess club, you have to allow a Bible club."
"What used to be absolute, and therefore quite simple to enforce, has become blurred and contentious," she adds.
This slow trickle of religion into one-prohibited places creates a slippery slope that Gaylor fears could bottom out in a full-blown theocratic society. Fundamentalist Protestant groups and Roman Catholics are the top offenders pushing for a government governed by God, she says.
"These denominations may invoke state-church separation by crying it's being violated when they don't like a government action, such as Obamacare's contraception mandate," she says. "But they essentially believe in theocracy and believe their religious dogma should be legislated in our laws. They want to tell the government what to do so it conforms to their doctrines."
Politics plays a part in how the upper courts have ruled in favor of religious inclusion, she continues. "The packing of the federal and circuit courts under the Bush I and II years, and the stonewalling of Obama appointees in the past eight years" combined with "a 5-4 Catholic/religious right bloc on the Supreme Court [has had] a chilling effect all over the country," she says.
'They come to us'
While things may look bleak, the foundation continues to win its share of victories, both in and out of court.
Some of these include forcing the Internal Revenue Service to clamp down on electioneering by churches and religious groups, ending a partnership between Boy Scouts of America and Maryland's Department of Natural Resources, and stopping an Alabama police department from posting religious messages on Facebook, among many others.
In most cases, the group doesn't take any legal action. "Most of FFRF's legal work is nonlitigation," says Gaylor. "We try to end complaints without going to court, via education and persuasion."
The group now has five staff attorneys. "Legally, we sue when there is no other recourse. We don't go looking for violations; they come to us."
Gaylor says a lawsuit usually develops over something "egregious" or "outrageous" or when the group hopes to "carve out new law, or overturn a highly unconstitutional longtime practice." But they are choosy.
"We prioritize public school issues or those involving children or students," says Gaylor. "[Children] are vulnerable; they're a captive audience. And because the law is very much with us in keeping religion out of public schools, we can usually end those violations without having to go to court."
Currently, the group has about a dozen open lawsuits involving censorship, Ten Commandments monuments on public land, a city-appointed chaplain and state-instituted days of prayer. They've also recently sued Gov. Scott Walker for an alleged open records violation involving the state's Contraceptive Equity Law.
America's secular roots
The Freedom from Religion Foundation's first victory was in Madison 38 years ago, when Annie Laurie and her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, persuaded the Common Council to end its practice of prayer before each session.
They soon took on similar cases elsewhere, gained some notoriety, and after a couple of years, then-president Anne Nicol took the group nationwide in 1978.
Back then, they believed their battle to uphold the establishment clause of the First Amendment -- "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" -- would be short-lived.
"We truly thought it would only take a few years to remind the nation of America's secular roots, and that reason would prevail and we could get on with our lives," says Gaylor.
But that didn't happen. The group is now the nation's largest association of atheists, agnostics and religious skeptics, and continues to guard the separation of church and state and educate others about nonbelievers of any pedigree.
One vehicle for outreach is the group's weekly radio show Freethought Radio, which airs on 92.1 The Mic Saturdays at 11 a.m. and on iTunes. The foundation also distributes the newspaper Freethought Today 10 times a year, runs billboard and other ad campaigns, updates an extensive website as well as Twitter and Facebook accounts, and offers scholarships and essay contests for college students.
The organization also hosts an annual convention. Usually held out of state, the 2015 event is slated for mid-October at Monona Terrace.
Gaylor attributes her group's growth to a few factors: an increasing number of legal victories, its tenacity, an increase in outreach efforts and a general surge in secular popularity.
"We have a track record as a freethought group that isn't all talk and no action," she says. "Our 10 victorious lawsuits against [President George W.] Bush's faith-based initiative created a lot of positive attention."
Acts of global terrorism in the name of religion have also had an effect. "I'd attribute the remarkable growth in nonreligious youths' [interest in secularism] in part to 9-11," she explains. "That opened so many eyes to the harm of unchecked religion."
The nonprofit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm whose stated mission is to "protect the free expression of all faiths," is often on the other side of the issues from Freedom From Religion Foundation. In June Becket won a high-profile victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, with the justices ruling 5-4 that family-owned businesses like Hobby Lobby do not have to offer their employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the owners' religious beliefs. It was a controversial challenge to Obamacare.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation had filed an amicus brief to the court opposing Hobby Lobby's claim of a religious exemption.
Unsurprisingly, officials at the Becket Fund say Gaylor's group goes too far.
"FFRF takes an extreme approach to separation of church and state, seeking to eradicate even the most innocuous traces of religion from the public square," says Luke Goodrich, general counsel for the Becket Fund. "A few years ago, they even protested the Postal Service's decision to honor Mother Teresa with a commemorative stamp."
Gaylor counters that public funds shouldn't promote "institutions or individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings of belief."
But that wasn't Gaylor's only problem with a government-sanctioned honoring of Mother Teresa, whom she called an "extremist as a handmaiden for Roman Catholic global bans on contraception and abortion." Gaylor says the nun "used her Nobel acceptance speech not only to preach against legal abortion, but against contraception."
Rev. Michael Schuler, senior minister of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, notes that not all faith-based groups oppose Gaylor's group.
"Aside from those they face in court, some religious organizations actually appreciate FFRF and the work they do," says Schuler. "As someone with the utmost respect for separation of church and state, I feel they perform a useful service." A number of his church members support the foundation, he adds. "[FFRF] are pretty much of the same mind as most folks in our movement."
But he does acknowledge the foundation's tactics might be off-putting. "The FFRF tends to be more 'in your face' than similar organizations, which may lessen their appeal to secularists who are not quite so negative about religion in general."
New digs
Prior to the completion of its four-story addition in January, the foundation was crammed into what was originally a family home built by gold rush entrepreneurs in 1855. Over the years it held various businesses and was even once owned by a church and operated as a rectory.
The foundation purchased the building in 1990 and renamed it Freethought Hall. With staff additions, it was clear they had outgrown the space. "We were practically sitting on each other's laps," says Gaylor. "We'd turned the library and reception area into legal rabbit warrens. We had staffers at tiny desks wedged behind doors, and our webmaster and editor shared their office with storage."
While they had looked around for suitable office space downtown, nothing fit their needs, so they decided to purchase a crumbling building behind Freethought Hall on the corner of West Washington Avenue and North Henry Street. They razed it and started from scratch.
The new addition comes with a hefty price tag, but has plenty of space and amenities beyond more office space. There is an auditorium with seating for 100, a radio and television studio (the group plans to expand on their radio presence with a topical, timely TV show) and a second floor that houses the lawyers and a law library.
Inside, golden brown woodwork stretches around doorframes and along the floorboards as mustard accent walls offset the largely cream interior. Windows are abundant throughout, and there's a top floor dome-like room with a view of downtown the group has dubbed the "Above Us Only Sky Cupola."
Now that the addition is complete, the original building will be remodeled to make new space for the foundation's newspaper staff. In all, the entire project will cost just over $3 million.
Gaylor says the foundation will have a grand opening sometime in late spring, once an outdoor garden is in full bloom. They also plan to hold regular monthly events for members that will include guest speakers or birthday celebrations for famous freethinkers. A belated 88th birthday party for Gaylor's mother Anne will be the debut event for the new space later this month.
With the bulk of construction behind them, the foundation can now fully focus on its work, which Gaylor says is primarily about reminding citizens and public officials about the country's roots.
"Civics courses don't teach about why the framers of our Constitution chose to adopt a godless constitution, that America was first among nations to write a secular constitution that gave sovereignty to 'We, the People' rather than a divinity," she explains. "We are constantly not just defending, but explaining, the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, even to public officials who should know better."
And she's unapologetic about FFRF's somewhat confrontational communication style. "We don't pull punches," she says. "The theocrats are highly funded and highly organized in our nation."
Politicians, she adds, are "trained to wear piety on their sleeves" and pledge fealty to religion.
"Very few speak up for the use of reason or as persons who personally reject religion," says Gaylor. "The only way for that to change is for the nonreligious to come out of the closet."
