Freethought of the Day

July 7

Robert A. Heinlein



On this date in 1907, Robert Anson Heinlein was born in Butler, Mo. The science fiction author is famous for his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). Heinlein was one of seven children. He attended the University of Missouri and graduated from the Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1929.

Heinlein served in the Navy for five years until discharged after contracting tuberculosis. He studied at the University of California-Los Angeles and conducted research at the Navy Experimental Air Station in Philadelphia during World War II. The prolific author, who had many pseudonyms, won four Hugos for “best novel of the year” (Double Star, Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress).

He eventually published 32 novels, 59 short stories and 16 collections. Four films, two television series, several episodes of a radio series and a board game have been derived more or less directly from his work.

Heinlein wrote, “The faith in which I was brought up assured me that I was better than other people; I was saved, they were damned. … Our hymns were loaded with arrogance — self-congratulation on how cozy we were with the Almighty and what a high opinion he had of us, what hell everybody else would catch come Judgment Day.” (Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time, ed. Laurence J. Peter, 1977)

In his 1973 novel Time Enough for Love, he wrote: “History does not record anywhere at any time a religion that has any rational basis. Religion is a crutch for people.”

He married Elinor Curry in 1929 and divorced in 1930, then was married to Leslyn MacDonald from 1932-47. He was married to Virginia Gerstenfeld from 1948 until his death at age 80 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. (D. 1988)

PHOTO: Midshipman Heinlein in the 1929 U.S. Naval Academy yearbook.

“The great trouble with religion — any religion — is that a religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge those propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason — but one cannot have both.”

— from Heinlein's 1982 novel "Friday" (narrated by Friday Jones)

Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor

© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.

Josiah P. Mendum



On this date in 1811, Josiah P. Mendum was born in Kennebunk, Maine. In 1844, Mendum took over as editor and proprietor of the Boston Investigator, the first U.S. rationalist news publication, after Abner Kneeland retired. Under Mendum’s businesslike management, the newspaper became prosperous and influential. Mendum also republished books by Voltaire, D’Holbach, Volney and Paine. He lobbied hard for the building of a hall to memorialize Thomas Paine in 1870. By 1874, the Paine Memorial Hall was opened in Boston.

Mendum spent 40 years as rationalist advocate. He and Horace Seaver as co-editors were succeeded by Mendum’s son, Ernest Mendum, and by Lemuel K. Washburn. When J.P. Mendum died, a memorial was fittingly held at Paine Hall. Mendum was lauded for helping to turn “the strait-laced Boston of sixty years ago [into] the enlightened Hub of today … to ‘destroy bigotry and uproot the evils of superstition.’ ” (Boston Globe, Feb. 3, 1891) (D. 1891)

Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor

© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.

Gustav Mahler



On this date in 1860, Gustav Mahler was born to working-class, Jewish parents in Austrian Bohemia, the second of 14 children. A musical wunderkind, he studied at the Vienna Conservatory as a boy. Mahler’s oeuvre is relatively limited; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works, his works are generally designed for large orchestras, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists.

At age 37 he faced a dilemma: He could become the director of the prestigious Imperial Vienna State Opera only if he abandoned Judaism and converted to Catholicism. Under the anti-Semitic laws, no Jew — no matter how talented or skilled — could occupy such an exalted position. Though nowhere near a devout Jew, he recognized that conversion was his only ticket to the position. He reportedly commented after the service was over, “I’ve just changed my coat.”

He married Alma Schindler in 1902 when she was pregnant with their daughter Maria. The year before he had started composing his masterful Fifth Symphony (its “Adagietto” movement was played at Sen. Robert Kennedy’s 1968 funeral Mass).

A second daughter, Anna, was born in 1904. Both girls fell ill in 1907 with scarlet fever and diphtheria. Anna recovered but Maria died two weeks later. That same year, Mahler was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect and restrictions were put on his activities. He made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera on Jan. 1, 1908, when he conducted Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”

He died in Vienna from bacterial endocarditis and pneumonia at age 50. Alma outlived him by 53 years and married twice more, including to architect Walter Gropius. (D. 1911)

“After his baptism, he never again attended Mass, and upon his untimely death in 1911 at age 50, there was no religious funeral service of any kind, nor any religious markings on his gravestone.”

— Rabbi A. James Rudin, "Unconventional Converts," Religion News Service (June 5, 2009)

Compiled by Annie Laurie Gaylor

© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.

Eleanor Clift



On this date in 1940, Eleanor Clift was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. In the 1960s she became a secretary for Newsweek magazine and was one of the first women at Newsweek to be promoted to reporter. Clift became an accomplished political reporter, serving as deputy Washington bureau chief beginning in 1992, working as part of the 1992 election team covering Bill Clinton’s campaign and becoming a contributing editor for the magazine in 1994. Clift was Newsweek’s White House correspondent until 1985, when she briefly became White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times.

She was a panelist on the political talk show “The McLaughlin Group.” Clift is also a writer who authored Founding Sisters and the Nineteenth Amendment (2003), as well as co-authoring two books with her husband Tom Brazaitis. When Brazaitis died after a long battle with kidney cancer, Clift wrote the 2008 memoir Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death and Politics about the deaths of Brazaitis and Terry Schiavo. Clift has appeared as herself in the films “Dave” (1993), “Independence Day” (1996), “Getting Away with Murder” (1996) and “Follow the Leader” (2002).

Clift was brought up Lutheran but in a 2008 interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer, she said, “I’m closer to Tom’s [atheism] than to my early upbringing in the Lutheran church. I would probably label myself as an agnostic.” She gave a speech at the 31st annual Freedom From Religion Foundation convention in 2008 and was a guest on Freethought Radio on Sept. 27, 2008.

Public domain photo: Clift in 1999.

“Religion and politics are supposed to be separate.” 

— Clift, "Two Weeks of Life: A Memoir of Love, Death and Politics" (2008)

Compiled by Sabrina Gaylor

© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.

James Obergefell



On this date in 1966, civil rights advocate James Obergefell was born in Sandusky, Ohio, the youngest of six in a Catholic family. His mother worked as a librarian at the Sandusky Public Library. His father was a blue-collar factory worker who worked for Scott Paper and other companies and served in World War II as a U.S. Navy Seabee.

His name (pronounced Oh-BUR-guh-fell with a hard g) is synonymous for many with marriage equality since he was the lead plaintiff in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the U.S.

When he was 8 or 9 he started cutting out men’s underwear pages from Sears and Penney’s catalogues. As he got older, he realized what attracted him sexually and how it set him apart, so he continued to hold it inside.

“I think this is one of the most damaging things religion has been used for: to convince LGBTQ kids that that they are damaged, broken, or evil,” Obergefell said. “Those kids grow up doubting themselves, or worse, hating themselves. As they struggle, they look to their family for love and support and often experience the opposite.” (Speech to an American Atheists group in 2019)

He started drifting away from the Catholic Church in high school and eventually converted to Episcopalianism, what he came to call “Catholic lite.” The minister told him he didn’t have to believe everything he or the Episcopal Church said. “Within a year, I finally realized I didn’t believe in God, Jesus, or a higher power of any sort. I prefer to believe in my fellow humans, and that knowing right from wrong is based on how I want to be treated by others, not because of religion or a threat of eternal damnation.” (Ibid.)

He earned a degree in secondary education and German from the University of Cincinnati and attended graduate school at Bowling Green State University. He met his future husband John Arthur in 1992 at Uncle Woody’s, where Arthur was sitting at the bar drinking a gin and tonic.

He taught high school German and worked in real estate and I.T. He and Arthur, “his first serious boyfriend,” he told the Washington Post, built a life for themselves as a gay couple in Cincinnati, working together as consultants to various clients.

Though they could legally marry in several states, that wasn’t the case in Ohio, which would not even recognize legal marriages elsewhere. Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment by 61.7% in 2004 that said marriage is only between one man and one woman. Not all employers allowed gay couples to share an insurance policy.

Obergefell and Arthur had been together about 18 years when Arthur was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). Arthur started receiving hospice care in March 2013 and they decided to get married. They chose Maryland as their best option and flew there in a medical transport jet. Paulette Roberts, Arthur’s aunt, went along. She had obtained an ordination earlier allowing her to perform weddings.

Arthur died three months and 11 days after the wedding. Officials put Obergefell’s name on the death certificate as Arthur’s spouse, but Ohio appealed the decision and won. Obergefell appealed to the U.S.Supreme Court. In 2015 his case and several similar cases were consolidated as Obergefell v. Hodges. Hodges was director of the Ohio Department of Health.

There were two basic issues: 1.) Does the 14th Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? and 2.) Does the 14th Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

Oral arguments were heard April 28 and a decision rendered on June 26. It was 5-4 in favor of Obergefell et al. The court held that same-sex marriage bans violated the 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection clauses. Justice Anthony Kennedy authored the majority opinion, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Anthony Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each wrote dissenting opinions.

Several Republican presidential candidates soon endorsed religious freedom laws to respond to the court’s ruling. “They are pandering to their base and they are trying to create problems where there aren’t problems,” Obergefell said. “Religious freedom is still guaranteed by the constitution. There is nothing about marriage equality that forces any single religious person to perform a marriage that they are against, based on their belief.” (The Guardian, July 4, 2015)

In 2016 the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati honored Obergefell with its Everyday Freedom Hero award, given to people whose actions reflect the ideals of the underground railroad. The Cincinnati City Council declared April 28 (the day SCOTUS oral arguments were made) John Arthur Day in honor of the couple. Mayor John Cranley referred to Obergefell as a “historic figure” for the city and the nation.

The notion of equality still stuck in Justice Thomas’ craw, however, and in 2022 he called for the court to revisit Obergefell after it overturned Roe v. Wade. Obergefell ran that year for the U.S. House and lost to Republican incumbent D.J. Swearingen, 61.7% to 38.3%.

When South African vintner Matt Grove was looking to create a wine label dedicated to his late aunt, a lesbian who led the first class-action suit against NBC in pursuit of workplace gender equality, “He just googled ‘gay marriage’ and my name and face was the first to pop up,” laughed Obergefell. Their first wine donated proceeds to support marriage equality. (Wine Enthusiast, June 2024)

With Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Debbie Cenziper, Obergefell co-authored “Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality.” He is executive producer of the multimedia JustMarried Project, which shares the stories of couples, activists and allies who helped make marriage equality a reality legally, legislatively and culturally.

He was the recipient in 2026 of FFRF’s Forward Award, bestowed to exemplary supporters of freethought or separation of church and state.

“Before I say anything else, I have something I want to get off my chest. I’ve been afraid to tell anyone because I wasn’t sure how people would react. I don’t want to lose friends. I don’t want to have relationships change because of this. So I’m just going to spit it out: I’m an atheist.
“I thought my coming-outs were in the past, but unlike many LGBTQ people coming out to someone they love, I know I’m coming out as an atheist with people who will not judge me. Even so, I admit I feel a bit of anxiety. Our society tells us that a belief in a higher power is necessary in order to be a good person, a moral person, a real person. Well, I’m a man who happens to be gay and an atheist. And I’m tired of the closet.”

— Obergefell, speaking to an American Atheists group in Cincinnati in April 2019

Compiled by Bill Dunn

© Freedom From Religion Foundation. All rights reserved.