OCTOBER 1976

Vol. 18

No. 10
$1.00

..

In

This

..

Issue:

Atheist of The YearHe Doesn't Believe Ya Gotta Believe

Catholic Crimes Against Women

"Tell Jake to Sleep on The Roof"A Special about Margaret Sanger

A Journal

of Atheist

PI

Thought

E~10TIO
the method of philosophical

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CONTI,NTS,
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and
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(:rili'JlII- of I'S\ ."ialri . (:Ia""ifi"aliolls
(I )S.l\l II)
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\\ urrcu Shiblcs

Traditional
concepts
of emotion
are revised in terms of
con tempora ry
research
in
philosophical
psychology,
psychology,
and psychiatry.
The analysis stresses practical
and therapeutic
application
as well as theoretical
adequacy.

"I have been reading your new book on

emotion and I certainly am enjoying it immensely.
It is easily the best book on the subject that I have
ever read and gives the most adequate presentation
of the various cognitive theories of emotion that
probably has ever been published."
Albert Ellis, Ph.D., Exec. Dir.
Institute for Advanced Study in
Rational J?sychotherapy

************************************************************************************

Pleasesend me [

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Enclosed is my check or money order made

payable to:
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SOCIETY OF SEPARATIONISTS,
P. O. Box 2117
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INC.

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THE AMERICAN
Vol. XVII,

ATHEIST

No. 10

Editor:

ON THE COVER

MAGAZINE
October 1976

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Contributing

Editors:

Anne Gaylor
Jon Murray
Avro Manhattan
John Sontark

Cover Artist:

Jo Kotula

Design and Layout Editor:

Marilyn

Subcriptions:

H. B. Hawkins

Circulation

Manager:

Printer:

Hauk

Samuel Miller
Daniel Baladez

The American Atheist is published monthly by the

Society of Separationists, Inc., 4408 Medical Parkway, Austin, TX 78756, a non-profit, non-political,
tax-exempt, educational organization.
Mailing address: P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas,
78768. Subscription rates: $12.00 per year; $20.00
for two years. Manuscripts: The editors assume no
responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. All manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced and accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

CONTENTS-THIS

ISSUE

News
Atheist of the Year-More on Marsa .....
The High Court's Mixed Record
on Rei igion

.4
10

Feature Articles
"Tell Jake to Sleep on The Roof"
-A Special about Margaret Sanger
God and War

14
26

Letters to The Editor

16

Editorial

17

American Atheist Radio Series

Secularism. :

18

Honor Roll

.21

Speaking for Women

Catholic Crimes Against Women

22

Active in the women's rights movement in

her native Wisconsin, which has the sorry record of
being the last state in the Union to legalize contraceptives for unmarried people, Anne Nicol Gaylor
first worked to modernize birth control laws and
then pioneered abortion reform.
In 1967 as the editor of a weekly newspaper,
she wrote the first editorial ever published in Wisconsin in support of abortion rights. Later, she organized the Madison chapter of the Wisconsin
Committee
to Legalize Abortion,
and in 1970
founded one of the first abortion referral services
in the country.
She is presently vice-president central of the
12,000-member National Abortion
Rights Action
League, and is a co-founder of the Women's Medical Fund which helps indigent women secure abortions. She has organized the Sterilization Abortion
Litigation Fund to finance court challenges of unconstitutional
Wisconsin laws passed by the heavily
Catholic Wisconsin legislature in the aftermath of
the 1973 Supreme Court abortion decision.
Born on a farm near Tomah, Wisconsin,
Anne was the youngest of four children and the
only daughter of Jason and Lucie Sowle Nicol. Her
father, a graduate of the Agricultural Course at the
University of Wisconsin, farmed and operated a
grain and feed store. Her mother had taught elementary
school before
her marriage.
Anne's
mother died when she was a baby, her father when
she was in her teens. As a child, Anne attended a
one-room country school. She is a graduate of the
University of Wisconsin where she majored in English.
A businesswoman, she started the first service supplying temporary office help and the first
private employment agency in Madison in the 50's.
Later, she and her husband, Paul, owned a small,
suburban weekly newspaper. Since 1970 she has
done volunteer
work,
primarily
for women's
causes.
The Gaylor's have four children, all young
adults-Andrew,
twins
Ian Stewart and Annie
Laurie, and Jamie. For the past 17 years they have
supported children overseas through one of the international agencies that does relief work in impoverished countries.
Since her image as a "radical" makes her virtually unemployable, Anne plans to spend her immediate future in raising money for court tests of
violation of church-state separation in Wisconsin,
and in speaking out for abortion rights in the continuing battle to protect the 1973 U.S. Supreme
Court decision.

Livingston

News
MORE ON MARSA
On 17th June 1976 I attended a Metuchen
N.J. borough town meeting. To my surprise, at the
opening of the meeting Mayor Donald J. Wernik
said, "Everyone please rise for the invocation and
remain standing for the flag salute." I remained
seated. When everyone was seated, I stood to state
my strong objections to the religious exersice, stating that it violates the first amendment to our Constitution.
I further stated, "Attempts
to impose
your piety on others is a serious danger to the principals of church-state separation." I was told by
the Mayor that the subject had come up before and
that it was the consensus of the council to keep the
prayer. I argued that if something is not lawful it
cannot be superceeded because a person or a body
of persons arbitrarily wants to do it. Another exchange brought by comment, "You can pray in
your church, your home, or your head, but not in
this building supported by tax dollars. It is a clear
and absolute violation of law. Also ... this council
is here to represent all of the people all of the time,
not some of the time, and this religious exercise
does not represent many in our community including myself." I suggested a committee be formed to
investigate my charges. This was agreed upon.
Following this, I contacted the Middlesex
County (N.J.) American Civil Liberties Union, asking for the assistance of that group in the matter.
On 6/7/76 the council meeting was delayed
while Mayer Wernik explained views of the town
attorney and council as being for prayer in all
methods, i.e.: silent meditation and even to invite
a clergyman to lead in the ceremony! Several exchanges took place in which I challenged Mr. Barnichel who gave the invocation, the attorney Mr.
Spritzer, the Mayor, and the town council as a
group. I noted that religion has placed an inordant
burden on all the citizens, noting that in Metchen
alone, which is only 2.9 square miles, religion holds
over nine million dollars in tax exempt buildings to
say nothing of their tax exempt investments and
businesses. I stated that I had no choice than to do
my best to sue the council and borough of Metuchen for the permanent removal of their religious
ceremonies.
At the same time I received the following
letter from John Nehila, Staffperson, Middlesex
(N.J.) County ACLU, Tillett Hall, Room 101-C,

October 1976/American Atheist - 4

College, New Brunswick,

N.J. 08903.

Dear Mr. Marsa,

I have consulted with our Staff Counsel about the matters you have raised in your letter.
The fact is that the members of a body can make
rules of that body. Furthermore, this is not a matter to wh ich the constitutional principle of the separation of Church and State applies.
The following day The News Tribune Newspaper of Woodbridge, N.J. carried the following
article, titled "Metuchen Approves New Meeting
for Format".
A variation on the opening of the Borough
Council meetings was adopted last night-a compromise between the period of silent meditation agreed to by a majority of the council members
last week and the continuation of the invocation as
urged by Councilman Donald Barnickel.
Under the new arrangment, each councilman, in alphabetical order, will determine how
each particular council meeting is opened.
Barnickel gave a very brief prayer last night
since he is first on the list. Council President John
Bertrand will follow on June 21. In the past he has
given the invocations.
The compromise was suggested by ':ouncilman John Wiley at the agenda session which preceeded the regular meeting.
"I am not advocating here the teaching or
preaching of religion,"
Barnickel told his colleagues. "That is the proper function of the rei igious institutions."
He said he supports the doctrine of separation of church and state "as essential to a free society."
"But to deny the use of a non-sectarian appeal to a Supreme Being seeking wisdom and courage to act for the benefit of all citizens would be a
perversion of this doctrine," Barnickel said.
Councilwoman
firm in her position.

Diane

Forney

was equally

"I would feel most comfortable with a period of silent meditation," she reiterated. "When a
Metuchen resident (Paul Marsa of 35A Middlesex
Ave.) spoke against the invocation last week, Mr.
Barnickel rightly pointed out that the purpose of
the invocation is to help us better execute our res-

ponsibilities

dated June 25th, 1976, stated:

as members of the governing body."

With a silent meditation,

Mrs. Forney argued, time is afforded for reflection "on our responsibilities ... in a way most meaningful to each
of us as individuals."
Barnickel said he objected to changing the
procedure, a tradition of 70-odd years, because
"one man comes along and objects."
The prolonged discussion of the issue caused
the regular meeting to begin nearly 20 minutes
late.
"Prayer in the council is political show business," Marsa charged. Asserting that prayer is not
used at Planning or Zoning Board of Adjustment
meetings, he asked "Why pray now?"
He labeled the invocation as "just one of the
thousands of violations of the separation of church
and state throughout the country."
Former
Republican
councilman
Donald
Stewart expressed disappointment that the council
would "capitulate to a complaint from an individual." He said he would like to see the council continue the tradition of invocations.
Stewart called the council's solution
problem "a weasel way" to resolve it.

to the

Mayor Donald Wernik, Mrs. Forney and

Councilman
Walter Qualls took umbrage with
Stewart's statements. It was the intention of the
council to continue prayer in some fashion, argued
the mayor. Mrs. Forney said the council approach
was straightforward.
And Qualls said "to call this
council 'weasel' is particularly
out of taste."
The entire matter of "prayer" has so permeated the thinking of civil authorities in the United
States that Paul Marsa is not alone in finding the
attitude that this is part of the natural order of
th ings.
Recently Mr. Clyde A. Wheeler of Reading, ,
Massachusetts wrote to the alleged separationist
organization
"Americans
United".
We say "alleged" since this group is dominated by Baptists,
opens all meetings with prayers and invocations, is
closely tied to the churches which are Protestant,
and which refuses to assist Atheists for any cause.
Mr. Wheeler's complaint was that the legislature in
Massachusetts opened with a prayer each day.
The reply which he received from James
W. Respess, General Counsel of Americans United
i

"In answer to your question regarding the

prayer to open the legislature, it is our opinion that
this case cannot be won and we would not wish to
enter such a case, regardless of the cost or lack of
same. You might wish to explore this further with
the Civil Liberties Union chapter in your area.
They would be the most likely source for an attorney who would file such a case on your behalf."
Of course, the American Civil Liberties has
always eschewed any case involving "prayer"
or
Atheists-as evidenced by the reply Mr. Marsa received, and as evidenced by its refusal, in a fifteen year period to assist the two most militant
Atheists in the United States, Garry DeYoung and
Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
The legal test which was laid down in the
case of Murray vs. Curlett in respect to "impermissible entanglements" of religion and government is
that any law, or practice, which either inhibits or
advances religion is an impermissible exercise of
government.
It is obvious that a legislative body, pausing
before it begins, evoking the protection of a god,
any kind of a god, and bowing before that god
with supplications, acknowledging that the people
of that nation are subservient to god, and that the
nation is "under god", is an exercise of religion,
and an advancement of the same.
The American Atheist community- which
comprises over one-fourth of our nation, through
its inactivity has permitted this situation to come
about.
Prayer was never a part of our government
until the advent of the cold war. The Nixon-Eisenhower team, as President and Vice President of the
United States, began the introduction
of the practice, aided it, spread it. At that time, on an international basis the United States had decided that
it would pose our nation as the "Christian Good
Guys vs. the Atheist Bad Guys". The emotional
arousal that the country needed was predicated on
the religious fervor of our people. The cry was
"Godless Communism".
We permitted it. Each and everyone of us in
the <Atheist community
permitted it, with the exception of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who in 1959
defied the nation in openly proclaiming to be an
American Atheist, and entering upon litigation to
orotect the rights of the same.
liVe are orqanizing and organized now. There

Octobo.

1976/Amerlcan

Atheist

is no excuse for us to permit this madness to continue. We must carefully lay a foundation and then
begin the suits which are necessary to remove this
involvement of religion with government.

contact

We want you persons in

Paul Marsa, his address is:

New

Jersey

to

See what you can do to assist him toward

the removal of prayer there. Elsewhere in the
United States we will be moving toward this same
goal.

HE DOESN'T BELIEVE

YA GOTTA BELIEVE

"It is the greatest honor I've ever achieved,"

Thoren said Thursday. "The very greatest."

Thoren, 50, of Petersburg, Ind., was referring to a title that was recentlv voted him.
Thoren was named Atheist of the Year at a
national convention of the American Atheists Organization.

uished

Thoren
work

received the honor for his "distingin the field of communications."

Thoren's
distinguish
work in the field of
communications
consisted of founding a telephone
service called Dial-An-Atheist.
It was counter

Dial-A-Prayer,"

Thoren

said.

According
to Thoren, Dial-An-Atheist'
was
the rage of southwestern
Indiana for almost two
years. He said his recorded messages received an
average of 2,000 telephone calls a day.
"Then
the Indiana Bell people shut me
down," he said. "They accused me of being profane and foul."
Thoren admitted that
around his part of Indiana.

October

He said that many of the callers to Dial-Anwere not happy with the tone of his mes-

He said that Americans are tolerant of virtually all religious beliefs-except

that the belief
that there is no god.
Thoren said that he and his fellow members
of the American Atheists Organization
arouse anger in others because they do not dispute the fact
that they are making fun of the idea of god.

OF THE YEAR

The following
article appeared, just as below in the Chicago Sun Times, Friday, June 25,
1976.

Lloyd

Atheist
sages.

"The callers didn't like the way I referred to

the Holy Trinity,"
Thoren said. "I referred to the
Holy Trinity as Sky Daddy, J.e. Superstar and the
Holy Spook."

Paul Marsa
T / A Hess Gasol ine Station
Rt. 27 & Parsonage Rd.
Menlo Park, N.J. 08817
(201) 494-1771

ATHEIST

"People have burned crosses on my lawn,

shot guns at my house, things like that," he said.

1976/ American

"I

"Of course I make fun of god," Thoren said.

mean, who could take such a thing seriously?"

Thoren said that, on the Dial-An-Atheist

messages, he referred to himself as "Mr. T," and
that local children treated him like a semi-celebrity, and enjoyed calling him "Mr. T."
Many of his pro-Atheist
discussions
been with young children, he said.

have

"Yes, the little kids will come up to me and

ask me, "Why don't you believe in god?" Thoren
said. "And I will explain to them that I don't believe in god because there isn't one." I will tell the
children that, if we were to ask the question, 'Is
there a candle burning in the next room?' we could
very easily find the answer. We would simply walk
into the next room and find out. And I will explain
to the children that we cannot do such a thing with
god, because there is no god."
When asked how the parents of these children react to his discussions, Thoren said:
"As I told you, I have had cross bu rn ings
and shots fired at my home."
Thoren said he dismisses those who believe in
god as "supernaturalists,"
and cannot take them
seriously because "anyone believing in help from
some supernatural
power, that kind of thing, is
ridiculous.
God has never spoken to me and he
never will. God is merely a great figment of man's
imagination-people
have invented god to overcome thousands of years of fear."

he is very unpopular
Thoren

Atheist

-6

said that the number of calls to Dial-

An-Atheist

WATSON ANNOUNCES

did not surprise him.

"Of course people called my service," he

said. "I mean, nobody listens to Dial-A-Prayer, nobody dials Dial-A-Prayer.
It's so humdrum. They
restate and repeat the same incessant messages over
and over, week after week. It's the same reason
why people are bored by going to church or temple
every week. People go to religious services, and
they drowse off, they fall asleep. I mean, every
week, the lord's prayer and then Amanamanaman.
Du IIsvi lie!"
He said that his Atheist of the Year award
hangs on his wall "right next to my diploma from
Northwestern
Un iversity ," and that "next year the
national convention of the American Atheists organization is going to be held in Chicago, at the
Hyatt Regency O'Hare."
Thoren said he is working on plans to get
Dial-An-Atheist
back on the telephone lines--and
that, in the meantime, he has tapes of all his previous messages, and is preparing to put them together on a record album.

Frizzy
haired
geneticist
James
shocked his distinguished
audience when
"God is a copout."

Watson
he said,

The message of the last 30 years, he said, is

that "nothing is going to get better."
A panelists at one of several recent symposiums sponsored in Florida by the ITT Community Developement Corp., Watson, a Harvard professor who won the Nobel prize for his discovery of
the structure of DNA, the molecule of heredity,
amplified
his presentation
at a relaxed cocktail
party after the panel discussion.
"It would be nice to believe that there is
something distantly
wonderful that keeps everything in line, but there is no reason for it," he said.
"I would like to think that there is something guiding our destiny. But there is nothing that
is doing this but man himself.
"I

"I can't decide what to call it,"

"The Best of Mr. T," or 'Dial-An-Atheist's
Hits.' "

HIS ATHEISM

don't

believe

he said.
Greatest

[source:

in god

at

all,"

Miami Herald Tribune,

he 'said.
4/2/76]

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO

The Seventh Annual
National
American Atheist Convention
wi II be held at
Hyatt Regency O'Hare Hotel
River Road at Kennedy Expressway
Box 66456, Chicago, Illinois 60666

THAT COMPLAINT?
The
National
Organization
for Women
(NOW) is asking the Internal Revenue Service to
determine if the San Diego Roman Catholic Diocese is illegally using tax-exempt funds to support a
political antiabortion
campaign.

(312) 696-1234
on

April 8, 9, 10th
1977

Plan NOW to attend!

For
information
and
Reservation Blanks
write

H. B. Hawkins
P. O. Box 2117
Austin, TX 78768
or call

(512) 458-1244
[Reservations

limited

to 500 persons]

Janice Gleason, of San Diego and a member

of NOW's national board of directors, said recently that the women's
liberation
group's request
had been forwarded to the I RS national headquarters "because of the national significance of the
materials submitted.":
Mrs. Gleason, who also is national president
of Catholics for a Free Choice, has been denied
Communion
by Bishop Leo V. Maher of the San
Diego Diocese because of her militant proabortion
stance.
The I RS audit request is the first step in a
national mobilization
campaign against what NOW
considers "gross violations
of the separation of
church and state" in the Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life
Activities
adopted by the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops in Washington D.C., last November.

October

1976/ American

Atheist

-7

"The bishops have vowed to support political candidates who advocate an antiabortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution,"
Mrs. Gleason said.

ole" and "Ice Cream Sundae Pie," Wade notes

scriptures and spiritual "rnusinqs" meant to "acknowledge our supreme source of inspiration."

"This amendment has been endorsed by Ellen McCormack, of Nevil York, the bishop's handpicked Democratic Party candidate for President
on an antiabortion platform. Her political advertisements, published in official Roman Catholic
newspapers across the country, unequivocally state
that she is running for President soley to obtain
federal matching campaign funds to be used for
showing antiabortion
television commercials nationally."

The quasi religious market is big business

and fast growing. Among the reams of publicity
releases crossing news media desks were several by
producers bent on entering the religious market by
the side door.

Denying that the church is violating IRS

tax-exempt regulations governing political activities, Bishop Maher declared: "Every citizen has the
right to express his political and social views.
"While a religious organization may not devote a substantial part of its activities to lobbying,
the I RS regulation provides that an 'organization
is exempt even if it advocates social change or intends to mold public opinion on controversial issues.' "
[source:

Los Angeles Times,

1/31/76]

One was introducing a pair of record albums

by a top country music vocal group, The Statler
Brothers, who "interpret
the gospels" in albums
"Holy
Bible-New Testament"
and "Holy
BibleOld Testament."
But the publicity points out, "These men are
not overly religious ... but do go to church on Sunday and believe in religion."
Another release tells about producer-director
Roberto Rossellini's newly completed film, "The
;'.~essiah," the story of Christ.
The publicity explains the film relates the
story of "a young man of no visible assetsother
than his own presence and his faith in god ... r r
Then it emphasizes, "Th is is not a rei igious

LET US PRAY

film."

There is a story going around about an athlete who got up from a savage tackle and mumbled,
"Jesus Christ." Ten publishers jumped out of the
stands and asked him to write a book about his
religious faith.
Record companies vied for his signature to
cut a gospel rock album, and he was asked to speak
at 14 Christian summer camps and 12 evangel istic
ski retreats in Colorado.

.After a decade of disinterest in the organized church, a trend which has now leveled off,
there appears to be a phenomenal interest in religion. And, producers of everything from books and
records to key chains and T-shirts have hopped on
the bandwagon.
The public has given tremendous support to
religious rock operas, massive outdoor youth crusades featuring rock groups and to singing nuns
with twanging guitars.
One of the latest contributions
to the famous name-religious market is a cookbook
by
David Wade, "The Spice of Life Cookbook"
(Word, $7 _95). In the margins of the pages, alongside recipes for such dishes as "Angel Corn Casser-

October

1976/ American

Atheist

-8

How can anyone produce "The Messiah"

and say it is not religious? The same way a oerson
can say he wishes the church would be more outspoken about ethics and morals, about injustice
and oppression, about war and persecution, and
then adds, "But for Heaven's sake, don't get the
idea I'm reliqious. Organized religion turns me
off."
No involvement is necessary. No sacrifice or
commitment is implied .
[source:

CHRISTAIN

The Dallas News, 1/6/76]

GROUPS TO USE

STOCKS TO FIGHT BOYCOTT

Several major Christian denominations have
notified American corporations in which they own
stock that they will withdraw their investments if
the concerns submit to the Arab boycott against
Israel or discriminate against Jews.
The development
was disclosed at the
American Jewish Committee's 70th annual meeting
in Washington D.C. in mid-May and elaborated on
by Rabbi Marc H. Tannenbaum, national interreli-

gious affairs director

of the agency.

"The use of the church investments by a

number of major Christian bodies and ecumenical
groups to change the policies of those industries
which have caused social injury and violated the
civil rights of American citizens by capitulating
to
the Arab boycott against Israel and to anti-Jewish
discrimination
is a significant and welcome contribution to restoring ethical accountability
and social responsibility
in the world of commerce,"
Rabbi Tannenbaum said.
He said that one of the most active groups in
this effort was the National Ministries Board of the
American Baptist Churches. The church owns approximately
$36 million in stock.
In the letter, the Baptist group reminded the
various corporations
that "all boycott
demands
against any country
having diplomatic
relations
with the United States are contrary to the stated
policy of our government."
Other religious groups that have taken similar actions, Rabbi Tannenbaum said, were the Interdenominational
Committee
on Corporate Responsibility
of Pennsylvania and the Forum for
Investment
Responsibility
of New York.
Both
groups include representatives from the Episcopalian, Presbyterian,
Baptist,
Methodist,
Lutheran,
Unitarian,
Quaker, and Ethical Culture bodies.

have understood
the terrifying
seriousness of efforts by Arab nations to try to dehumanize Israel
and the Jewish People" by trying to equate Zionism and racism.
The report is a compilation
of Christian responses that followed the adoption
in November,
1975, of the United Nations resolution on this subject.
[source: Chicago Tribune,

5/16/76]

"AS Y E SEW"
The Most Hev. Walter F. Sullivan, bishop of
Richmond, Va.'s Catholic Diocese, has ordered all
high schools in his jurisdiction
to refuse to allow
the U.S. Selective Service to use the schools for
student registrations. He said he was practicing the
doctrine of separation of state and church delineated last year by the U.S. Supreme Court in denying government
aid to parochial schools. Separation of state and church, said the bishop, is a twoway street.
All the schools are, however, tax free in' every aspect of their functioning.
Bishop Sullivan did
not, however, give back the tax-exemption.
[source: Dallas Times Herald, 1/8/76]

CATHOLICS

INCREASE TO 22% OF U.S.

These ecumenical groups are related to the

Interfaith
Center on Corporate
Responsibil itv.
which consists of the major Protestant denominations and Catholic orders, all working in the field
of corporate responsibility.

The nation's Roman Catholic membership

increased by 180,037 in 1975 to reach a new high
of 48,881,872
Catholics living in 18,5~1 parishes
in the 50 states. Catholics now allegedly make up
22.78 per cent of the population.

Rabbi Tannenbaum
did not disclose how
much money had been invested by these groups in
various corporations.
He said the American Baptist
churches had received replies from 22 corporations
and are considering follow-up action.

Both infant baptisms and the number of

converts to Catholicism
increased, in the former
case reversing a downward
trend that began in
1962. Recorded Catholic marriages, however, decreased by 15,896 in 1975.

Recently Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, speaking at a Baltimore synagog, said the
United States was committed
to ending Arab boycotts against Israel and companies that trade with'
Israel. Kissinger said any move toward peace in the
Middle East "must include steps to end the economic warfare."

Last year also showed decreases in the number of priests, sisters and brothers, a decline in the
number of educational
institutions,
and decreases
in the number of children in Catholic schools and
public school pupils receiving religious instruction
under Catholic auspices.

In a related development, the American Jewish Committee

released a 74-page study by Mrs.
Judith 8anki, assistant director of the Interrelated
Affairs Department, revealing that "the leadership
and masses of the Christian world--Roman
Catholic, Protestant and Evangelical, Greek Orthodox-

These statistics and trends were among the

highlights found in the 1976 Official Catholic Directory. Figures are compiled as of Jan. 1 of each
year.
The directory shows that in 1975 there was
a decrease of 62 priests bringing the total of or-

October 1976/ American Atheist - 9

dained priests to 58,847. Professed rei igious perssonnel include 8,563 brothers, a decrease of 62,
and 130,995 sisters, a decrease of 4,029. Over the
past ten years, the clergy has decreased by only a
few hundred, from 59,123 in 1966 to 58,847 in
1976, but the brothers have declined by almost
4,000 and the nuns have decreased by more than
50,000.
It must be remembered that in reporting
membership the Roman Catholic Church reports
anyone ever baptised into the faith. If you are a
drop-out Roman Catholic (as an Atheist), your old
church is still counting
you to make up this
22.78% that she claims.
[source:

Washington

Post, 5/21/76]

and security dealers across the country

do.

Are you a church member? There are 528

U.S. churches which hold PG&E securities.
Do you belong to a fraternal organization or
benefit in any way from a charitable, cultural or
public service foundation fund? Substantial funds
are invested in PG&E by 1,313 fraternal organizations and various .foundations.
And 209 colleges
and universities place scholarship, student welfare
and various institutional
funds in PG&E securities.
And, if you are in any of the above other
than a church group, remember that churches own
banks, insurance companies and fraternal organizations.
[source:

PG&E Progress,

July 1975.1

NOTE FROM YOUR LOCAL GAS

AND LIGHT COMPANY
Who owns Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E)? People, that's who. Including you
most likely.
More than half of the company's 288,600
direct owners-people
who have invested some of
their savings in PG&E common
and preferred
-live in the company's service territory.

more

Collectively,
these local stockholders
own
than 43 million
shares of PG8lE stock.

But if you are not a stockholder, you probably are one of the millions of Californians who
have an indirect
ownership
interest in PG&E.
Do you own an insurance policy? Most probably, then, you are an indirect owner of PG&E because 554 insurance companies hold substantial
investments in PG&E securities. Chances are that
your insurance carrier is investing part of your premiums in PG&E to provide earnings that help cover
your insurance needs.
Are you employed by a city, county, state
or school district? At least 38 pension funds of
such governmental agencies have invested in PG&E
securities.
Are you a union member? If so, your union
may be among the 20 unions which have invested
funds, pension trusts and insurance premiums in
PG&E.
Do you have a bank account? If so, your
bank probably
invests some of your money in
PG&E. About 828 banks, investment companies

October

1976/ American

Atheist

- 10

Iii.

THE HIGH COURT'S MIXED

RECORD ON RELIGION
1 contemplate with sovereign reverence that
act of the whole American people which declared
that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the
free exercise therot,' thus building a wall of separation between church and state. "
-Thomas
Jefferson,
commenting
on the
First Amendment'.
In 1947, in the first of the modem-day SL'preme Court decisions on the First Amendment's
religious "establishment"
clause, the Court was
considering
New Jersey's system of paying for
transportation
to and from
paroch ial schools.
Clearly, the payments helped the children get religious training. Justice Hugo Black wrote in rinping words for the majority: "The First Amendment
has erected a wall between church and state. That
wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could
not approve the slightest breach."
Then, in the next sentence,
Jersey has not breached it here."

he said:

"New

As one of the other Justices noted in dissent,

the undertones of the majority
opinion with its
stress on "separation"
were rather "discordant"
with the ultimate ruling. The discordance, though,
was hard Iy unusual: there are some consistent
themes
in the court's long line of religion cases,
but there is also great inconsistency
and illogic.
And for those who delight in illogic, the Court's
treatment of the "wall of separation" is an especial
pleasure.
The Court has allowed states to provide text-

books as well as transportation for parochial school

students. It has, however, forbidden them to fund
"maintenance
and repair" for parochial schools.
But it has permitted state and Federal funding for
construction
for church-affiliated
colleges, and it
approved, by a 5-4 vote, general subsidies to
church-related colleges in Maryland.

Congress couldn't interfere with one's beliefs, but

that it could interfere with one's conduct, if it was
"in violation
of social duties, or subversive of
good order." This distinction was to last for years
in the Court's interpretation
of the free-exercise
clause.
But by the 1960's, substantial agreement
had developed that conduct also must often be
protected if one's right to free exercise of religion
is to be protected. A notable example: the 1972
case in which the court ruled that the Amish, who
for religious reasons do not believe in formal high
school education, could not be convicted of violating the state's compulsory school attendance law.
To interfere with the conduct of the Amish by
compelling them to attend school would clearly
have involved an infringement
of their beliefs.

The court permitted schools to require flag

salutes by children whose religious convictions forbade such salutes, and three years later, it banned
flag salute requirements.
It permitted communities to require Jehovah's Witnesses to pay licensing
fees before seeking to sell their phanplets, then, the
very next year, banned this as well. It rejected, as
an unconstitutional
"establishment,"
a "released
time" program allowing children to get out of public school classes for religious teaching, then, four
years later, okayed a released time program.

In the 19th century, establ ishment-clause

cases were also rare. But in the 20th century there
have been many, mostly involving schools-public
funding of parochial schools, and prayer or other
religious activity either in the school or carried
on with school cooperation. The 1947 New Jersey
transportati~>n case set the tone.
.

Jefferson's "wall of separation" was quoted

often and with reverence along the way. In 1971,
though, writing for the majority, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger remarked on what had become obvious: "The line of separation, far from being a
'wall,' is a blurred, indistinct, and variable barrier
depending on all the circumstances of a narticular
relationship."
Recently, when the Cou~t upheld
the Maryland program, no one mentioned the wall
at all.

As the Court saw it in the New Jersey case

the object was that the Government could not
"contribute
tax funds to the support of an institution which teaches the tenets of any faith," because that would be a law relating to the establishment of religion; yet, it couldn't hamper the free
exercise of religion either, by denying "benefits
of public welfare legislation" to anyone because of
his or her faith. Free transportation
school was
a state program designed for children's welfare.

The reasons for the Court's varied rulings

are many. The words of the First Amendment are
sparse, but the issues complex. At times there is
a conflict, or seems a conflict, between the "exercise" and the "establishment"
clauses.

to

There is the perception voiced by the Court

as far back as 1892 that "th is is a rei igious peop le."
There is history-when
the Court in 1970 rejected
a challenge to New York's property tax exemption
for property used solely for religious purposes, for
example, the Court reasoned in part that there was
a long tradition of such exemptions. There is pragmatism, and practicality, as in the increased public
demands in the 1960's for Federal aid to orivate
schools. And, of course, there are the switches in
personnel on the Court itself.
The religious caseload really began to pick
up in the late 19th century, most significantly,
perhaps, in 1879 with the first of several "Mormon
cases." Polygamy was a tenet of the Mormon faith;
it was also illegal. The question was the law banning polygamy itself illegal, as a denial of the right
of free exercise? '
The court resolved the problem by deciding,
in effect, that the free exercise clause meant that

In view of this reasoning, what followed,

perhaps, is not surprising. The cases became a matter of looking at factual distinctions: the first time
the court considered a "released time" program,
school buildings were used. It was struck down.
The next time, the children left the school for their
religious
classes; 'no
school
buildings
were
used. The program survived the attack.

The difference that the Court has divined between aid to parochial school and aid to churchaffiliated
colleges may tell the story best. The
Court is very strict on aid to parochial schools, limiting it mostly to textbooks and transportation,
but with colleges, it is increasingly expansive. It
distinguishes thus: parochial schools are sectarian,
teaching religious concepts; school children are
young and impressionable. College students are less
susceptible to religious doctrine; there is ahigh degree of academic freedom at the college level; college courses "tend to entail an internal discipline

October 1976/American Atheist - 11

lV

for sectar-

the cocktail parties and other social affairs that are

an important part of every delegate's working day.

1'1 one area the Court seems truly adamant

about the wall of separation:
in 1962, it struck
down a prayer composed by New York officials for
school children; in 1963 it invalidated a program
of reading the Bible and the lord's prayer in public
schools. It has not veered from either position even
though it is well known that there are still widespread violations of these rulings.

Monsignor Chell, one of the Vatican's experts on East-West relations, served from 1967 to
1973 as a negotiator in efforts by Pope Paul VI to
strengthen links between the church and the Communist governments in Eastern Europe.

that inherently
ian influence."

limits the opportunities

Thomas Jefferson was a sophisticated man,

and it might be he could understand what has happened to his wall between church and state. After
all, he once designed another wall, for the University of Virginia--the
serpentine wall. It swings from
right to left and back again, but it stands up all the
same.
[source:

Lesley Oelsner,

New York Times, 6/27/76]

GOD DID IT
When George Foreman beat Joe Frazier, for
former heavyweight champion, to a pulp on the
16th of June, 1976, he had only 3 sentences to say
concerned with h is victory.
"I've always been a good finisher. When I get
a man hurt, he doesn't come back alive," said
Foreman after ending Frazier's career.
"But,"
the puncher."

said Foreman,

"God

is on the side of

[soure-r: St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

"THE VATICAN

6/16/76]

EAR"

During a recent late-evening debate in the

Security Council, a slender Roman Catholic priest
slipped into the chamber, took a seat in a section
reserved for delegates not directly concerned with
the issue under discussion and listened intently to
arguments about Spanish Sahara.
"There was a threat to peace," the priest explained later. "The Vatican must know."
.
He is Msgr. Giovanni Cheli, permanent observer of the Holy See at the United Nations, who
is considered one of the best-informed diplomas in
the international community
here.
The Pope's man at the United Nations, a 57year-old Italian from the Piedmont region, can often be seen chatting amiably with officials from
both Communist and non-Communist
countries at

October

1976/American

Atheist

- 12

In 1971 Monsignor Cheli was instrumental in

inducing Jozsef Cardinal Mindszentv, then Primate
of Hungary, to leave the United States Embassy in
Budapest, where he had found refuge during the
1956 uprising, and go into exile.
The Vatican observer, who has a staff of 14,
reports to the Holy See regularly,
perhaps in
greater detail than do some delegates. At least once
a week a courier with a diplomatic
pouch leaves for
Rome; urgent
information
is cabled in code.
Monsignor
Cheli watches meetings of the
General Assembly, the Security Council and the
world organization's
various committees, although
he does not address them or vote. He spends many
hours oainstakingly
reading the papers and, documents that the United Nations pours out in an unending flow, and he presides at weekly staff meetings to discuss current issues.
Delegates say that he became involved behind the scenes in the controversy over the Arabinspired resolution branding Zionism as "a form of
racism and racial discrimination."
He made the point that the significance of
the term "Zionism"
must be thoroughly
investigated before it could be the subject of a United Nations document. The General Assembly approved
the controversial text on Nov. 10.
Neither the Vatican
nor United
Nations
headquarters expects Monsignor Cheli to take any
visible iniatives. "Essentially,
the Pope's man is
what his title says," a European ambassador remarked. "An observer; yet he acts at ti mes as a
catalyst as well, quietly
putting out suggestions,
bringing people together, offereing the long-range
philosophical-ethical
view of problems and issues."
Asked why the mission needed
staff, the Vatican observer replied:
"Many of the
incide with those of
toward a more just
disarmament;
these
the pronouncements
the church."

so large a

aims of the United Nations cothe Holy See. Peace, progress

international
economic order,
are themes that recur also in
of the Pope and the efforts of

The Vatican office, reinforced by volunteer

workers during General Assembly sessions, is today
one of the bigger observer missions. It's expansion
during the last few years reflects a growing awareness at the Vatican of the role of international organizations and of the importance
of the third
world.

Bible Week, an interfaith

from Nov. 23-30.

The observer and his staff have just moved

from cramped quarters in a building attached tc
Holy Family Church, on 47th Street near United
Nations Headquarters, to a town house at 20 East
72nd Street.

marks.

project

This year's honorary chairman is President

Gerald Ford, who selected the Biblical passages
which are recommended for reading.
The list is being widely

The Holy See's observer mission at the

United Nations was established in January 1964.
Other observer missions are maintained by the two
Vietnams, the two Koreas, the Principality of Monaco, Switzerland, and numerous others. The Atheists, of course, have NON E.
[source: New York Times, 12/12/75J

REFUGEES

RECEIVE

TRACTS

One of the first items each of the thousands

of Vietnamese refugees received as they landed in
the United States this year was a religious tract.
Almost overnight, having heard of the quickly arranged immigration,
the American Bible Society (ABS) printed artistic, colorful phamplets for
distribution
among the refugees as they. alighted
from planes that brought them to th is strange,
new, country.

slated this year

distributed

[source: Dallas Morning News, 11/22/75J

The news presented in these columns, which

fills approximately
one-half of the magazine, is
chosen to demonstrate to you, month after month
that the dead reactionary hand of religion is always
on you. It dictates how much tax you pay, what
food you eat and when, with whom and how vou
have sexual relations, if you will have children and
how many, if you are a woman whether you will or
will not become pregnant and if you will or will
not remain so, what you read, what plays, cinema
and television you may see, and what you should
or should not believe about life.
Religion is politics and, always, the most
authoritarian and reactionary politics.
We editorialize our news to emphasize this
thesis. Unlike any other magazine or newspaper in
the United States we are honest enough to admit
it.

Opening them, they found the scripture 11

Corinthians
1:3-11, printed in their native Vietnamese language:

"
Ne want to remind you, brothers, of the
trouble we had in the province of Asia. The burdens laid upon us were so great and so heavy, that
we gave up all hope of living.
"But this happened so we should rely, not
on ourselves, but only on god. From such terrible
dangers of death he saved us, and will save us... r r
(Good News Bible).
,
Believing the Holy Scriptures have a message
of comfort and hope for all persons, the ABS is
dedicated to its cause, to get people to read the
Bible once they have it in their hands.
Comprised of Protestant,
Roman Catholic,
Orthodox
and Jewish business and professional
people, LNBC has been calling attention to home
Bible reading through its sponsorship of National

October 19761 American Atheist - 13

on book-

"Tell

Jake

to

Sleep
Anne

A slight, red-haired young woman, Margaret

Sanger, cared for patients in the swarming tenements of the lower east side of New York City in
the summer of 1912. In her area of work one block
alone held 3,000 persons, 450 of them babies.
Most of her cases were confinements
for
pregnancy, and she dealt daily with women who
had five, six and seven children already crowded into tiny apartments, where a new baby pulled the
fam iIy ever deeper into the hopeless morass of poverty.

on the

Roof"

Gaylor
overwhelming
truth of women's
needs and yet
turned to pass on the other side. They must be
made to see the facts. I resolved that women
should have a knowledge of contraception.
They
have every right to know about their own bodies. I
would strike out; I would scream from the housetops. I would tell the world what was going on in
the lives of these poor women. I would be heard.
No matter what it should cost, I would be heard."

Back street abortionists

flourished
in the
area and going home at night Margaret Sanger often passed long lines of women waiting in front of
the abortion "offices".
Several times she counted
over 100 women waiting.

The cost was great, but she was heard.

Abused, persecuted, shunned by former friends, in
exile, jailed nine times, Margaret Sanger finally saw
birth control (she coined the phrase) legally, socialiv. and medically accepted. Her pamphlet "Family
Limitations",
which sent her into exile in Europe
because it spelled out specific birth control techniques, eventually was printed in 13 languages. Her
newspaper, "The Woman Rebel," was the harbinger of a new and wholesome concept of sex for
women, free from prudery and restraint, presaging
the emancipation of women from sexual servitude
and mandatory motherhood.

One day she was called to a dingy tenement

on Grand Street to attend a Mrs. Sadie Sachs, a
victim of bungled abortion.
Her husband, Jake,
a truck driver, had come home to find his wife unconscious on the floor, their three children crying
helplessly. A doctor confirmed that septicemia had
set in, and he and Margaret Sanger struggled for
two weeks to save Mrs. Sachs' life.

There were many low points-her

lonely
flight to England to avoid arrest, the death of her
much-beloved,
only daughter Peggy, the raids on
her birth control clinic, the hunger strike and neardeath of her sister, Ethel, who was iooprisoned for
disseminating
birth control information,
her own
arrests and a 30-day incarceration in Queens County Penitentiary.

Present when the doctor came for his final

examination
of Mrs. Sachs and to pronounce her
out of danger, Margaret Sanger heard her patient
ask him, "What can I do to prevent another baby?"

Her crusade for birth control was a focal

point for official Catholic harassment. As late as
1921, when she organized the First American Conference on Birth Control held in New York, its
final rally was obstructed,
with the Town Hall
closed by order of Archbishop
Patrick J. Hayes.

Repeatedly she was seeing the degradation

of motherhood,
of sex servitude. She was nursing
women, frail and wasted, fearful of another pregnancy, yet unable to prevent it.

Said the doctor,

"Young
woman, there's
on Iy one way. Tell Jake to sleep on the roof!"

Wrote Margaret Sanger:

Later that year Margaret Sanger was
moned again to the Sachs tenement, only this
she and the doctor were too late. Mrs. Sachs,
nant again, had attempted self-abortion and

sumtime
pregdied.

That night Margaret Sanger reached a turning point in her life and put aside her nurse's uniform forever.
"I was now finished with superficial cures,"
she wrote, "with doctors and nurses and social
workers who were brought face to, face with this

October

19761 American

Atheist

14

"It was one thing to have halls closed by a

mistaken or misguided,
ignorant
police captain,
but a very different thing to have a high dignitary
of the Roman Catholic Church order me to stop
talking. I knew the law of the city; I knew the
rights of citizens guaranteed under the Constitution. I had been taught by my teachers in American history that the church and state were separate
and apart; that we as citizens were guaranteed from
interference by powerful church influence. At the
thought of this official impertinence, this bullying,

this arrogant dictatorship, this insolence of a Roman Catholic Archbishop, my resistence, my resolution became set. I would not close that meeting
unless I was forced by arrest to do so. I knew our
rights were being violated ... Unless I stood my
ground and got arrested, I could not take the case
into the courts."
Naturally,
Margaret
Sanger stood
her
ground. Confusion followed as she was silenced by
two policemen and other women took the podium
and attempted to speak. There were cheers and
bravos for the women, boos, hisses and catcalls for
the policemen who silenced them. Finally, Margaret Sanger and Mary W.insor, a dauntless suffragist,
were arrested. With policemen holding their arms,
they were led from the building and marched
through the streets to the stationhouse, followed
by a large crowd. Reserves had been called out to
deal with the "mob".

vertised, and given column after column

able publicity.

of favor-

Margaret Sanger travelled far with her message-Japan,

China, India-and
made dozens of
trips across the Atlantic. She lived to see birth control clinics around the world.

The case was dismissed the next morning,

but Archbishop Hayes inadvertently
had assured
the birth control movement the best publicity possible. His aide, a Monsignor Dineen, helped the
cause still further with a statement to the New
York Times (Nov. 15, 1921.)
"The Archbishop is delighted and pleased at
the action of the police, as am I, because it was no
meeting to be held publicly and without restrictions. I need not tell you what the attitude of the
Catholic Church is toward so-called birth control.
What particularly aroused me, when I entered the
hall, was the presence there of four children. I
think anyone
will admit that a meeting of that
character is no place for growing children. Decent
and clean-minded people would not discuss a subject such as birth control in public before children,
or at all. The police had been informed in advance
of the character of the meeting. They were told
that this subject--this plan which attacks the very
foundations
of human society--was again being
dragged before the public in a public hall. The presence of these four children at least was a reason for
police action."
The four children, as it turned out, hao-,
pened to be four mature Barnard College students
with bobbed hair. Short hair was very daring for
young women in 1921, and to the elderly Catholic
clerics, short hair could only be found on youngsters.
The action of Archbishop Hayes brought a
firestorm of protest with critical editorials in all
the east coast's leading daily papers. People who
had never heard of birth control heard of it after
the Catholic blunder. The idea was dramatized, ad-

Margaret Sanger

Eventually, the honors poured in, among

them a beautiful tribute from her close friend, British author H.G. Wells. How appropriate if there
were a statue of Margaret Sanger in our nation's
capital with his words inscribed:
"Alexander the Great changed a few boundaries and killed a few men. Both he and Napolean
were forced into fame by circumstances outside of
themselves and by currents of the time. But Margaret Sanger made currents and circumstances.
When the history of our civilization
is written, it
will be a biological history and Margaret Sanger
will be its heroine."

October 1976/ American Atheist - 15

f/

letters

to

the

Editor

Dear Madalyn;

Mrs. O'Hair,

I'm glad to have recieved your letter concerning my donation of the book Freedom Under
Seige, to the Newark Free Library.

I recently
voiced these sentiments
for a
friend, now recovered, and it appeared in the Chicago Daily News, June 24,1976.

However I did do exactly what you asked

me in your letter even before I recieved your letter
requesting that I do it.
Well here is the story. I donated the book as
I told you I did about 3 weeks later I went in to
see if the book was on their shelves. But I found no
book Freedom Under Siege. I then asked and
they looked in their files and could find no card.
They could not locate the book either, they told
me someone must have taken it out and they forgot to file a card. O.K. So far, so good. I left and
waited another 3 weeks or so and went back again.
I could not find the book and no card. However
they were having a book sale an:::l they said to me,
"Perhaps it is in the book sale." I said "What are
these books selling for?" She said "10 cents." I
could of dropped over.
I said "Here I bring in a book that cost me
$9.50 and you're going to sell it for a dime?" Well,
I found out when the sale was and I was luckv: I
bought it back. My dauqhter looked in the back of
the book and said, "Dad this book never had a
card. I'm sure they never put it on the shelf."
I
thought this to be a rotten thing for them to do.
I now have the book in the Lyons N. Y.
Free Library and it's there with these stipulations:
[1] that they can read the book and decide
whether they want to keep the book and [2] if
they do they are to put it on display with other
books on the shelves. [3] And if they don't want
to do that they are to return it to me.
I was so damned mad to think that they had
the nerve to take my book never put it on their
shelves. And throw it in a sale for a dime! I let
them know I did not like what they did and they
know it. From here on their will be stipulations.
Mr. John J. Tournois
Newark, NY
P.S. I just phoned the Lyons Free Library and I was
informed that the book Freedom Under Seige will be
placed on their shelf in the very near future. After a month
or so I will check to see if they have and I will then again
write you and let you know if they did or not. But I do
have confidence they will.
October:.19761American Atheist - 16

To the religio in residence at this hospitalDon't pray for me, at least not in my presence, for I'm a captive audience in this hospital,
plagued with the dreadful headaches and weariness
of men ingitis.
I know you bring cheer and comfort to some
of the guests here. But not to me. When I entered
the emergency room, I filled out a little card of
vital statistics and under religion, I marked "none."
The same information
is on my wristband. So why
do you come here, as if I had invited you?
You have not even respected my
knocking. You do not observe visitor's
you already have been here three times.
are not short and cheerful and they do

privacy by
hours and
Your visits
upset me.

With an I.V. in my arm, I cannot direct you

toward the door.
Perhaps I should change the card to read
"agnostic"
under religion? Would that stop you? I
do not know what is to come, really, but will this
be a reflection on my husband, who 'teaches elementary grades in a small community?
Will the
word be passed on that he is without religion, godless? Will the parents believe he is infecting their
children with his belief or lack of it?
You cannot help it that you are short and I
am tall; but do your eyes have to remain at about
the chest of my 5-foot-10-inch
frame? My beauty
is not enhanced by this hospital gown, I know. Nor
is yours, in that sport coat that does not hide your
clerical heart.
I don't know where I caught the virus of this
disease. But I am convinced it was not punishment
for my sins. I will get well, if my body can throw
off this illness, and my mind is rested. My own
will, the help of dedicated doctors and nurses and
the love and support of my husband are enough for
me.
I'll talk directly to whatever power guides my
actions and aspirations. I don't need an advocate. So
please- won't you just leave quietly?
Claire Metzger
Dixon,IL

Editorial
A Guest Editorial
Happily

we all work

However we Atheists
viewpoints.

for the same cause.

have many divergent

At first when I attended meetings with large

groups of Atheists, I wondered if any two of us
could ever agree on anything. But later, after thinking about it, I realized that most of what we were
"arguing" about were people's rights and laws of
the land which restricted those rights. Most of the
onerous restrictive laws were laid down on us by
the goody-goody Christians who in general desire
to make our country's
laws the same as their
church laws.
However much you or your group are opposed to, let's say, abortion is it necessary to crusade to make it illegal for all, world wide, as the
Catholic church is trying to do?
However much we may be opposed to murder, we are kind to our pets and consider it a good
thing to put our terminally
ill dogs and cats to
death, but in the case of the upright primate homosapiens, this species of mammal must suffer even
though they may so very much desire to die, than
continue to suffer. It's the church again saying it's
a no-no.

by Lloyd Thoren
thing that will in the long run create severe hardships for our great-great grandchildren, whose ever
genes composed their makeup.
The author could go on and on and on discussing rights and wrongs, but it all boils down to
the fact that we should maximize the freedoms of
all peoples and minimize attempted enforcement
of the aged discriminatory
laws which cause such
a misery for many minorities.
We are fighting for one cause. AT H E ISM.
Why? The reason is that Christian indoctrination
causes people to become severely neurotic. The situations in Northern I rei and and Lebanon are pitiful examples.
Cooperation with fellow Atheists is essential
to our success. In our movement there are many
courageous persons. None are "perfect".
Let's get behind our Atheist

leaders.

We are on your side.

We are doing the best we can.
Sometimes we mess up.
But by damn we try and shall never. give up.

Those damn idiotic 10 Commandrnents were

lifted out of the book of Exodus, a book of hundreds of laws, the original Dear Abby of 10,000
years ago. They are still trying to enforce obedience, these insane people who believe something
written in ages past by our ignorant forefathers
should continue to be held sacred, whatever that
means, for all mankind forever. Never an amendment, never a change.

Our cause is truth

timately win.

and that's why we will ul-

Like Victor Hugo said, "No army can stop

an idea whose time has come". Our time has indeed come.

Thank you,
We Atheists are not at all like the selfrighteous Christians. We can agree that what somebody else does is really none of our affairs so long
as it does not hurt us.
Of course we have the obligation to point
out as Maltheus did that geometric population
growth will ultimately be a disaster for mankind.
The reasons the Catholic church has not been more
concerned with this, problem is positive proof of
the stupidity of their leadership.
We should always be concerned about every-

Lloyd Thoren
Indiana Chapter Director
Society of Separationists,
P. O. Box 151
Petersburg, IN 47567

Inc.

October 1976/ American Atheist - 17

American

Atheist

Radio

Series

Secularism
25th November, 1972
Austin, Texas

Program number 221

KTBC Radio

Christians

now

admit,

at least in theory.

2. The right to differ, without

right to think is nothing worth.

Hello there,
This is Madalyn Mays O'Hair,
Atheist, back to talk with you again.

American

As an Atheist and speaking for Atheists as

well as American Atheism, I try constantly to find
out why we have hidden ourselves under diverse
names during our history.
Imagine then my surprise to come upon, finally, the origination of the word "Secularist" and
find that it was put into use by George Jacob Holyoake, of England, of whom much has been said in
these programs. Yet, I did not uncover this aspect
of his activity until this week.
George Holyoake first used the term "Secularist" in 1851 and one author says that this was
used to express the attitude of the rationalist towards religions which affirmed both Divine Providence and Immortality.
After deciding on the word, he convened
at Manchester, England, a conference which led to
the establ ishment of various "Secu larist" groups
and ultimately of the National Secular Society of
England. I visited that Society in my last trip to
Enqland=-it is thriving nicelv=even yet.
From 1846 to 1861 Mr. Holyoake had edited the magazine "The Reasoner" which at that
time was the only important publication in England devoted to the judicious discussion of the
various theological questions including those which
refer to the existence of god and to the alleged
truths of the Bible. It was in the pages of "The
Reasoner" that the word "Secularism"
was first
suggested as a name representing principles adopted by those to whom Christianity
was no
longer acceptable.
Mr. Holyoake subsequently drew up certain
positive propositions which he published under the
title of "Secularism the Philosophy of the People".
This said,
"Secularism
four rights:

most

builds

on the foundation

1. The right to think

of

for one's self, which

October 1976/ American Atheist - 18

1.1

which

the

3. The right to assert difference of opinion,

without which the right to differ is of no practical
use.
4. The right to debate all vital opinion, without which there is no intellectual equality-no
defense against the errors of the state or the pulpit.
"Looking
over human society, numerous
persons may be discerned standing outside Christianity, who, for conscientious reasons, reject one
or other of its fundamental
principals. At this
point of sight, a serious question arises-Are good
citizenship, personal virtue, a calm conscience, and
fair desert in death, possible to such persons? Secularism undertakes to solve that problem and answers-Yes.
"Its moral basis is, that justification
by sincerity is a higher and more reliable truth than 'justification by faith':
"Its province of study is the order, rather
than the origin, of nature, the study of the laws or
operations of nature being the most fruitful for human gu idance.
"Its practical result is the discovery that science is the providence of man, and the development of this truth as a protection against false dependencies.
"Its theory of morals is that there exist
guarantees of pure morality in human nature, in
utility and intelligence; and that conduct is the
true source of acceptability before man and godthat human service is the truest prayer, and work
the highest worship.
"Its standard of appeal is that Secularism accepts no authority but that of nature, adopts no
methods but those of science and philosophy, and
respects in practice no rule but that of the conscience, illustrated by the common sense of mankind.
It values the lessons of the past, and looks to tradition as presenting a storehouse of raw materials
to thought, and in many cases results of high wisdom for our reverence; but utterly disowns tradition as a ground of belief, whether miracles and

super-naturalism be claimed or not claimed on its

side. No sacred scripture nor ancient church can be
made a basis of bel ief, for the obvious reason that
their claims always need to be proved, and cannot
without absurdity be assumed."
"I t is said that Secu larism seeks to destroy
the 'religious element' in man. We answer, it rather
seeks to give the sentiment bearing that eroneous
name a definite and rational direction. We ask what
is meant by the 'religious element? It is answered,
'The worship of god'. We reply, the worship of a
supreme being implies the recognition of such independent being. But to those from whom such
recognition is hidden, -the aforesaid 'religious element' is not attainable. They can not be said to
'destroy' it--they do not discover it. To be intelligible, the 'religious element' must point to some
object. We demand to have it clearly stated what
that object is. The object of the appetite is a meal.
The object of the rei igious sentiment shou Id be
deity. But till deity is discovered, the object is
wanting, and the sentiment is blind. The chief general intellectual sentiment the race of man appears
to possess is the desire to penetrate the unknown,
by which our life is hemmed in. But the unknown
is not god, but the vestibule through which, perhaps, we pass to his presence. We cannot, without
the violation of philosophy, assume the unknown,
as such, to be deity. The god of the intelligent
worshiper is the known. He who worships the unknown is an Atheist in everything but the name.
"Our negative work has been to combat
priests and the laws, whenever priests or the laws
interfered with Freethought-that
is, our mission
has been to act as a John in the wilderness, to
make way for science."
With these pronouncements,
the skeptical
movement in England assumed a new form. It was
no longer mere unorganized Freethought, and the
Secular Unions grew.
America was a little slow to come to the use
of the term. In 1870 we had a man named Francis
Ellingwood Abbot who began to agitate for organization through his paper, then published at Toledo,
Ohio. This paper was called "The Index" and on
April 6th, 1872 he published "Nine Demands of
Liberalism".
Th is is over 100 years later that I read them
to you now. See if they sound like the program I
have been advocating for the last several years of
these broadcasts!
.
(1) We demand that churches and other ecclesiastical property shall no longer be exempt

from just taxation.

(2) We demand that the employment
of
chaplains in Congress, in state legislatures, in the
navy and militia, and in prisons, asylums, and all
other institutions supported by public money shall
be discontinued.
(3) We demand that all public appropriations
for secutarian educational and charitable institutions shall cease.
(4) We demand that all religious services now
sustained by the government shall be abolished;
and especially that the use of the Bible in the public schools, whether ostensibly as a text-book or
avowedly as a book of religious worship, shall be
prohibited.
(5) We demand that the appointment by the
President of the Un ited States or by the governors
of the various states of all rei igious festivals and
fasts shall wholly cease.
(6) We demand that the judicial oath in the
courts and in all other departments of the government shall be abolished, and that simple affirmation under the pains and penalties of perjury shall
be established in its stead.
(7) We demand that all laws directly or indirectly enforcing the observance of Sunday as the
Sabbath shall be repealed.
(8) We demand that all laws lopking to the
enforcement of "Christian"
morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the
requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and
impartial liberty.
(9) We demand that, not only in the constitutions of the United States and of the several
states but also in the practical administration
of
the same, no privelege, or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion;
that our entire political system shall be founded
and administered on a purely secular basis; and
_ that whatever changes shall prove necessary to this
end shall be consistently,
unflinchingly,
and
promptly made.
The appeals of Mr. Abbot resulted in the or'gan ization of a few Liberal societies, but in 1875
a convention was held in Philadelphia on October
1875 and a National Liberal League was formed in
1876.

Liberal

In 1885, about 10 years later the National

League met in Cleveland, Ohio and there
October 1976/ American Atheist - 19

changeJ the name of the organization

ican Secular Union.

Austin.
Houston and Nelsonville.
Lectures
'liven. Meetings were held and conventions
yearly.

to the Amer-

All of this is to say, that in England a Secu

lar Union had come into existence in 1850 and is
continuing,
in strength, to this date. In America,
we were 35 years later in getting started-sand
the
only remnant of that organization
left is in St.
Louis. It is borrlering on extinction now.

But-s-back at
Liberal League the
where. At the Fifth
Liberal Leagues had

The general principles were beautiful: "Secularism teaches that conduct should be based on
reason and knowledge. It knows nothing of divine
guidance or interference;
it excludes supernatural
hopes and fears; it regards happiness as man's
proper aim, and utility as his moral guide".

the beginning of the National

local units popped up everyAnnual Congress the Auxiliary
increased to 225.

"Secularism
affirms that progress is only
possible through Liberty, which is at once a right
and a duty; and therefore seeks to remove every
barrier to the fullest equal freedom of thought,
action and speech,

After all=Texas is supposed to be a part of

the Bible belt and since the American
Atheist
Centre is situated here in Texas, I thought I would
look up how that state did in this effort.

That is almost too good to be true isn't it?

And, where is it all now-1 00 years later? We do indeed have a long history of Atheism in America.

The first meeting to organize was called by a

Mr. Shaw in Waco in July, 1890. The Constitution
included Abbot's
Nine Demands for Liberalism.
The number of members enrolled at this first meeting was 73. The second meeting was held in San
Antonio in April, 1891. By that time the membership had increased to 520 persons. A third meeting
was held in Waco in April 1892 and there were
then 573 members. But, the fourth annual meeting
was held in Austin, Texas in May, 1893.

This informational
broadcast is brought to
you as a public service by the Society of Seperetionists,
lnc., a non-profit,
non-political,
taxexempt, educational organization dedicated to the
complete and absolute separation of state and
church. This series of American Atheist Programs
is continued
through listener generosity.
The
Society of Seoeretionists (Inc.) predicates its philosophy on American Atheism. For more information, or for a free copy of the script of this program, write to P.O. Box 2117, Austin, Texes. That
zip is 78768. If you want the free copy of this particular scriot ask for number 221. The address
again for you is P.O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas, and
that zip is 78768.
,.

Now, the American Atheist Centre is located

in Austin, Texas and over 100 years later we are
still pressing for the "Nine Demands for Liberalism".
In Texas there were small Liberal League
organizations
in Denison, Flatonia, Forney, Reagan, Gainesville, Burnet, Goldthwaite,
Sunset, Alvarado, Fort 'North, Stephenville,
Norse, Colvert,
Corsicana, Walnut Springs, San Antonio,
EI Paso,

I will be with you again next week, same day

of the week, same time, same station. Until then, I
do thank you for listening and "good-bye" for
now.

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October

1976/ American

Atheist

- 20

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to You That You.

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The American

Atheist

HONOR

BUILDING

ROll

FUND CONTRIBUTIONS

(alphabetically

listed)

Robyn M. Bagley

$10.00

Melvin J. Blockinger

$200.00

True Blue

H.w. Von

$1,000.00
Borstel

Edward

R. Fish

Vernon

R. Hone

Stanley.J.

Centre

$20.00
$$100.00
$100.00

Klir

$25.00

Clarence J. and Margaret Richards

$10.00

S. J. Shimits

$25.00

Society of Separationists,

Total

Inc.

$50.00

$1,540.00

(Received up through August

10, 1976. Contributions received after this date will be
reported in next month's is-

We thank you very much.

Balancestill owing: $44,187.90

sue.)

~J

Speaking for

Women:

Catholic

Crimes
Anne

I wou IJ like to see a conference convened in

the United States called Catholic Crimes Against
Women. I would like to see and hear woman after
woman who has been denied her right to birth control, sterilization or abortion by Catholic physicians, Catholic hospitals, Catholic. legislators and
Catholic judges take the podium and tell her story.
Perhaps dramatic testimony
such as this would
draw this great problem to the media's attention,
and public pressure would force the medical community to start practicing medicine by medical,
not rei igious, standards.
I n the long Iist of Cathol ic crimes against
women, surely the repeated denials of sterilization for women patients by Catholic hospitals are
the most grave. Recently the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a sterilization case out
of Montana, brought by a woman whose medical
history incl uded Caesarean sections, diabetes, and
other physical problems. In her community, as in
so many, all maternity cases are channeled to one
hospital, and the hospital all pregnant women must
use is a Catholic-owned facility. Even tlrouqh this
woman had compeiling medical reasons to have
permanent birth control and not to be pregnant again, and even though she had a physician willing
to help her, she was refused the sterilization that
could save her health and possibly her life. She was
in a "captive" situation with no place else to go for
the medical care she needed.
For a woman having a delivery by Caesarean
section, this is a special tragedy. Her abdomen is
cut open for the Caesarean, and it is very simple
for the physician to cut her tubes at the same time.
(Cutting the Fallopian tubes prevents eggs from the
ovaries from reaching the uterus. Since the eggs are
so tiny, they are readily absorbed by surroundinq
tissue.) The procedure is quick, simple, sure. It does not add to the patient's hospital bill or to her
convalescent time. From every point of view-medical, financial, personal=it is advantageous to perform a sterilization at the time of Caesarean surgery.
Yet allover the United States women in rural, small-town, and even some urban areas are denied this health-saving, life-saving procedure because their local hospital, their only hospital, is

October

1976/American

Atheist

- 22

1/

Against

Women

Gaylor

controlled

by Catholics.

A further reason to make tubal ligations available to women at the time of Caesarean sections is that these women can not have sterilization by the new and simple "Band-Aid"
method
(Iaporoscopy) because of the scar tissue from previous abdominal surgery. So if these women are denied sterilizations by their local, Catholic-controlled hospitals, they must enter another hospital at a
later time and have their abdomens cut open again.
They must endure the pain, risk and expense of operations that should never have been needed.
Another problem in church-state ethics and
the lack of choice for women is that regional units
for the care of high-risk newborns frequerrtly are
located in Catholic hospitals. In my state, Wisconsin, there are eight such units in various hospitals
around the state. Six of these eight are in hospitals
that do not allow sterilizations. The tragic problem
here is that women who have high-risk babies are
so often the women at high-risk themselves, who
have had repeated Caesarean sections, who so otter
need sterilizations to preserve their health and, in
some instances, their lives. These women understandably want to have their babies in hospitals
with special equipment and personnel trained for
high-risk care. Here again they turn out to be "captive" patients. They must choose between the facility that is best for them. After an investment in 0
difficult,
nine-months gestation, no woman wants
to add to the risk of her newborn by delivering it
in one hospital and having it transferred to another. She will forego the sterilization she wants
and desperately needs. Women should not have to
make this choice.
Until the past few years, very few voices
have been raised on behalf of women. Health planners still do not realize that is an error of great
magnitude to place a regional neonatal center in a
Catholic hospital. In a recent hearing and vote in
Wisconsin, the state's Health Policy Council (appointed by a Catholic governor) voted 19-11 to allow hospitals to refuse medically-indicated
sterilizations. How appalling that women's lives, health
and happiness should count for so little! How distressing that the predudices of religious hospitals
are more important than appropriate medical care!

Over the years I have spoken with a few hundred women denied sterilizations. Here are three
representative quotations from Madison, Wisconsin women.

these series of complications and the anxiety we

were experiencing over the welfare of our unborn
baby that my husband and I decided not to have
any more children.

(1) I had all three of my ch ildren at St.

Mary's Hospital, all by Caesarean section. During
the last pregnancy I asked for the tubal ligation,
but the doctor refused. So I went a year later to
another hospital for it. I couldn't have the new
Band-Aid surgery because of scar tissue from the Csections. So I had another operation, another abdominal incision, and all the money and all that
pain-it was totally unnecessary.

"During the last trimester of my pregnancy

it became apparent that the fetus was becoming
severely aenemic and would soon suffer brain damage and eventual death. My doctor decided to induce an early delivery and hope the fetus was mature enough to survive, rather than attempt an intrauterine transfusion. Since there was a possibility that delivery could not be induced, we discussed the likelihood of a Caesarean section and my
desire to have a tubal ligation. As we talked about
the possibilities, I realized that I was forced to
make a choice between going to a hospital that offered intensive care for high-risk newborns or to a
hospital that offered sterilization to mothers who
deliver those high-risk infants,

(2) It was my second Caesarean and I knew

we didn't want any more kids. I asked for the tubal
ligation but the doctor said no way. He offered to
take out my uterus! I said, "Forget it. I don't need
a hysterectomy, I need a tubal ligation."

"Although
my doctor felt that it was extremely unwise for me to have any more children,
he was threatened with a loss of hospital privileges
if he performed a tubal ligation-even
in the event
of a Caesarean section. Since he felt that the' baby
was in danger and there was a significant advantage
to delivering where the baby could be attended to
immediately,
I delivered at the Catholic hospital.
After 13 complete blood exchanges for the baby,
nine days of fear and worry, a hospital bill in excess of $7,000, and no sterilization
for me, we
took home our second son.

(3) All four of my children were born at St.

Mary's hospital. There were no problems with the
first three, but I had an emergency Caesarean with
the fourth. When I knew I was going to have the
surgery I pleaded with the doctor to have my tubes
tied-I
really begged him--but he said it couldn't
be done.
The following excerpt is from a written testimony by a woman who had to choose between
hospitals. Her community had placed its high-risk
unit for infant care in a Catholic facility. Pregnant
women at high-risk were to go to another hospital.
Here is her story:
"Because of Rh problems with our first
child, I was told to anticipate more serious difficulties with a second child. My second pregnancy,
therefore, was monitored almost from conception
by an obstetrician who specialized in Rh pregnancies. Blood titers were first determined each week.
Then, beginning with the fifth month he started
amniocentesis, a method of inserting a needle
through the uterine wall to obtain amniotic fluid.
This procedure was done every two weeks in the
hospital at which time I was admitted to the maternity unit for a half day.
"This was not a pleasant experience. Sometimes the needle would have to be inserted as many
as NINE times to obtain sufficient fluid. I was
quite nauseated after each procedure and came to
dread these biweekly appointments.
"In addition to the Rh difficulties,
I developed phlebitis in my left leg and then had to be operated on for a bowel obstruction when I was six
and one-half months pregnant. It was because of

"I mention the details of our experience, not

to be dramatic, but to illustrate that O'y all medical
standards we were justified in our decision to limit
our family to two children. Sterilization is the simplest and most effective means of doing so. Women
who deliver high-risk infants are perfect candidates
for sterilization and should have that option available to them. Medicine is a field where the best interests of the patient, not the rei igious bel iefs of a
hospital, should be the first consideration."

The tragedy of forced sterilization has been

brought to the public's attention repeated
as it
should be. But, for some reason, the equal tragedy
of the woman who needs to be sterilized, and can
not be because of religious prejudice, has gone untold. There has never been a national television
show or a radio program about the woman denied
sterilization.
I have never read a feature article
(other than those I wrote myself) about her dil, emma. Newspapers do not want to print accusations against Catholic hospitals and Catholic doctors. Producers of television and radio shows fear

tv.

<

October 1976/American Atheist - 23

an abortion must give their consent in writing. This

was upheld along with a provision requiring doctors to maintain detailed records relating to all
abortions performed, regardless of the state of
pregnancy.

th e "Cathol ic Crunch", or frequently are p racticing Catholics themselves and will not recognize the
problem. So, the tragedies go on.
From 1969 to 1971 in Wisconsin 48 women
died in pregnancy, 32 of whom had serious and important reasons not to be pregnant at all. Some of
these women had requested sterilizations and abortions which were dinied to them; others, knowing
the Catholic pedigree of their local hospital or
physician, probably never bothered to ask. These
mortality statistics have been cut by more than
half in Wisconsin with the advent of legal abortion
and the greater availability of sterilization. But unnecessary deaths, unnecessary abortions and unnecessarily shortened lives for women will continue
in every state while medieval religious beliefs are
allowed to dominate any part of obstetrical care.
Catholic crimes against women are continuing.
They will continue until women have the power to
say, "No more!"

But the court struck down other parts of the

Missouri law, holding that:
(1) The parents of unmarried minors need
not give written consent before an abortion can be
performed, and a married woman's spouse need
not consent in writing
to his wife's abortion.

(2) Physicians who perform abortions need

not exercise the same standards of care toward the
fetus as would be exercised if it was intended to be
born to live.
(3) Saline abortions may not be barred after
the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. (The saline method is the most common. The high court said the
state could not, on medical grounds, prohibit the
method's use.)

AND YET!!!
The president of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops said today that the Democratic
platform plank on abortion is "irresponsible"
and
"morally offensive."

The court did not rule on one provision of

the Missouri law stating that the rights of parents
to a child are terminated automatically
if a live
birth results from an attempted abortion.

Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Cincinnati assailed the Democrat's stand on abortion and
exhorted U.S. bishops to urge their parishioners to
"take a more active role in the political process" to
press for a constituticnal ban on abortion.

The Missouri law defines the viability of the

fetus as "that stage of fetal development when the
life of the unborn child may be continued indefinitely outside the womb by natural or artificial life
support systems." That provision was left alone by
the Supreme Court; the provision is consistent with
the court's own definition three years ago that viability occurs in about the twenty-eighth
week of
pregnancy.

[source:

News Tribune.

Woodbridge,

N.J., 6/24/75]

THE BATTLE CONTINUES

With Missouri's abortion
law reduced to
ashes by the United States Supreme Court in early
July, Attorney General John C. Danforth and other abortion opponents say the only recourse is an
amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
"All of the significant points of the Missouri
statute were held unconstitutional,"
Danforth
said at a press conference at the Forest Park Hotel.
"It looks about as close to a complete loss as we
can come."
Danforth termed the high court's
"disappoi nti nq."
As Danforth indicated,
state's 1974 abortion law.

decision

little remains of the

The Missouri law said that women who seek

October

1976/ American

Atheist

- 24

In its
that doctors
acted by the
fore could

ruling, the Supreme Court held also

had a legal interest in most laws enstate to regulate abortions, and therechallenge such laws in the courts.

Danforth had argued that physicians lacked

sufficient legal interest in the issue to gain proper
standing in court to oppose the Missouri law.
_
The court's ruling was the result of an appeal
by Planned Parenthood of Central Missouri, a birth
control organization that had challenged provisions
of the Missouri law.
Danforth said of the consent sections of the
law that were overturned, "We argued that the
state has an interest in protecting minors and protecting the family unit. And we argued that the
decision whether or not to have a family is a joint

decision of husband and wife. But the court held

otherwise, that it's the absolute right of the woman."
The decision dashed the hopes of abortion
opponents that the Supreme Court might soften its
1973 landmark decision that prohibits states from
regulating abortions in the first three months of
pregnancy, Danforth said.
I
t

"The court simply is not going to do that,"

he said. "What this might do is make it clear that
the courts no longer are the routes to follow in trying to overrule (the Supreme Court's 1973 decision)." Danforth said he would support a "Human
Life Ammendment"
'to the U.S. Constitution.
State Representative William R. O'Toole
(Dern.}, St. Louis, who sponsored the bill that eventually became Missouri's 1974 abortion law,
said the constitutional
amendment approach was
necessary "if the court continues on this path.
"It's chilling news to any parent to think
they don't have a legitimate interest in the protection and health of their child. It flies in the face of
human experience that a child should not at least
consult and confer with a parent before reaching
such a decision (to seek an abortion.)."
Harder work by anti-abortionists
was predicted by the chairman of the Missouri Citizens for
Life who said the group would work to elect antiabortion candidates for the General Assembly and
the Congress. A constitutional
amendment would
require a two-thirds majority in both houses of
Congress and ratification by three-fourths of the
states.
Mrs.

Ellen

McCormack,
1'LEA.E

A.U.S.-

the
w\A'f

anti-abortion
"t

"When the Supreme Court speaks," she said,

"it's not the Constitution. It's just a few men making arbitrary decisions. It's time for the people to
cry out."
The Supreme Court's decision was written
by Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who also wrote the
tribunal's first major decision on abortion three
years ago.
He was joined in the bulk of his decision by
Associate Justices William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Thurgood
Marshall and Lewis F. Powell.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Associate Justices Byron R. White and William R. Rehquist agreed with Blackmun's general view of the
case. However, they differed on the legality of the
Missouri statute in respect to spousal and parental
consent, the authority of the state to prohibit saline abortions and the imposition of standards of
care to be met by physicians in performing abortions.
Associate Justice John Paul Stevens agreed
generally with the court's majority except in its
holding on the matter of parental consent and the
bar against saline abortions.
[source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7/2/76]
It should be noted that Danforth, an employee of the state of Missouri, a public servant allegedly superintending the concerns of all the citizens of Missouri, is a gung-ho anti-abortionist
determined to have his personal attitude, morality
and opinions prevail in total derogation of the
rights of pro-abortionists who are numerous with-

c:::~r\.

in his state.

HAVE.

~1A~~.mE'-cic

candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, urged a nation-wide protest against the ruling.

r\t'PRO\iEO

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October 1976/ American Atheist - 25

~I

God
A Post

Mortem

and

on the
s.

Carter

This essay is intended to be a post-mortem

commentary upon the trial and conviction of Lieutenant William Calley for the massacre of twentytwo out of an alleged hundred or more helpless and
unresisting women, children and old men during
one of this country's campaigns in the unhappy Indo-China War. Because "post mortem" is Latin for
"after death," the phrase invokes in me thoughts
of the religious aspects of war and death-the part
which god, if any, plays in each, if at all.
It is clear that a belief in god or gods has had
important historical bearing on war as a human institution. Ironically, or naturally, there has always
been a link in men's minds between divinity and
government--symbolized
by the theory of "the divine right of kings." Thus, men in political and religious power have always manipulated the religious
beliefs of the masses into a willingness to die for
god and country-to
the mutual benefit of those in
power.
I mplied in the exhortation to serve god and
country is the belief that god is "on our side." At
this point the irony becomes evident. The major
combatants in each of the two great wars of this
century prayed to the same god for victory, and
the Germans, having lost both wars, must now have
second thoughts about just whose side god was on.
On the other hand, in the two local wars of more
recent date, in which (he United States has engaged
with "underdeveloped,"
infidel peoples in Korea
and Indo-China, the most that can be claimed is
stalemate, not victory, for god's chosen people.
Any religion which, like Christianity, teaches
belief in an after-life-is
especially useful to the ruling classes. Thus, the early Popes, who uniquely
blended the political
and religious, conquered
Europe in the name of their version of divinity.
When, however, in the Crusades, they attempted to
convert the Islamic heathens, the most that could
be claimed for Jehovah was equal power with Allah, the belief in whom strongly persists until this
day in that part of the world in which the Christian faith came to a military halt six centuries ago.
Of course, this involvment of god in the
Mortal activity of extending political and economic
power by military means, can boomerang or backfire. I have always felt that one of the primary
reasons why Japan lost its part of World War II was
the belief of its soldiers that death in battle,
whether by their own hand or by that of the ArnerOctober

1976/American

Atheist

- 26

II

War
My

Lai

Massacre

Trial

McMorris
ican enemy, assured for them a place in the Shinto
heaven. Often in the heat and emotion of battle,
Japanese soldiers or officers committed hara-kiri,
thus doubling their losses and making victory for
the god-trusting, but not suicidal, Americans somewhat less costly.
Regardless of what appear to be the lessons
of the past, this faith in the participation of a power beyond man and in the mutual mass murder and
destruction of war has continued to the present
day's highly sophisticated military-industrial
complex, which I suggest could more accurately be
called mi Iitary-industrial-pol itical-rel igious system.
Today, as throughout
the ages, American troops
are blessed by the chaplains of their varied JudeoChristian faiths as they march forth, or drive or fly
forth, against the un-Christian Buddist or Atheist
foe in Indo China. The lesson of the present is that,
so far at least, Buddha and Jehovah have reached
an accomodation or compromise.
.
Since this country waged this war for our
usual high objective to make the world safe for
democracy, again we seem to consider our military adventure as' an act of god. It is difficult for
some, though, to see any divine guidance i;"j the
conduct of our troops at My Lai. In the courtmartial of Lt. Calley, it has been proven as undisputed fact that non-combatant civilians-old
men,
women, and childrenwere slaughtered there by
the hundreds. Additionally,
while much is made of
this one trial, the most telling reaction has come
from North Viet-Nam, which charges in its press
that My Lai was just routine in the conduct of the
war by our god-fearing troops.
After we were successful, in World War II,
in keeping the world safe for our brand of Christian democracy by defeating, with massive help of
the Atheistic
Russians and Chinese, the equally
Christian but undemocratic Germans and Italians
_ and the un-Christian Japanese, we led our allies in
the institution
of the new doctrine
of "war
crimes." Many of the best military and even industrial and political minds in the defeated countries
were made to pay before the firing squads of this
. New I nquisition, for atrocities committed by their
troops.
The most significant charge against the Germans was that they had decimated the god-believing but Christ-denying
Jews in their midst, for
reasons which still seem vague but must have been

outwardly
politico-economic,
and subtly racialreligious. The charges against the Japanese, on the
other hand, dealt mostly with alleged massacres by
thei r troops of civi Iian or mil itary person nel of
lands which, like the Phillippines, they conquered
in their victorious sweeps in the early years of the
war.

upon his own people in this civil war, we were

justified
in compounding
the injury by bombing
into oblivion
the village homes of human beings
ten thousand miles away from us who presented no
threat to our homeland.
Because ours was a holy war, we were entitled to drop napalm fire-bombs on soldiers and civilians alike, to destroy vegetation and forestation,
which god or nature provided for the sustenance of
this unmechanized,
unindustrial
land:
it was our
divine right to kill, to maim, to destroy, to save the
world from the enroachment of godless communism.

In our treatment of the Japanese war criminals, we carefully

evolved the General Yamashita
Doctrine, under which the named general and many others of his hapless colleagues were made to
pay the supreme penalty although
it was not
shown that they actively participated
in, counselled, or even knew about the murderous acts of individual units of soldiers, who, as stated above,
thought that death in battle, perhaps even of the
enemy, was a divine act. We applied a similar approach in our famous Nuremberg Trials of leading
Nazis. As to our conquered foes, we adopted a holier-than-thou
attitude that we, the "good guys,"
should sit in god-like judgment
over the "bad
guys" for their un-Christian conduct.

This is what was being implied in the support of Calley by the overwhelming
majority of
no-longer Silent Americans. Perhaps they were also
saying that no white man should have to pay such
a penalty as life imprisonment when his only crime
was against non-whites. The suspicion that this is
so may be justified when it is considered that those
who protested most loudly, screaming with most
emotion that Calley was a scapegoat, are those very
elements most closely identified, by their own admissions and conduct,
with
America's
peculiar
brand of racism.

It was very easy for the whole of the American people to sit by proxy at the trials to the death
of German and Japanese war criminals. Then came
My Lai, and charges that military agents of this
god-serving
country-troops
who
doubtlessly
prayed and were prayed for as they sallied forthhad committed
wanton
massacres of civilians.

This racism was ironically

revealed by Calley himself when, at his trial, he said he was in favor of sparing civilians from the atrocities of which
he was accused so that they could be forced to lead
his men through mine fields-hardly
a less atrocious way of being blown to bits to protect the
American soldiers.

In the investigation of our own acts at My

Lai, some could find the hope for a new. day in
military
justice, a vindication
of the war crimes
trials, a step forward in civilization.
However, one
by one the charges were dropped against all but
two of our men, Sgt. Mitchell, who was found not
guilty by a jury of his military peers, and Lt. Calley, who was found guilty in thirteen days of deliberations following the longest trial in military history.
He was sentenced to life at hard labor.
The American people as a whole reacted,
with violent emotions,
in their condemnation
of
the Calley trial, not of Lt. Calley. In letters to
editors and telegrams to their representatives
in
Washington, even to their president, they said that
Calley should not have been tried, should have
been found not guilty, or guilty of a lesser offense,
and at worse, should have been given a minimal,
wrist-slapping sentence. They were saying, by irnpi ication, that American troops shou Id not have
had to account for war crimes for which we, in
victory, held the whole of the defeated countries
responsible. They said that when those on god's
side committed atrocities against helpless civilians,
it should have been accepted
as the fortunes of
war. Because the enemy committed
acts of harm

Yet America has reacted by making a new

national hero of this confessed murderer. It is significant that a record justifying
or even glorifying
his conduct
became a national
best seller. The
final step in Calley's virtual sainthood occurred
when the President himself ordered the convicted
man's release from cell confinement during the appeal of his conviction
and asserted that he, the
President, would have the last word on the nature
and extent of Calley's punishment.
There is another side to the coin. If Calley
was indeed a scapegoat and since he admitted at
- least some of the charges but blames them on orders of his superiors, the answer is not to exonerate
him but to ferret out and prosecute those both
above and below him who are guilty of My Laiand countless other My Lai's.
<

But where should we stop? If all such incidents are called to account, would there be any
soldiers left to continue any war and to get ready
for our next walk with god? Should ultimate blame

October

iI

1976/American

Atheist

- 27

have been placed upon the commander-in-chief

of
our armed forces, the President himself? Finally,
since the American People as a whole were ratifying and adopting as their own the conduct
of our
troops at My Lai, who among us is not a war criminal?

<>

which conceivably still could arise from the IndoChina ashes, questions such as these might well occur at the next War Crimes Trials. When others
than ourselves sit in judgment,
perhaps our conduct will be deemed in the same category as that
of which we accused the Germans and Japanese:
criminal, inhuman, barbaric, atrocious, racist. And
just as godless.

If by any combination
of circumstances god
rndons our cause and we lose a World War III

.).

"

"~~.~

.;.r
.

'I

. \.
, c

"When

October

1976/American

Atheist

28

~h
I grow

up,

I want

to

be an Atheist."

W~(

~~"""m--.

cJcUR,~A\"

Poems
IF I WERE GOD

A ROSE AND A DREAM

I'm glad that I'm not the Christian

I pursued a dream
To the inmost heart of a rose,

For my, what would

The perennial flared her petals wide

To make them stop their bloody

And gently beckoned me inside

Their feuds both old and new.

In this meadow of petals and crimson glow

Imagine me as god would be

Myriad of seedlings huddled

In heaven on a throne

in rows,

While quarreling

Tiny dreams, centered for growth

In the velvet sanctity

of the luminous

I do?

Claim me as their own.

rose

Their bloody

Enfolding

Beseeching me to aid

in the recesses of the heart

some buried too deep

hands upraised to me

The one against the other

While other still, were fast asleep

As each their brother

I dared to choose a tiny mite of love

The priests of every fighting

Gently caressing it through

Insisting that I should

Softly

pillowing

Sheltering

the night

Give aid and comfort

with care

it, from inclement

quarrels

sects in every land

Each gem nation an essential part

Some seedlings were timid,

god

air

slayed.
clan

to them

For they alone were good.

As the sun gently tapped

And in my name they'd

even bless

On the gray door of dawn

The hand upraised to kill

And all flowers and wood lets

Asserting as they always do

Were bathe in fragrance and mist

To represent my will.

,.

I slowly awakened to a moist, mossy kiss

A rustl ing, zephyred sigh

I'd be asked to bless their battle ships

And then a new-born

Their bombers, guns and shells

baby's cry.
-Jo

Palais Belvin

With which they turn'a fruitful

Into a thousand

RELUNCTANT

ANGEL

-I'm glad I'm not the Christian

I'm afraid the job I could'nt

MY paradise is on THIS sphere.

I'm having SUCH a wonderful time
I do not yearn to disappear
Up to that Elysian clime.
If heaven's as sweet as OTHERS
Pulsing with elation,
Tell me, why do they
Disdain the joyful immigration?

earth

living hells.

But if I could, to Hell they'd

god
fill.
go.

As sure as I'm Sam Hill.

-Sam

say

...,..-Joe
Tierney
October

1976/American

Atheist

29

Hill

Book
Emotion, a book by Dr. Warren Shibles, head
of the Philosophy Department of the University of
Wisconsin, at Whitewater,
is essentially a new
"method of philosophical therapy".
It is a big, scholarly book -- 492 pages, of
which about 20 pages are bibliography and many
more scores of pages are footnotes of sources and
references.
The book measures 4 5/8" x 7 1/8" in paperback and is over an inch thick.
The paperback
price is $8.00 and the hardback price $10.00. [See
inside cover of this magazine for order form] .
People value their emotional life beyond all
else, and yet little, or no, reasearch has been done
on the nature of "emotions"
per se. Many experts
in the field of psychology feel that emotions are
fictionalreally non-ex istant. Others, usually the
average man, conceive of emotions as internal
states of being.
If people can be termed to be "emotionally
disturbed"
we must first determine
what an
emotion is. Everyone faces so-called emotional
problems all the time. Our culture is involved in
the social problems of war, racism, sexism. Our age
is characterized by al ientation and the problems of
inability to love. At both levels, emotion is at the
root of the problem.
In this book, Warren Shibles, who is an
Atheist, attempts a clarification of the concept of
emotion with the theory that emotions are based
on reason, showing then how we can prevent and
eliminate negative emotions and learn to induce
positive emotions. With the acquisition of such
knowledge, it can be possible to radically change
one's character and personal itv.
One usually thinks emotions just happen .to
a person and that the person cannot control them,
rather than that people actively determine and
create emotions, which is more nearly true, according to Shibles. A person may wish to think his
(her) emotions are passive so as to give up responsibility for them and so that his (her) actions will
not be criticized or questioned. This also serves as
a rational ization for not changing one's emotions.
If emotions are merely feelings one has, then (s)he
can do nothing about them and so does not have to
change negative emotions.
Shibles strips awc)Y all
,
October 1976/American Atheist - 30

Review
of this pretense.
He agrees with Albert
Ellis that emotion
involves cognition or reason. Even bodily sensation
is not free of cognitive association.
Humans think
in words, phrases and sentences. It is these sentences, with their content of
thought, which - accumulated - constitute neurosis. Much of our emoting takes the form of selftalk or internalized sentences. These internalized
sentences are one's thinking. In fact, without cognition, (or self-talk) there would be few emotions.
An individual
evaluates [attitudinizes,
becomes biased] when he perceives something as
being "good" or "bad"- and emoting usually involves some kind of bodily sensations. It is pure
acceptance of Ellis.
But before accepting
Ellis, and Wittgenstein, Shibles also examines and evaluates Melden's Contextual "Theory of Emotion",
William
James'
"Emotion
as
Feeling",
Schecter's
"Arousal-Label
Theory",
Beck's
"Cognitive
Theories"
and,
of
course
Wittgenstein's
"Language Game-Theory".
One of the most informative and ready referencing portions of the book deals with the classification of emotions and another is his analysis of
love.
In one ten page section of the book, he also
covers informal logical fallacies. Under seventeen
headings, the falacious arguments of all times and
circumstances are grouped, distinguished and defeated. They all speak to the emotion of faith,
faith in an idea, in a word-form,
in an unreality.
Shibles sees language only as a tool, or instru_ ment of reason, of adjustment, of adaptation for
the human to relate to that which surrounds him.
This is a book of pure, unregenerated, Atheist
logic and explication that is a joy to read.
You
could put
beginning
life style.
Shibles his books.

have wanted something in which you

your intellectual teeth as a substantive
point for an explanation of the Atheist
This is it.
We highly recommend
and will be reviewing and selling more of

THE SOCIETY OF SEPARATIONISTS,

Inc.

"Aims and Purposes"

1. To stimulate and promote freedom of thought and inquiry concerning religious beliefs, creeds,
dogmas, tenets, rituals and practices.
2. To collect and disseminate information,
data and literature on all religions and promote
more thorough understanding of them, their origins and histories.

3. To advocate, labor for, and promote in all lawful ways, the complete and absolute separation
of state and church; and the establishment and maintenance of a thoroughly secular system of
education available to all.
4. To encourage the development and public acceptance of a humane ethical system, stressing
the mutual sympathy, understanding and interdependence of all people and the corresponding
responsibility of each, individually, in relation to society.
5. To develop and propagate a social philosophy in which man is the central figure who alone
_ must be the source of strength, progress and ideals for the well-being and happiness of humanity.
6. To promote the study of the arts and sciences and of all problems affecting the maintenance,
perpetuation and enrichment of human (and other) life.
7. To engage in such social, educational, legal and cultural activity as will be useful and beneficial
to members of this Society (of Separationists) and to society as a whole.
"Definitions"

.l . -Atheism is the life philosophy

(Weltanschauung) of persons who are free from theism. It

predicated on the ancient Greek philosophy of Materialism.
..

IS

2. American Atheism may be defined as the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the
supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a system of philosophy and ethics verifiable by
experience, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority or creeds.
3. The Materialist philosophy declares that the cosmos is devoid of immanent conscious purpose; that it is governed by its own inherent, immutable and impersonal law; that there is no
supernatural interference in human life; that man-finding
his resources within himself-can
and must create his own destiny; and that his potential for good 'and higher development is
for all practical purposes unlimited.

~\

The Society of Separationists, Inc., is a non-political, non-profit, educational, tax-exempt organization. Contributions to the Society are tax deductible for you. Our primary function is as an educational "watch dog" organization to preserve the precious and viable principal of separation of state and church. Membership is open to
those who are in accord with our "Aims and Purposes" as above. Membership dues is $12.00 per person per year.
An incident of membership is a monthly copy of "American Atheists Insider Newsletter". We are currently forming local chapters and membership in the National organization automatically gives you entrance to your local
chapter.

---------------------------------

The Truth,
at last, Revealed

about

Shocking? Perhaps. But it is only a small

part of the fascinating mountain of evidence gathered in FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE by attorney
Dr. Madalyn Murray O.Hair and her researchers as
part of their ongoing fight to preserve the First Amendment guaranty of the separation of state and
church - a guaranty of not just freedom of religion but freedom from religion.

FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE
by Madalyn

Organiz ed Religion

Murray O'Hair

Or:ganized religion is working to destroy your

freedom. It strives to influence your elected representatives and to write the laws under which
vou live, to regulate your children's schools and
dictate what is taught there, to censor your entertainment and choose what you and your neighbor can see and read, and to determine for all
women the right to control their lives and their
bodies. And it is your money that makes this
tyranny possible. The churches have their billions
invested in profit-making
enterprises; and their
wealth grows daily from gifts, grants,-rents, interest, capital gains and government subsidies. They
are now financial giants, no longer dependent upon
their parishioners for support. What they count on
is their freedom from taxes. The churches' billions
are accumulated at your expense.

Official
government
and church
figures
prove that churches have as their membership only
a minority
of our citizens. This books shows the
continuing
pressures that this minority
exerts on
the Iives of the majority of Americans.
Dr. O'Hair deals with politics, not religion;
with separation of state and church, not Atheism.
This report shows how your treasured liberties are
slowly being eroded as the churches increase their
power over every aspect of American life', limiting
your freedom of choice and even your access to information regarding those choices.
FREEDOM
UNDER SIEGE dares to focus
on the facts about this growing threat - a threat
that our politicians and the press, radio and television have been unwilling to confront.
HARDCOVER

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