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The New York Times
On Religion
A Pragmatist and a
Lobbyist on Atheism
By SAMUEL G.
FREEDMAN, nytimes.com on the Web, February 23, 2008
ALBANY -- The atheist lobby,
in the blond, pregnant person of Jennifer Lange, waited with diminishing
patience for the elevator in the Legislative Office Building.
Ms. Lange checked her watch one last time, then rounded a corner into the
corridor and skipped down four flights of stairs. The back way to
Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky’s office was just one of those useful things she
knew about the inner workings of Albany.
Ms. Lange’s mission on this Monday in early February was to scuttle a bill
titled the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which she and every legislator on
her agenda called in their common insiders’ slang Rifra. Of the nearly
10,000 pieces of legislation introduced annually in the New York State
Legislature, the act was one of only several dozen brought under the lead
sponsorship of the Assembly’s speaker, Sheldon Silver. It was not going to
be an easy target.
Then again, in her 10 months as the part-time registered lobbyist for the
Institute for Humanist Studies, Ms. Lange had already reckoned the difficulty of
her task. Alone in Albany, and among just a few comparable figures
elsewhere in the nation, she advocates for the political interests of
secularists who variously describe themselves as nonbelievers, freethinkers,
humanists, atheists, skeptics and brights.
The assignment puts her in competition with dozens of lobbyists for religious
entities, including powerhouses like the Catholic Conference, and also
individual churches, hospitals, charities and social service agencies.
More broadly, Ms. Lange tries to offer persuasion and charm amid a climate of
nasty polarization between the faithful and the faithless.
As represented in print by best-selling authors like Christopher Hitchens, Sam
Harris and Richard Dawkins, atheism has lately mounted an in-your-face attack
not simply on religion’s influence on public policy, but on belief itself.
From the opposite flank, Mitt Romney used a major address in his presidential
campaign to espouse the view popular in pious circles that the United States is
essentially divided between the committed adherents of all religions, a k a the
good guys, and the secularists, a k a the enemy.
“It’s not like I’m coming from Save the Children or something everybody’s in
favor of,” Ms. Lange, 32, put it in an interview. “When you say you’re an
atheist, people think of negative values, of heathens. People feel that
we’re antireligious. I’m not trying to change anyone’s religion. I
don’t even want to talk religion or the Bible when I’m lobbying. I want to
stay focused on state policy and finding the places we can make common cause.”
Such pragmatism is not only Ms. Lange’s personal style. Leaders of the
Institute for Humanist Studies, an Albany research organization founded in 1999,
very consciously studied the religious right, as well as the gay rights
movement, as models of successful lobbying.
“We were looking for examples of how a significant minority can mobilize their
people and their friends and their families to achieve influence,” said Matt
Cherry, executive director of the institute. “There’s been a tendency for
atheists to use only the politics of protest — to be on the sidelines with all
your purity — but not to roll up your sleeves.”
In Ms. Lange, the institute found an experienced legislative tactician and a
disarming public face. Ms. Lange grew up in Peoria, Ill., as a regular
churchgoer and youth-group member in a United Methodist congregation.
While she recalls having decided by her early teens that she did not believe in
God — and being particularly disturbed by what she considered the misogyny of
the Bible — she still accompanies her parents to church during family visits to
the Midwest.
She put her idealism first into the Peace Corps, spending two years in
Guatemala, and then into the presidency of the National Organization for Women’s
chapter in Buffalo. (In somewhat unfeminist fashion, she had followed a
boyfriend to western New York.) She then became a legislative aide to Sam
Hoyt III, a Democratic assemblyman from Buffalo, serving two years in his
district office and then three in Albany.
Her time in the state capital gave her the practical savvy and personal
connections that the humanist institute sought when it hired her last April.
As Ms. Lange zigzagged through the office building on that Monday morning this
month, she collected busses on the cheek and doting questions about her
toddlers, Hannah and John. Her fond relations with the secretaries and
administrative assistants ensured that she would get access, timely access,
either to legislators or a staff member of consequence.
“Being an insider, I know who you need to know,” she said. “I know the
process. The bills, the legislation, the budget, scheduling meetings.”
At each stop, Ms. Lange made her pitch against the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act. While the measure sought to remove any “unreasonable burdens” from
religious practice, the State Constitution more than amply protected religious
freedom, she told legislators. A new law risked eroding the separation of
church and state.
In her search for allies, she made sure to discuss issues like same-sex marriage
and comprehensive sex education, on which she and many legislators already
agreed. She also lined up sponsors and votes for a coming resolution to
declare Feb. 12 as Darwin Day. (It passed unanimously.)
Still, none of the five Assembly members she met with promised to side against
the religion measure. Mr. Brodsky, a Democrat from Westchester County,
chided Ms. Lange that opposing the bill put her on the same side as lobbyists
for fundamentalist Christians and ultra-Orthodox Jews, who deemed the measure
too weak.
“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” Ms. Lange conceded.
At a different meeting with a different Assembly member, Ms. Lange faced a
different problem.
Kevin A. Cahill, a Democrat from Kingston, had not recalled cosponsoring the
religious-freedom bill in June until she presented him with an information sheet
about the measure.
“That means there’s another side of the story,” Mr. Cahill said, suggesting that
he must have had a good reason to back the measure, which is being considered by
the Assembly’s Government Operations Committee. “You think there’s a
better way to do this?”
Ms. Lange went into her standard spiel about the State Constitution being the
better way. Mr. Cahill, in turn, promised to “look back at what I’ve done
and why.”
The day’s lobbying was just about over for Ms. Lange. The hallways now
belonged to volunteers with canes and dogs, who were lobbying for the American
Council of the Blind. Ms. Lange made her final stop with her old boss, Mr.
Hoyt.
Seeing her arrive, he declared, “Charles Darwin is in the house.”
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