Lori Lipman Brown

Highlights from last night's talk by Lori Lipman Brown of the Secular Coalition for America.

The Good:
I was happily surprised to hear that she has been welcomed by and works closely with many reglious lobbyists who also support the separation of church and state. Lori relayed that people are making an effort to include atheism when they discuss religous diversity. Also, she invited anyone who might find themselves in DC to stop at her office and she would bring them to meet thier legislators. I might take her up on that...

The Depressing:
My, admittedly very bad, defensive mechanisim for dealing with the Bush Administration is to ignore it. So I just learned about how appalling the Office of Faith-based Community Initiatives is. Lori relayed a story about one grant reviewer who proudly crowed that if the grant application isn't from a chirstian organization she just throughs it out.

The Overall:
Lori is not a fantastic speaker however she is very personable and seems to be doing really great work. She's a bit of a rambler and often struggled for words so the talk teetered on the edge of boring. I toyed with the idea of sneaking out early a couple times, but she always grabbed my attention again before that thought took root.