Escondido Gives Atheist Magazine a Trial

A complimentary subscription to American Atheist magazine will be accepted by the Escondido city library for a one-year trial basis to determine whether it is of interest to its patrons, the library’s board of trustees decided Thursday.

After the trial, the trustees will either continue or cancel the subscription.

The decision came on a 3-2 vote of the board after a sometimes acrimonious debate over the merits of the magazine, a “journal of atheist news and thought” published monthly by atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s Society of Separationists.

Trustees had previously deadlocked, 2-2, on whether to accept the magazine when the fifth seat was vacant.

O’Hair’s daughter, Robin Murray O’Hair, editor of the magazine, on Thursday threatened the trustees with a lawsuit if the magazine was not accepted, and she said afterward that she will keep that option open.

“We will consider whether to go ahead by seeing how the magazine is received,” she said, saying the legal threat will be dropped “if they mend their ways on the amount of information they’ll allow.”

“We have taken other libraries to court over this issue, and we’ll be happy to do it again,” she told trustees. Her threat of a lawsuit brought an angry response.

Tom DeMitor, who was appointed to the board last week by the Escondido City Council to fill the vacancy, told O’Hair:

“I do not intend to sit on this board and listen to someone try to coerce it. I do not appreciate you coming from Austin, Tex., and threatening this board with civil action.”

But DeMitor then made the motion to accept the magazine on a trial basis, and head librarian Graham Humphrey said he will monitor the magazine’s popularity.

“It will be kind of subjective, to see if people come in and ask for it,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a good magazine. Most of its writing is poor, and its presentation is poor. And it serves more as a newsletter for atheists; it promotes their organization.”

DeMitor said after the meeting that he suspected that interest in the magazine will wane after the curiosity wears off.

“I absolutely do not like it,” he said. “I’ve seen better work from senior high school journalism classes. It has a great deal of vitriolic commentary, and it appears that they are against everything that has anything to do with religion. I wouldn’t waste my time with it. If you want to read it, it’s there, but you’re wasting your time.”

O’Hair and Stephen Thorne, an Escondido resident and director of the San Diego chapter of American Atheists, argued that the library has a responsibility to accept the subscription because libraries serve as storehouses of information, including material not necessarily accepted by society’s mainstream.

“Your refusal to accept the American Atheist can only be interpreted as a personal abrogation of public trust by individual trustees based upon their disposition to endorse, in their official public offices, their narrow sectarian religious ideas,” she said in a prepared statement.

Graham noted that the library has other information about atheism on its shelves and repeated his objections to American Atheist on grounds that it is poorly written and constructed, that its articles are not indexed in the two major indexes used by the library and that there has been no demand for it in the past.

He said the American Library Assn. recommends to libraries that they include “as broad a selection as your budgets allow, your space allows and your community allows.” Some libraries, he added, have “marvelous collections on poultry.”

He said that, since the controversy has surfaced, his office has received many letters and phone calls--some anonymous, and many from outside Escondido--encouraging the library to accept the publication.

Trustee Jeanne Linthicum said she opposes the magazine because, among other reasons, “It doesn’t promote atheism, it simply condemns Christians. I don’t think this is the kind of literature we need.”

Trustee Carol Kane said she originally voted to reject the magazine but thought about reconsidering her position because “I don’t want to be considered a censor. But examining my conscience, I will not change my vote, and I will still vote against it. There are worse things than being a censor.”

Board President Virgil Bergman said he dislikes the magazine “but I’m a retired educator, and I believe libraries should have everything available to put in them.”

He added, “What bothers me is, how can they carry all that money around that says, ‘In God We Trust’?”

Trustee Ruth Potts said she favors accepting the magazine to expand the library’s collection of material “even though I don’t necessarily believe in it.”