Madalyn Murray a Hated Woman

THE MOST HATED WOMAN IN AMERICA

A candid interview with Madalyn Murray, who wants to tax churches and to remove prayer, the Bible, and God from the public consciousness

These death threats are no picnic," says Madalyn Murray. "I think sooner or later some night some nut is going to geta messa murray.gif - 17.2 K ge from Jesus Christ and I'm going to have had it. But as long as I'm still round I'm going to keep on being a squeaking wheel."

Mrs. Murray accepts the letters and phone calls that threaten her life as a well-deserved tribute to her unpopularity. She is America's most outspoken and militant atheist and she calls herself the "most hated woman in the U.S." Chaos, high-decibel controversy and headlines are her milieu. She is built like a Breughel peasant and lights spiritedly as a mustang in any way she can think of to further her cause which is the "total and utter separation of church and state." This cause, in a land where most people believe in God and those who don't keep quiet, is as good a way to win public favor as bringing back polio. But Mrs. Murray's popularity moves in inverse proportion to her success--which is not inconsiderable. She is a spearhead of the fight against public school prayer and it was her suit, "Murray vs.Curlett," that brought the controversial Supreme Court decision outlawing official prayer ceremonies in public schools--and made the name of Murray anathema to millions of Americans.

Now she is onto something even more potentially troublemaking. She is suing the city of Baltimore to prevent them from exempting places of public worship from taxation. "Why should I pay more taxes," she demands, "while moral and ethical leaders, as they call themselves, get off tax-free'?"

This suit, which some legal experts think will not only reach the Supreme Court but win there, could have immense repercussions. The Catholic and Episcopal dioceses of Baltimore have joined the case as co-defendants. In Baltimore the churches own $80 million worth of property. In New Jersey they have 18% of all property, in Maryland 17%, in Pennsylvania 14%. Mrs. Murray objects even more to the fact that churches are nominal owners of such unecclesiastical but income-producing properties as hotels, dwellings and business properties. And while she's at it, Mrs. Murray is also trying to get "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Madalyn Murray operates out of a row-house office on North Calvert Street, Baltimore. There she runs the, "Freethought Society of America, Inc.," which propagandizes atheism and has a mailing list of 25,000. She also runs "Other Americans, Inc." ("a particularly nasty organization," she explains), which promotes lawsuits against religious intervention in the secular world. She puts out a monthly magazine called "The American Atheist," which has a readership of 7,500. And she also offers for sale a two-record LP album, "Why I Am an Atheist," in which she rambles on for four sides and a total of two hours citing her philosophy and the history of atheism in America. The only atheist she mentions by name is herself.

Mrs. Murray, who is 45, is president of both her organizations and editor of her magazine. She has a board of directors to advise, and the fact that she has been able to get others less frenetic than she to join her is a source of great surprise. " Atheists are nonjoiners by nature," she says. "Getting them to cooperate even in a loose way is the miracle of the century."

Madalyn Murray, daughter of a Presbyterian contractor of Pittsburgh, decided at 13 that she did not believe the Bible any more. She began what she describes as "a long, isolated, painful search" for evidence that anybody else ever dissented the way she did. "I thought maybe I was some sort of weirdie," she says. But she kept her atheism so much to herself that when her sons were born she even went so far as to have them baptized. "It pleased their grandparents and I figured the kids would think it was like any other water splashing on their heads. My attitude then was 'You go your way, I'll go mine-you think Christ was a god born of a virgin; I think he's the hero of a beautiful story but I also, think we've all got to create our own destiny, based on reason alone.'"

But when Bill Murray, very much his mother's son, turned 14 her atheism became less laissez-faire. "He came to me, that trouble-making boy of mine, and he said, `Look, either you follow your convictions or you're a hypocrite. Do I have to pray in school or not'?'" It turned out, after 2 1/2 years of litigation which ended up in the Supreme Court, that he didn't have to. But he and his brother both suffered as a result, enduring ostracism and abuse. They have both been beaten up, jeered at and subjected to taunting catcalls-such as "Jesus Loves Me"--by their classmates. Both have been their mother's loyal but sometimes rueful pawns in the fight against prayers in school. "I've missed so, so much school this year," sighs Garth, "because of atheism and sinus and measles."

Bill, though a youth of keen intellect, probably will not graduate on time from the Polytechnic Institute of Baltimore. His mother says this is because the high school would not help him review the work he missed during the seven weeks he spent home with mononucleosis. The school denies this--and one might think a school system would rush both Murray boys through, even if their I.Q.s were barely above the simian, just to get Madalyn Murray out of their hair.

There's been trouble after school and weekends too. Somebody once wrung the neck of the Murray's cat. Somebody wrote "MURRAY IS A COMMUNIST" in red on their sidewalk, in response to which Mrs. (who, whatever else she may be, is not a Communist) got two mongrels, named them Marx and Engels. Their neighbors then testified in court that the dogs barked regularly every five minutes, which Mrs. Murray said was impossible; and untrue. But still she had to send her dogs away. Her office windows have been broken by rocks, her car tires flattened, tacks put in the driveway behind her office.

She also lost her job. "I'd been a social worker for 21 years, but' 24 hours after I filed suit on the prayers they decided I was incompetent' and fired me." She had already lost her husband--a Roman Catholic--by divorce. "Why did I marry him? Well, you know, he had blue eyes and black hair, one thing leads' to another."

The Murrays share an unimposing house with her mother, who buys the groceries, and her brother, who pays the gas, light and phone bills. "It's exciting and even adventurous to live on a small amount of money," says Mr. Murray. "We get enough in contributions to whittle down the mortgage for our building and our postage bills. Postage is our biggest expense. Then we have other problems--recently we had to get a German shepherd to protect me when I work alone late nights."

Mrs. Murray's office from outside looks deceptively placid except for a patched broken window on the second floor. Within, one is reminded simultaneously of college humor magazine, a hospital emergency ward and a church rummage sale at closing time. Letters are always getting lost--some from well-wishers get put in the "Nut File" with death threats and religious tracts. Volunteers bring their cantankerous babies. The Murray dog gets loose and romps up the street, and must be chased by earnest, hand-wringing young men who look as though they'd rather be writing thoughtful tracts. Coffee water boils away on the hot plate. Toothbrushes and bobby pins, testimony to all-night work sessions, clutter the sink of the powder room. A benign, elderly atheist who looks like an ad for Vermont maple syrup drops by to wish Mrs. Murray well, and is put to work stuffing envelopes. The phones ring incessantly, frequently long-distance. Mrs. Murray is to go to Los Angeles to tape a TV show on the 11th. Mrs. Murray is not to debate Billy Graham or Norman Vincent Peale just yet, maybe later. This grieves her--"I've never lost an argument yet, I'd love to take them on.") Mrs. Murray is due in half an hour to address a Bucks County group ("Oh damn, I forgot--where is Bucks County?").

She is very often in the headlines. Lately she has been in the vortex of two storms. A 17-year-old friend of her son Bill named Susan Abramowitz ran away from home, claiming her father beat her, and sought refuge with the Murrays. The Abramowitzes charged, and later retraced the charge, that their daughter had been converted to atheism, but Mrs. Murray was exonerated. Still in the news is her hassle with the city's Bureau of Building Inspection. Two members of the bureau, she charges, broke into her office with no warrants and no explanations. The bureau asserts its entrance and intent to inspect were entirely legal but Madalyn Murray says, "They really have it in for us in this town. I've got a lot of enemies.

"People ask why don't I leave Baltimore if I dislike it so much-- well, they can go to hell. I've got a right to live any place I want, even in Baltimore where row houses breed row minds. All any one cares about here, besides maybe religion, is the goddam Orioles. Marx was wrong, its baseball that's the opiate of the masses." Short of knocking motherhood, 'The Patty Duke Show' and sunny weather, she couldn't have made a more damaging statement, but conformity doesn't come easy to Mrs. Murray

I wonder how long it takes to make these faces I see around here so expressionless?" she says. "We, have a horribly monolithic society. We need more radicals. If enough of them don't turn up to fight we'll get to Orwell's 1984 right on schedule. We've got just 19 years and 6 months, and the way things are going now we ought to make it on time."

Mrs. Murray trained for her belligerent career on many campuses and in the Women's Army Corps during World War II. She lists the University of Toledo, the University of Pittsburgh, Ashland College (where she got a B.A.), Western Reserve, Ohio Northern, Howard University (where she was the only white woman) and South Texas College of Law (where she got a degree). "My father moved a lit and I went to whatever college was handy. I have a terrific curiosity" she says. "Everything I learn makes me realize I don't know a thing. But compared to most cud-chewing, small-talking, stupid American women, I'm a brain. We might as well admit it, I'm a genius."

I love life, I knit, I sew, I'm a damn good housekeeper, I keep my life64.gif - 24.2 K yard nice, I love food, I'm crazy about flowers, I never stop reading. But I've got to fight what I know in my guts is wrong just like if I'd been born French in an earlier century I'd have fought in a sewer in Paris. There's a joy being outside of society-reject by it. Religious people are cowards. It's easy for them to love their God, because he presents no problems. They don't have to face him. Go through history," she bubbles on expansively, "and you'll find that nearly all who contributed anything--including Abraham Lincoln, who did not put `under God' in the Gettysburg Address himself-were atheists or agnostics." Mrs. Murray has little use herself for agnostics, who she' calls "atheists without guts. They're afraid to speak up."

She does have ideas on Christ, blasphemous ones about his parentage and serious ones on his probable fate if he were around today. "He'd be on my side, not theirs," she contends. "We wouldn't crucify him now, we'd just make damn sure he never got a job again as long as he lived."