Author Archives: Marilyn Westfall


About Marilyn Westfall

Marilyn is a long-time Atheist and Unitarian Universalist and currently serves on the board of the American Humanist Association. Marilyn is a co-founder and a senior editor of The Eloquent Atheist on-line magazine. She has published fiction, poetry, and criticism in several literary magazines.

Mission Dolores Part III (of four)

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At Mission Delores, San Francisco: Religious Romance & Genocide III – The Cemetery, Graves & Roses At the entrance to the mission cemetery, I hear traffic flow on Dolores Street, which parallels the mission but is blocked from sight by a wall landscaped with trees and shrubs. Tires drone, now a tailpipe or muffler drags on the road and clatters. Rap music builds until I feel its tremor that soon diffuses to echo. An engine’s high-pitched whine goes silent. Immediately, … Read on…

Mission Dolores Part II (of four)

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At Mission Delores, San Francisco: Religious Romance & Genocide II – The Museum, Fact & Facsimile   An older German couple, standing in front of me, reviews the Register, a record of all the Indians baptized at Mission Dolores. Many of these were likely forced conversions, from natives rounded up by soldiers and put to work, creating bricks, gardening, tending animals, washing laundry, and caring for their own sick; the vast majority died at the mission, and lie buried in unmarked … Read on…

Mission Dolores Part I (of four)

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At Mission Delores, San Francisco: Religious Romance & Genocide I – The Chapel, An Odyssey The soured wood of the church doors flavors the air. Stone tile cools my knees. I unzip my forest green backpack and remove a notepad wedged between books and my rolled-up windbreaker. On the dusky burgundy squares, my pack is a lump disrupting the floor’s diamond pattern.            Until minutes ago, I was weighed down by that pack, searching for Dolores and Sixteenth streets-the location of … Read on…

An Interview with Lori Lipman Brown

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Celebrating Her Second Anniversary As Director of the Secular Coalition for America Lori Lipman Brown is a former Nevada State Senator, private practice lawyer and law professor. Her legislative record in the arenas of public education, mental health care and the repeal of consensual sex crimes resulted in her being named Civil Libertarian of the Year by the Southern Nevada chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Legislator of the Year by the Nevada chapter of the National Association … Read on…

An Interview with Jim Haught

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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…

Pacific Woes: A Secular Triptych

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The Pierced Lady Waiting for the shuttle bus into San Francisco, the woman in leather shivered. Her sandy hair was tucked behind ears upholstered with gold rings and studs. On her neck, where her collar was short, climbed a tattoo’s red ink of wings or flames. Her amber eyes blinked as she excused her breath: “I have to have a beer before landing. I’m nervous about crashing. Did you ever circle around and around in the fog?” She climbed the … Read on…

America’s Most Hated Woman: Remembering Madalyn Murray O’Hair

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I would recommend, for those who have not yet read it, a biography of Madalyn Murray O’Hair: Ann Rowe Seaman’s America’s Most Hated Woman. O’Hair herself reveled in that appellation and used it to portray herself as the ultimate Outsider, a communist, freethinking female and victim of a capitalistic Christian empire. By doing so she made both money and history. O’Hair was apparently born to be a maverick. Her mother Lena had tried to induce a miscarriage, when she found … Read on…

An Interview with Frank Zindler

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FRANK ZINDLER is Editor of American Atheists Press. A former university biology instructor, he is also a professional linguist with a specialty involving ancient languages. Zindler is the author of numerous articles and several books on Atheism and related history, including a special annotated edition of Part Three of The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. He is a member of several learned societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, New York Academy of Science, Society of … Read on…