Freedom Writer - January/February 1996

Woman, Atheist, Anarchist

_Madalyn_Murray_O'Hair,_76,_perhaps_the_world's_best-known_
atheist,_mysteriously_disappeared_last_August._Rumors_
abound._In_poor_health_in_recent_years,_some_speculate_
O'Hair_died._Others_theorize_she_was_kidnapped_by_radical_
Christians;_some_think_she_

relocated_to_New_Zealand_or_Australia._O'Hair's_conceivable_
death_brought_to_mind__Freedom_Writer_'s March 1989 
interview with the outspoken activist. Here are some 
excerpts._

FW Were you always an atheist?

O'HAIR Oh no, not at all. I was born into and reared 
in the Presbyterian faith. My father was a Presbyterian 
and it used to be the obligation, the social obligation, 
of women to take their husband's religion, no matter 
what they [the women] were re

ared in. So my mother was a Lutheran, and the moment 
she married my father she started attending a Presbyterian 
church. She attended that church for 50 years. My brother 
and myself were both brought up in the Presbyterian 
church.

FW At some point you must have changed your mind.

O'HAIR I sure did!

FW What happened?

O'HAIR I used to skip grades in school, and I'd been 
reading since I was three. Just generally speaking, 
my family's pretty bright, including my parents. One 
weekend my father refused to take me to the library. 
I used to go down and load up on libr

ary books, and when he wouldn't take me to the library, 
I was forced to read the Bible from cover to cover. 
I was either in the fifth or sixth grade. Now, you 
know damn well I didn't understand everything that 
I was reading, but I understood enough that I

 thought it was pretty horrible. I thought that it 
was violent, that God was pretty mean, and that the 
visitations he made caused troubles of all kinds on 
the chosen people. Then I started to read some of that 
to my father and mother. I would pick out stu

ff that I thought was pretty horrible. My mother would 
just look at me and say, "Oh, that's not in my Bible!"

FW Is your organization tax-exempt?

O'HAIR Oh, we are now, yes. We just finished winning 
tax- exemption for every one of our organizations. 
So, every single one is tax-exempt. Now let me tell 
you about that because you probably have the same thing. 
Are you tax-exempt?

FW Yes, we are.

O'HAIR Good, good. There are four kinds of tax exemptions. 
Health, education, welfare, and religion. With health, 
education, and welfare, you have to file Form 990. 
With religion, they file nothing. Nobody can ask them 
anything. That's a tax-exempt

ion we think they shouldn't have. They should be accountable 
to the citizens of the United States for exactly what 
they do with that tax-exempt money. Also, I think that 
they're obligated to do something. Such as, there are 
millions of homeless, and milli

ons of churches that are used one day a week. There 
isn't a reason in the world that they can't let people 
come in and sleep on the pews. There isn't a reason 
in the world that they can't feed them. Most of the 
churches have kitchens. And, they should do 

this for love of Jesus Christ, not asking for a government 
grant, or a handout. If they really want to say that 
they are going to do it to the "least of these," then 
let them do it.

FW Do you support religious freedom?

O'HAIR Oh, absolutely! I feel that everyone has a right 
to be insane. And that they can do this any place at 
all. If they want religious schools, build them! My 
only problem with that is, do not ask for the land 
to be tax-free. Do not ask for a gov

ernment grant to build them. Do not ask for money for 
teacher's salaries, or more books, or anything else. 
Just go ahead and do your thing, and do it yourself. 
Just exactly the same as if you were a nudist. Somebody 
doesn't get a tax break for being a Mas

on, or whatever they're interested in. And I feel that 
religions can have administrative bodies, social services, 
hospitals, anything at all, as long as they pay for 
it totally themselves, and make certain that the people 
who are involved with them are aw

are that they are basing their premises on religious 
ideology.

FW On the issue of censorship of pornography and rock 
music, do you see that as a religious issue, too?

O'HAIR Yes, I do. Incidentally, I don't like rock music. 
I never have liked it. I have never understood it, 
and I can't hear the lyrics. I think that most people 
can't hear them either. I'm still stuck with Chopin 
and Beethoven and Bach, and all th

ose old ones. The whole point is, I feel that everyone 
who wants to say anything, do anything, should be able 
to say anything or do anything, within the limits of 
not hurting another person. And I don't see how rock 
music hurts anybody, or I don't see tha

t pornography hurts anybody.

Incidentally, one of the things that I learned very 
quickly when I first met Larry Flynt — he wanted to 
interview me for his magazine, and I went and met him 
several times and developed a friendship with him — 
one has to pay for pornography. It is not dis

tributed free anyplace in the United States. There 
has to be a deliberate act of someone going in and 
purchasing it. So, I think that's a hell of a lot different 
than distributing leaflets or pamphlets on the street. 
It's merchandise. If someone wants to 

get involved in that, it's their business.

The relationships that people have — that are sexual, 
psychological,
emotional — these relationships are not open to supervision 
by parents,
schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right 
to intervene at all
in any kind of relationship like that.

FW What do you see as your greatest accomplishments?

O'HAIR Oh, one of the things that I am most proud of 
is that people can say, "I am an atheist," in the United 
States today, without being called a Communist atheist, 
or an atheist Communist. I separated those two words. 
I think that's probably the 

best thing that I did. The other thing is, of course, 
that we are developing something that we call "modern 
atheism," or "American atheism," which is entirely 
different from the materialism of the Greek philosophers. 
What we are interested in is moving ou

t, in order to see that there is a more viable life 
cycle for all people, and that the human condition 
can be ameliorated somewhat by human beings working 
in concert to do something. We must do something about 
the pollution. We must do something about the

 waste. We have to do something about the greed. We 
must stop war. And we're not going to do any of those 
things as long as we feel the solution is to go to 
church on Sunday, or funnel our energy into prayer 
or religious solutions. Everybody has to get mi

xed up in the problems, to try to solve them.

FW How would you like to be remembered?

O'HAIR I told my kids I just want three words on my 
tombstone, if I have one. I'll probably be cremated. 
One is "woman." I'm very comfortable in that role. 
I've loved being a woman, I've loved being a mother, 
I've loved being a grandmother. I want three words:
Woman, Atheist, Anarchist. That's me.

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