Why Bush threatens secularism

Special Report: Second of three parts.

The weekend before President Bush’s second inauguration, 60 humanists, atheists and ethical culturalists gathered at a hotel just off Dupont Circle for an “emergency meeting” organized by the American Humanist Association.

“The situation is now as bad as we’ll ever see it,” Roy Speckhardt, the group’s deputy director, says afterward.

He predicts that Mr. Bush’s evangelical Christian views would be folded into government policy on judicial appointees, abortion, social services and other issues.

“A slim [election] victory is being interpreted as a mandate on moral issues, so we are concerned,” Mr. Speckhardt says.

One of the 20 organizations represented at the pre-inaugural strategy session was a group from Madison, Wis., called the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Group founder Anne Nicol Gaylor, 78, unable to attend because of failing eyesight, sent son-in-law Dan Barker in her place.

The foundation is the mom-and-pop operation among the four main organizations — the others being the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way — that are leading the legal battles to push God from the public square and create a nation in man’s image.

In 28 years, Mrs. Gaylor’s foundation has filed about 25 lawsuits in addition to complaints that never made it to court. An early victory halted the 122-year history of prayers at University of Wisconsin graduation ceremonies in 1976 because of a complaint lodged by Mrs. Gaylor’s daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, then a student. She is now the co-director of the foundation with her husband, Mr. Barker. In 1985, their group managed to stop the university football team’s pre-game prayers.

“Sometimes all you have to do is complain,” Mr. Barker says. “It’s better that way, and cheaper. She asked the school why there’s prayer, and they said, ‘Gee, why is there?’ ”

Christianity and other religions are essentially harmful, in the view of the foundation, which claims 5,000 members, most of them atheists who make small donations.

“There is complete scorn on the part of the current administration as to the separation of church and state,” the elder Mrs. Gaylor says in an interview. “There has never been any less respect in Washington for church-state separation, even though church-state separation is one of the things that made our country possible in the first place.”

Many Christians and others of faith, however, see a growing threat that Mrs. Gaylor and her allies are intent on loosing the nation from its Judeo-Christian moorings.

Building the wall

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