Annie Laurie Gaylor

Annie Laurie Gaylor is co-president, with Dan Barker, of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the largest explicitly atheist/agnostic organization in North America with more than 16,000 members. FFRF also has brought more than 50 lawsuits to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state. She cofounded the original FFRF as a regional group with Anne Nicol Gaylor, her mother, as a college student in 1976. A 1980 graduate of the UW-Madison Journalism School in Wisconsin, she was an award-winning student reporter and recipient of the Ken Purdy scholarship.

After graduation, she founded, edited and published the Feminist Connection,a monthly advocacy newspaper, from 1980-1985. She joined the Foundation staff in 1985. Annie Laurie served as editor of Freethought Today, FFRF’s newspaper, from 1984 to 2009, when she became executive editor. Her book, Woe To The Women: The Bible Tells Me So, first published in 1981, is now in its 4th printing. In 1988, the Foundation published her book, Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children, the first book documenting widespread sexual abuse by clergy. Her 1997 anthology, Women Without Superstition: ‘No Gods, No Masters, is the first collection of the writings of historic and contemporary women freethinkers.

She is married to Dan Barker and they live in Madison, Wisconsin. Their daughter, Sabrina, a 4th generation freethinker, is a college student.