Annie Laurie Gaylor

From Philosopedia

Gaylor, Annie Laurie (2 November 1965 - )

Daughter of Anne Nicol Gaylor and wife of Dan Barker, Gaylor is a freethought activist who edits Freethought Today for the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Wisconsin.

Gaylor was born in Madison, Wisconsin, along with her twin, Ian Stuart Gaylor. With her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, she co-founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1976 as a college student.

In 1977, Gaylor's complaint halted invocations and prayers at University of Wisconsin-Madison graduation ceremonies, ending a 122-year abuse. She earned a journalism degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980.

Her book documenting bible sexism, Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So, first issued in 1981, has been reissued in a revised and updated form. In it, she wrote,

• The only true shield standing between women and the bible, that handbook for the subjugation of women, is a secular government. U.S. citizens must wake up to the threat of an encroaching theocracy, and shore up Thomas Jefferson's '"wall of separation between church and state."

Gaylor edited and published the Feminist Connection, a regional monthly, from 1980-1984, then became editor of Freethought Today, the Foundation's newspaper, in 1985.

She wrote the first book exposing the clergy sexual abuse scandal, Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children (1988), and is editor of the first anthology of women freethinkers, Women Without Superstition: No Gods - No Masters (1997).

For the American Humanist Association, Gaylor is co-chairperson of the Feminist Caucus.

In 1994, she spoke in Rochester, New York, on “Female Freethinkers” at a Robert G. Ingersoll commemoration of Ingersoll’s work on behalf of women’s equality.

She and Dan Barker have one daughter.

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