Report from the AAI Conference

by Bill Creasy

The 2008 Atheist Alliance International Convention was held on Sept. 25-28, 2008, in Long Beach, Ca., on board the Queen Mary.

On Thursday night before the conference, Margaret Downey, president of AAI, and Capt. Roy Sorge, captain of the Queen Mary, performed a secular wedding of two atheists, Larry Mendoza and Rebecca Rivera. The marriage had all the joyous trappings of a traditional marriage, from wedding cake to dancing, but with secular vows.

The conference began on Friday with two civic activism opportunities: a blood donation drive and a "Locks of Love" hair donation. The latter event asked for donations of 6-10" of hair to be used to make wigs for cancer patients. Margaret Downey donated 10" of her trademark long medium brown hair, as did 5 other volunteers.

The conference officially opened at 7 pm on Friday. The evening session honored "atheists in foxholes." Speakers included Jason Torpy (president of Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers), Carlos Bertha (USAF Academy), and Kathleen Johnson (former sargeant in Iraq and Afghanistan, currently with American Atheists), who spoke about incursions of fundamentalist Christianity in the military. Mikey Weinstein gave a fiery talk on getting fundamentalist religion out of the military. He is a lawyer who is pursuing lawsuits against the military to remove denominational, evangelical, fundamentalist religion from the most powerful military machine in the world. He said that a lot of complaints come from moderate Christians bcause they are told by fundamentalists that they aren't committed enough, but they don't want to sue; typically only atheists are willing to pursue lawsuits. In his opinion, the fundamentalists are trying to take over the U.S. military, and we are at war to stop them. He accepted the first "Valiant Atheist Medallion of Honor" award for Army specialist Jeremy Hall, who was not granted leave by the Army to attend the conference. Hall is plaintiff in a lawsuit.

On Saturday morning, there were a total of nine workshops, making for difficult choices. Fortunately, most of the workshops were videotaped for the conference DVD. Lori Lipman Brown, director of the Secular Coalition for America, and Sasha Bartolf, her legislative associate, gave an informative workshop on lobbying. After a discussion, we broke into three groups to practice lobbying, with Brown and Bartolf playing the roles of members of Congress.

Ellen Johnson, former president of American Atheists and director of Enlighten the Vote (formerly known as the Godless Americans Political Action Committee), presented another workshop. She said votes of atheists should be courted by elected officials, but they aren't being. Secular voters are a bigger block than any single religion. Politicians are coming to her to ask for her endorsement.

At lunch, Julia Sweeney and Jill Sobule sang songs and told stories. Downey and Sweeney presented the 2008 Richard Dawkins Award to Ayaan Hirsi Ali. She saw the conference and accepted the award by streaming video from an "undisclosed location." She received a standing ovation that she saw via the internet, but she didn't give a speech.

Hirsi Ali couldn't be on the Queen Mary due to security concerns. Part of the reason for the concerns appeared to be the proximity of the Queen Mary to the Long Beach Harbor, one of the biggest ports in the country, with its local security. But in addition, there had been a bomb threat to the ship, which turned out to have come from a Christian fundamentalist who had seen ads for the conference. There were bomb-sniffing dogs, undercover officers, and bodyguards at the conference. Even though the threat didn't directly involve Hirsi Ali, federal, local, and ship-board officials decided Hirsi Ali would be at risk if she came onboard, and she agreed. Mikey Weinstein received multiple personal death threats on the day that he appeared at the convention. He was allowed on the ship, however.

There were three plenary talks in the ballroom in the afternoon: Michael Shermer, P. Z. Myers, and Michael Newdow.

Michael Shermer is editor of Skeptic magazine and his most recent book is The Mind of the Market. (He spoke at the 2008 WASH Winter Dinner.) He discussed that morality came from social necessity. Religion and government came second with civilization as social control for large groups of people who were living in proximity.

P. Z. Myers is a biology professor at the Univ. of Minnesota, is a blogger, and was interviewed in the pro-creationist documentary Expelled. He discussed his transition from Christian to atheist. He was inspired by the space program, but was jarred when the Apollo astronauts read Genesis, because religion sounded pathetic, uninformative, inaccurate, and unsatisfying. Religion didn't help him cope with grief from the death of his grandmother. He realized "religion is ridiculous," and "science is enthralling." Religion offers cartoons, not real respect for our history. He gave some examples of scentific discoveries in molecular biology that amaze him. He was a good speaker and answered many audience questions.

Michael Newdow, lawyer, physician, activist, and musician, said little about his on-going court cases that are still in process. He noted a Supreme Court dissent written by Justice Scalia, on one of the Ten Commandments cases, that said devout atheists could be disregarded. Newdow noted that historically Catholics have been subject to more legal discrimination than atheists. He gave a brief history of Catholic v. Protestant warfare to rebut Scalia. All 13 colonies had laws exempting Catholics from rights, and some had oaths to disavow Catholicism or popism. Newdow is working on a hundred-page law journal article. Then Newdow sang songs that he had written based on a parody of "West Side Story" about Scalia and the Supreme Court, called "Wasp Side Story." Who else but Newdow would write a law journal article and parody songs to go with it?

After dinner was the award presentation. Mynga Futrell won the World of Support Award. Sally Cramer accepted a Community Action Award for the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia for helping to found the Philadelphia Coalition of Reason. There was a pre-recorded video from Rep. Pete Stark, the only openly atheist member of Congress.

Eddie Tabash gave a keynote speech encouraging atheists to run for office. He asked atheists to be single issue voters and vote for atheists without regard to other positions. Some atheists may even run as stealth candidates.

On Sunday, Downey, Bobbie Kirkhart and Kathleen Johnson did a panel on Women and Religion. (Downey had other women scheduled, but some couldn't come, and security prevented Hirsi Ali.) Downey showed video of Nigerian children accused of being witches. Kathleen Johnson said women were beginning to be used in Iraq as suicide bombers, and she was trained in security to search women. Women are not seen in public in Afghanistan. Bobbie Kirkhart talked about many famous current and historical women atheists.

Lisa Smith, WASH member, did nice Powerpoint memorial of atheists and humanists who died in 2008. The conference closed with a review of photos from the conference and the announcement of next year's conference in Denver. Since Downey's term as president was over and she chose not to run again as AAI president, a new president, Stuart Bechman was elected and was introduced.

The conference was very musical. Joel Pelletier performed a concert of original and cover songs with a ten-piece band on Friday night. Jill Sobule, a well-known folk singer, did several songs at Saturday lunch. Michael Newdow played his songs during his talk. On Saturday night, an original musical play called "Religiomania" was performed. At the wedding on Thursday, Joy the DJ sang Karaoke style, and she and Downey performed an energetic rendition of "I Will Survive." Dancing award winner John Edwards gave lessons in hip hop dancing. Finally, on Sunday morning, the Camp Quest children sang songs.

It was nice to stay on the Queen Mary. The ship is definitely showing its age, and the managers are dealing with bankrupsy. It wasn't the grand showplace that it must have been when it was in its prime. The local people seemed to take it for granted as an standard tourist attraction. But to someone who hadn't seen it before, it has a great sense of history, of thousands of people being in the same rooms over decades, and particularly coming and going to war. This kind of authenticity is invaluable and can't be faked at a tourist attraction.

In summary, it was an engaging conference, although it didn't outdo the 2007 Crystal City conference. A set of DVDs should be available for sale in a few months at the AAI website (www.atheistalliance.org).

This article was originally published in the November 2008 issue of WASHline, the newsletter of the Washington Area Secular Humanists.