Edwin Kagin

From Philosopedia.org

Kagin, Edwin Frederick (26 November 1940)

An attorney at law in Union, Kentucky, Kagin is the founder of Camp Quest, the first secular summer camp in the United States for the children of Humanists, Freethinkers, Agnostics, and Atheists. He is married to Helen McGregor Kagin, a retired physician of Scottish descent from Regina, Saskatchewan.

Kagin's father, a Presbyterian minister, had been born in Kentucky. His mother is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, originally from South Carolina. His ancestry is Calvinistic German on his father's side and Scottish (Stewart) Presbyterian on his mother's.

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Kagin became an Eagle Scout. In early adulthood he served in the United States Air Force as a medic in London, England, and received an Honorable Discharge in 1962. He then attended The College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio; Park College in Parkville, Missouri; the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Missouri; and the School of Law of the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky.

For a time, Kagin worked as a college English instructor and served as editor of the American Association of Mental Deficiency and National Institute for Mental Health project that created the Adaptive Behavior Scale, an instrument for the assessment of mental retardation.

The larger part of his career has been as an attorney, during which he has sometimes focused on civil liberties and constitutional issues. His legal work has included an unsuccessful challenge of Kentucky's statutory rape laws and a lawsuit against a church school for expelling an eighth-grader because she had sex. He once represented a woman in prison who tried to force Kentucky to pay for her abortion; when it refused, Kagin threatened to sue the state for child support. He sued judges in Kenton and Campbell counties to stop them from sending divorced parents to classes given by Catholic Social Services.

After abandoning belief in Christianity, Kagin became a Freethought activist. A founding member in 1991 of the Free Inquiry Group, Inc. (FIG) of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, he served as its vice president.

Through FIG, Kagin established Camp Quest in 1996, becoming its first director. Later he became co-director with his wife, Helen. Camp Quest was separately incorporated in 2002 with the Kagins among the founding board members. The two retired as directors at the conclusion of the 2005 camp season, finishing the camp's first decade of operation.

According to Kagin,

• When people ask how I know the Bible so well, I tell them it was from 12 years of perfect church and Sunday school attendance. And when people ask why I turned against religion, I tell them 12 years of perfect church and Sunday school attendance.

Since 2003, Kagin has served as Kentucky State Director for American Atheists. The Kagins were named "Atheists of the Year" by American Atheists in 2005. In January 2006, Kagin was appointed American Atheists National Legal Director, to supervise and plan First Amendment and related litigation on behalf of that organization.

Kagin was also a founder and board member of Recover Resources Center, which provides an alternative addiction recovery program to the religiously oriented Alcoholics Anonymous. In addition, he was a co-founder and currently serves on the national advisory board of the Secular Student Alliance.

As an outspoken public critic of religious intrusions into government, Kagin is a frequent speaker and debater at local and national events. On more than one occasion, he has appeared on radio, sparring with Michael Medved. Kagin has also run prominently, albeit unsuccessfully, as "the candidate without a prayer" for the Kentucky Supreme Court (1998) and the Kentucky State Senate (2000).

Through his writings in Fig Leaves, the FIG newsletter, as well as those he published and circulated via the Internet, Kagin gradually became known in wider Humanist and Freethought circles. This led in 2003 to his authorship of a chapter in Kimberly Blaker's Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America (2003, New Boston Books) and in 2005 to his own book, Baubles of Blasphemy (Freethought Press), a collection of some of his often irreverent essays and poetry.

Kagin is a National Rifle Association Certified Handgun Instructor, an Honorary Black Belt in Kenpo Karate, and an honorary Kentucky Colonel. He is listed in Warren Allen Smith's Who's Who in Hell (2000, Barricade Books).