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Welcome to the convention!
Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton addresses the convention on the first night.
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The FFRF also gave an Emperor Has No Clothes award to Rep. Pete Stark, the only openly nontheist U.S. congressperson, who accepted in a pretaped message.
Linda Greenhouse discusses the Supreme Court.
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Dan Barker presents the Emperor Has No Clothes award to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who signed copies of her books after her acceptance speech.
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Pioneering geneticist James F. Crow speaks on evolution and creationism.
Eric Workman accepts the Thomas Jefferson Student Activist award for successfully halting state-sponsored prayer at his high school graduation.
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Kirk Mefford (R.) and Aaron Blum (L.) discuss their role as advisors to a nontheist student group at West High School. They brought one of their students with them as well.
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FFRF staff attorneys Rebecca Markert, Patrick Elliott and Richard Bolton discuss legal challenges.
One theocratic judge put this copy of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom to show how pious he was. See anything wrong with it? Notice which one is missing?
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During the lunch break, we toured this street fair in downtown Madison. You can see the impressive dome of the state capitol building.
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Julia Sweeney reads from her new book, My Beautiful Loss of Faith Story.
Madison cartoonist Mike Konopacki gave a graphical (and graphic) presentation on religiously inspired violence in American history.
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Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks rallies freethinkers to action.
A wide shot to get a sense of the size of the convention. This was about half the ballroom; the other half, equally packed, was behind me.
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Julia Sweeney signs books and DVDs after the convention (with Annie Laurie Gaylor looking on, right). Did you know she had a small role in Pulp Fiction? She was much amused when one conventiongoer presented her with this large poster…
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Did someone order a large ham? The last event of the night was ex-Mormon cartoonist Steve Benson, who presented a gallery of his most infamous political cartoons with musical accompaniment by Dan Barker.
Freethought Hall, the FFRF’s historic headquarters, was just down the road.
I have to admit, as inspiring as it was to see Freethought Hall, it was dwarfed by this Episcopal cathedral down the block – and that’s just one church, in one city. It’s a reminder of how much work we have left to do in organizing and advocacy. Of course, to be fair, churches enjoy a smorgasbord of tax benefits and legal privileges not available to groups like FFRF. We’ve only just begun to fight!