Atheists Are Guaranteed Freedom, Too

In her acclaimed new novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Canadian poet Margaret Atwood invents the Republic of Gilead, a white Christian fundamentalist theocracy where blacks are resettled in “homelands” in the northern plains, Jews are given the choice of conversion or expulsion, and atheists are hanged at public executions, their bodies displayed on hooks set into a wall in the nation’s capital.

In this fiction lies a real cautionary note for Americans who, flocking to militant fundamentalism, appear willing to give up personal liberties in the hope of achieving security. What’s worse, they appear ready to sacrifice the liberty of everyone else who disagrees with them.

This struck home for my family last month. We have had to file a suit against the Los Angeles Unified School District to ban the reading of prayers at our son’s high-school graduation ceremony June 18. Some people have been supportive, but many of the reactions suggest that the American ideal of equal constitutional rights for all citizens is being corroded by a tyranny of religion.

I’m an atheist. My wife is not, but she believes that religion should be an intensely private matter, practiced alone or in voluntary private associations--never in the public forums of a pluralistic democracy. When we married 23 years ago, we agreed that we’d each teach our children the basics of our respective philosophies, and let them choose their own when they grew up. We have two sons, Will and Dan, who both chose atheism.

Two years ago, in the middle of Will’s graduation from Van Nuys High School, a senior came to the lectern and asked, “Shall we bow our heads in prayer?” Faculty and staff members in their academic robes, and most of the students, obediently pantomimed submission while the girl read the prayer.

Shocked and furious, we’ve spent the past two years arguing with school officials, seeking assurance that there would be no religious intrusion at Dan’s graduation this June.

Although they’ve fawned over religious activists--gutting social-studies textbooks of evolution theory to avoid offending creationists, and requiring written parental permission for the most innocuous “hygiene” (sex-education) classes--to us school officials were supercilious and adamant. “Our young people will make their own decisions,” the principal said. “We will not censor them.” Others scoffed at our protests. “What harm can it do? It’s only a minute or so in the program. Why don’t you just ignore it?”

Not merely the content but also the form and tone of the reactions have been disturbing. Strangers call at 7 in the morning or 11:45 at night, launch into a condescending scolding, then turn petulant or abusive when I refer to the time and try to cut short the invasion of our privacy. In a supermarket parking lot, a guard watched indifferently while someone peeled the atheist bumper stickers off my car and left a religious tract in their place.

The message is clear. Because Dan, Will and I are atheists, because we will not profess some religion, any religion, we have forfeited our civil rights, and even the considerations of common courtesy. The government may with impunity usurp my parental prerogative of moral instruction, undercut my parental authority, contradict my teachings in front of my children and rub their noses in irrational superstitions. Our argument, that we are entitled to freedom from religion in the most important public ceremony (and one supported by our taxes) of their young lives, is trivialized and dismissed with cheery contempt. So Dan, his mother and I have gone to court.

Writing on this page in the first year of the Reagan Administration, Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) invoked the nation’s “Judeo-Christian ethics” and asserted: “The First Amendment provides freedom for religion. The modern interpretation of absolute freedom from religion is erroneous and logically impossible.” Now even that frayed velvet glove has been discarded. Now we have a well-connected potential presidential candidate, Pat Robertson, using his Christian Broadcasting Network to establish the United States as “a Christian nation” whose people should “submit to the will of Christ.” Dare I ask, as interpreted by whom?

Dan, who has earned top marks in history and government, asks if the United States and California constitutions apply only to people who profess a religion. Are their rights denied to Americans who are atheists?

The fundamentalists’ advocates in Washington are wrong. The “establishment” clause was included in the Constitution to free all government activity from religious intrusion. “Only a minute or so” of prayer at a public school ceremony may seem like a little thing to some. But it’s the accumulation of little things that have the United States on the road toward becoming a theocracy like Iran--or the Republic of Gilead.