Madalyn Murray O'Hair (1919 - 1995) was an American militant atheist, founder of American Atheists and campaigner for the separation of church and state.

Biography

Madalyn Mays was born in Beechview, Pennsylvania and baptized as an infant into the Presbyterian church. She married John Henry Roths in 1941. However they were separated when they both enlisted, he in the US Marines and she in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. In 1945, posted to Italy, she began an affair with William J. Murray Jr. and bore him a child, calling him William. Murray was married and a Roman Catholic, and refused to divorce his wife to marry Madalyn. Nonetheless she divorced Roths and began to call herself Madalyn Murray. In 1949 she obtained a degree in Law from South Texas College of Law, but never practised. On 16 November 1954 she gave birth to another son, Jon Garth Murray, by a different father.

In 1960 she began a lawsuit against the Baltimore School District. In Murray v. Curtlett she protested the unconstitutionality of her son William participating in Bible readings in the Baltimore public schools. This suit was amalgamated with the similar Abington School District v. Schempp, and reached the United States Supreme Court, which handed down a decision in 1963 8-1 in her favour, and effectively banned 'coercive' public prayer and Bible reading in public schools in the US. This sparked such an outcry that the 1964 Life magazine referred to her as 'The most hated woman in America'. As a result of this decision, Madalyn founded American Atheists, 'a nationwide movement which defends the civil rights of nonbelievers, works for the separation of church and state, and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy'. She acted as its first CEO before later handing it on to her son, Jon Garth.

In 1965 Madalyn married Richard O'Hair. Throughout the 1970s she publicly debated religious leaders on a variety of issues and she also produced an atheist radio program in which she criticized religion and theism. She also filed numerous lawsuits on many issues where she felt that religion had been given too much liberty in violation of the Constitution. In 1980 her son William converted to Christianity and was 'born again' at Gateway Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair not only took on religious believers, but also many atheists. She kicked out of American Atheists members who did not conform to her idea of what atheists should be like. In a 1982 address she criticized a wide variety of atheist "types" as being unacceptable - seemingly all except the type which was based upon the ideas of psychologist Abraham Maslow and which was characterized by self-actualization.

On 27 August 1995, Madalyn, Jon Garth and Robin Murray O'Hair, William's daughter who Madalyn had adopted, vanished from the headquarters of American Atheists, leaving a note saying they will be gone for a while and are going to San Antonio. In September Jon ordered $600,000 worth of gold coins from a San Antonio jeweller, but took delivery of only $500,000. Nothing more was heard from any of the O'Hairs, and in 1996 William Murray filed a missing person report. Speculation abounded that the O'Hairs had abandoned American Atheists and fled with the money, one investigator concluding that they had gone to New Zealand. Other theories were that they had been kidnapped by fundamentalist Christians. Many of the O'Hair assets were sold to clear up their debts. Eventually, though, suspicion turned to David Roland Waters, an ex-convict who had worked at the American Atheist offices and was already convicted of stealing funds from there. Police concluded that he and accomplices had kidnapped the O'Hairs, forced them to withdraw the missing funds, and then murdered them. Waters eventually pled guilty to reduced charges and in January 2001 he led police to three bodies buried on a remote Texas ranch, which proved to be O'Hair and her children.

Urban Legend

Madalyn Murray O'Hair is probably, much to her annoyance, best known today by users of the internet for a seemingly unsquashable urban legend. An email endlessly circulating, mostly among Christians, charges that "Madalyn Murray O'Hare is attempting to get 'Touched By An Angel' and all TV programs that mention God taken off the air". The initial rumour has been circulating since 1975, and initially draw hundreds of thousands of letters in response. The email invariably misspells O'Hair's name in the same way. It cites a petition to the FCC, which in real life was denied in 1975. These emails were still circulating in 2002, seven years after O'Hair's disappearance and long after she was known to be dead. A variant that acknowledges her death is still circulating in 2003, still warning about the danger to 'Touched By An Angel' months after the program's last episode has been shown.

External Links