Dangling from the brick fireplace in Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker's near-west-side home are three ornaments: a shiny Santa, a Hello Kitty head with a wreath around its neck, and a miniature "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" book. They are not out early for this year's holiday celebration, but left over from the year before.
The ornaments are at first a bit disconcerting, given that Gaylor and Barker are co-presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison-based national advocacy group. And during the Christmas season, the group tends to come off as a bit of a Grinch. Recently, for the 14th year in a row, FFRF's solstice message went up in the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda, proclaiming its wish that "reason prevail." It also says, "Religion is but a myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds."
Yet Gaylor sees no disconnect between the ornaments in their home and this anti-religious stance. She says the couple's daughter Sabrina, now 20, still gets a kick out of Hello Kitty. And for the whole family, the solstice season is special.
"Christians stole Christmas," she says, noting the holiday's pre-Christian origins. "We're pleased to share it with them - just so they don't try to hog the whole winter solstice season."
The Gaylor-Barker family celebrates the solstice in a Sears house that's a smaller version of one Gaylor grew up in. The celebration of the sun's rebirth looks a lot like any holiday celebration, with food, family, gifts and often a tree.
"It's a natural holiday," Gaylor says. "You need to have something to look forward to."
It's late November and dark. After a long day, Gaylor, 54, curls into herself on her sofa in a living room arranged more for solitude than conversation. Oriental rugs provide the biggest spark of color on wooden floors.
Gaylor is exhausted after spending five hours being deposed for a federal lawsuit against the National Day of Prayer. "When you're suing your president [Barack Obama] and his press secretary," she says, "that's a very time-consuming case."
Petite with flyaway blond hair and direct eyes, she exudes competence as well as confidence. Yet she's surprisingly taken aback by negative reactions to her group's anti-religion message. The effect is an unsettling blend of iron fist in a delicate organza glove.
A little more than a week earlier, Gaylor was sharing animal stories with author Ursula LeGuin and laughing with radio host Ron Reagan, the former president's son, at the Freedom From Religion convention in Seattle. The next Monday, Jay Leno told a joke about the group: "When asked if they were happy to be in Seattle, they said, 'We're just praying it doesn't rain.'"
Home again, Gaylor is juggling six lawsuits, including a National Day of Prayer suit in Colorado, a Pledge of Allegiance appeal, a new case challenging a federal tax deduction for clergy housing, and a local case against a Manitowoc crèche. FFRF unsuccessfully filed suit to stop the engraving of "In God We Trust" on the Capitol visitor center in Washington, D.C.
"They went ahead and did it," she says. "Now we are really injured. Now we have to duke it out." The first hurdle is getting a green light to sue, which recent court rulings have made more difficult.
Barker, 60, is traveling. In a flurry of activity after Seattle, the tall, laid-back musician in black jeans and a black blazer found time to paint over graffiti on the FFRF building before leaving for 10 events in eight days in Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri. This included a debate with Dinesh D'Souza, author of What's So Great About Christianity, with its purposeful lack of a question mark. After another brief stop in Madison, he was on his way to London, then Memphis, to look at complaints about prayer in city hall.
These days Gaylor and Barker are working longer hours than ever, often not coming home until after dinnertime. With Sabrina away to school at the UW-Whitewater, there's no reason to get home early enough for a healthy meal. The couple instead focus on their growing sense of urgency about FFRF's work.
Gaylor sees too many church/state violations and can't fix them all. The noise level - the intensity of the crank calls, four death threats so far this year - is the worst she remembers. "I think things are getting a little unsettled," she says.
Annie Laurie Gaylor and her mother, Anne Gaylor, started the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1976. It grew out of the reproductive rights movement after the Gaylors saw legislative hearings packed with Catholic nuns, priests and schoolchildren and concluded religion was the root of women's inequality. Anne Gaylor took FFRF national two years later.
The foundation's current repertoire includes legal action, billboards, bus signs, a weekly radio show on Air America, the monthly newsletter Freethought Today, and Barker's national and international lectures and debates. There's also hope for a television show.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation was formed to educate the public about nontheistic belief and promote the separation of church and state. In practice, this has two components: legal action against perceived local, state and federal violations of the First Amendment; and education, including liberal doses of anti-religion rhetoric.
Freethought Today has for years run page after page of "Black Collar Crime Blotter." These are listings of transgressions against morality and public safety committed by clergy.
The term "freethinkers" is an umbrella for atheists, agnostics and rationalists. "To the freethinker,"
