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Tis the season . . . for graduation prayer violations. This week we talk with Max Nielson, the South Carolina high-school senior who complained about student-led prayer at his graduation on May 30, which led to FFRF’s most recent lawsuit.
It’s Memorial Day weekend, and the livin’ is easy. Relax with us as we listen to some freethought music, new and old. On the second half of the show, we talk with Teresa MacBain, the Methodist minister who recently made national news (with stories on CNN and NPR) when she came out publicly as an atheist. Teresa is now Acting Director of The Clergy Project.
Victory! This week we celebrate with FFRF’s main litigation attorney Rich Bolton, talking about our recent victory from the Colorado appeals court declaring the governor’s Colorado Day of Prayer proclamations unconstitutional. We also cover FFRF’s complaint about Gideon bibles in a Texas elementary school, as well as discuss Franklin Graham and Mitt Romney’s statements about gay marriage.
Jeff Shott, the 17-year-old Tennessee student who dressed up as Jesus on “Fictional Character Day” at his high school, tells us the whole story. FFRF attorney Patrick Elliott brings us up-to-date on the religious legal shenanigans with our lawsuit challenging the Ten Commandments in a Virginia High School, and we celebrate Mother’s Day with a tribute to The Women’s Medical Fund, founded by FFRF founder Anne Nicol Gaylor.
Is the Freedom From Religion Foundation “roaming the country” looking for state/church violations? FFRF’s lead staff attorney Rebecca Markert assures us it is the other way around, as she discusses the many complaints that come into the legal office. We also hear about Freethought in Australia, Philadelphia and North Carolina, legal complaints in Rhode Island and Tennessee, listen to Annie Laurie on FOX News talking about a cross at a fire station, and give tribute to nonbelieving composers Brahms and Tchaikovsky.
Dan and Annie Laurie report on their visit to the Global Atheist Conference in Melbourne, Australia, and Dan talks about his visit to the first atheist conference in the Philippines. Lots of U.S. state/church news to report, then an interview with Saloma Furlong about her book, Why I Left The Amish, followed by Australian songwriter Shelley Segal singing “Saved,” from her new CD: An Atheist Album.
This week we talk with Paul Heffron, a former minister who is now part of the Freethought Band, and listen to some of their lively irreverent music. We also talk with Debbie Weisman, whose family were plaintiffs in the 1992 landmark Lee v. Weisman victory before the U.S. Supreme court that stopped clergy-led prayer at high-school graduations when she was a student at a Rhode Island high school.
We devote this entire show to the life and work of the freethinking songwriter Frank Loesser, who wrote Guys and Dolls, “Heart and Soul,” How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” “What Are You Doing New Years,” and many other songs. We talk with his daughter Susan Loesser, who wrote a memoir about her father called A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls In His Life.
During this Easter weekend, we discuss why the resurrection story is false. We play a tribute to the irreverent atheist songwriter Yip Harburg (born April 8, 1896) and then talk with Tara Ayres, artistic director of the Stage Q production of the docu-musical This Beautiful City, about gays, fundamentalists and atheists in Colorado Springs.
