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Government prayer, religious symbols on city seals, freethought billboards in Spokane, atheist Boy Scouts turning in their badges: it is a busy summer for state/church activism. This week we hear the testimony of a brave 12-year-old girl protesting prayer in her Tennessee county; we play a little-known Cole Porter song, “Experiment,” about the value of science; and then talk with Linda Stephens, one of the plaintiffs in the victorious 2nd-Circuit Appeals Court decision outlawing governmental prayer in the Town of Greece, New York.
This week we have a whole lot of victories to report in the battle to keep religion and government separate, mostly in the south. We listen to country singer-songwriter Robbie Fulks’ irreverent tune, “God Isn’t Real,” and then talk with annalise fonza, a United Methodist minister who gave up her faith and is now a happy atheist university professor.
Freethought in the Arts! After reporting on victories and positive developments in FFRF legal complaints in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the U.S. Army, we talk about the many freethought connections in the movies, music, literature and poetry. For the second half of the show we play Bill Moyers’ remarkable interview of freethought poet Philip Appleman that ran on PBS in early July.
Hasa Diga Eeebowai! After reporting news on our own continent–including an FFRF victory in Virginia stopping prayers at a county board meeting, a JFK billboard in Lubbock, press coverage of our full-page ad in the New York Times, and a clip of FFRF’s “freethought poet laureate” Philip Appleman being interviewed by Bill Moyers–we talk with Leo Igwe, the leader of Humanists in Nigeria, about his heroic attempts to combat superstition, witchcraft, Christianity, and Islam in Africa with reason and skepticism–efforts which got him unjustly thrown in jail.
Perhaps it should be called the “Godless Particle,” since the newly discovered Higgs boson was named after an atheist. This week we honor nonbelieving lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, and talk with Barbara Forrest, professor of philosophy, author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design, and expert witness in the Dover (PA) “intelligent design” trial.
This week we hear reaction to FFRF’s provocative “Quit The Church: Put Women’s Rights Over Bishop’s Wrongs” billboard. We talk about (yet) more governmental prayer violations, then we interview Ron Williams, the Australian singer/songwriter and father of six who challenged state-paid chaplains in public schools, and this month won a victorious decision from the High Court.
We’re storming the bishops’ bastille. Attorney Andrew Seidel exposes the bishops’ phony claim that the contraception mandate is religious persecution. We unveil FFRF’s impressive TV ad campaign with Julia Sweeney.
Honoring “June-teenth” this week, we talk about FFRF’s recent Nativity Scene victory in Santa Monica, California, and we listen to the new TV-Web ad that former Catholic Julia Sweeney made for FFRF fighting the Catholic Bishops’ assault on birth control. Our guest for the 2nd half of the show is Eleanor Smeal, former director of NOW, and current director of the Feminist Majority.
Hear the new radio ad that Julia Sweeney recorded for FFRF. This week we talk about FFRF’s retort to the Catholic Bishops’ assault on women’s healthcare, and about yet more illegal governmental prayer. Then we interview private detective Sam Brower, author of Prophet’s Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints.
