So You Want to Be an Emperor?

It has been observed that if you want to be an emperor, it is better by far to be one at the beginning of the empire than at the end, when the whole enterprise is collapsing. If so, this is as good a season as any to start thinking about how to get there. Empires have been out of fashion for several generations, but history moves in cycles, and the day of the empire is returning. Read on…

The Influence of Piety: Same-Sex Marriage

Nearly forty-five years after federal civil rights legislation was passed, the idea of treating people equally under the law is hardly controversial. However, sexual-oriented minorities have faced constant opposition from government officials and the people who elect and support them. Gays and Lesbians have been, and continue to be, legislated against and demonized. One may wonder why the United States lags so far behind other liberal western democracies when it comes to protecting its citizens. The answer is no doubt … Read on…

An Interview With Annie Laurie Gaylor

Annie Laurie Gaylor is Co-President of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) since 2004, along with Dan Barker. She was the organization’s co-founder in 1976, when she was a college student, with her mother Anne Nicol Gaylor. The FFRF now has a program on Air America Radio, “Freethought Radio,” broadcast weekly on Saturdays.  FFRF works to protect the constitutional principle of separation of Church and State; it also educates people about nontheism. Annie Laurie is also the editor of Freethought Today, the only freethought newspaper in the United States, … Read on…

An Interview with Jim Haught

James A. Haught was born in 1932 in a small West Virginia farm town that had no electricity or paved streets.  He graduated from a rural high school that had 13 students in the senior class.  He came to Charleston, worked as a delivery boy, then became a teen-age apprentice printer at the Charleston Daily Mail in 1951.  Developing a yen to be a reporter, he volunteered to work without pay in the Daily Mail newsroom on his days off, … Read on…

An American Theocracy?

I am a humanist. I don’t believe in an anthropomorphic divine presence that created or controls my life. I believe that I can live my life ethically and morally without any ‘divine’ guidance. Like religionists, (and to quote from dissenting Judge Fernandez in the 9th Circuit’s Pledge of Allegiance case) I also feel ‘awe at the immenseness of the universe and our own small place within it, as well as the wonder we must feel at the good fortune of … Read on…