America's Most Hated Woman

America's Most Hated Woman
Author: Ann Rowe Seaman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2005-03-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0826418872

Why did Life Magazine dub her "the most hated woman in America"? Did she unravel the moral fiber of America or defend the Constitution? They found her heaped in a shallow grave, sawed up, and burned. Thus ended Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the articulate "atheist bitch" whose 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ended school prayer. Her Christian-baiting lawsuits spanned three more decades; she was on TV all over the country, foul-mouthed, witty, and passionate, launching today's culture wars over same-sex marriage and faith-based initiatives. She was a man-hater who loved sex, a bully whose heart broke for the downtrodden. She was accused of schizophrenia, alcoholism, and embezzlement, but never cowardice or sloth. She was an ideologue who spewed toxic rage even at the followers who made her a millionaire. She was a doting mother who accosted people to ask them to be sexual partners for her lonely children, and whose cannibalistic love led her children to their grave. She thrived on her fame, but just as the curtain of obscurity began to lower, the family vanished in one of the strangest of America's true crimes. This is the real story of "the most hated woman in America," by the only author to interview the killer and those close to him and to witness the family's secret burial in Austin, Texas. From the First Chapter The sky was gray and drizzling, but it had stopped at the funeral home by quarter to nine. Billy Murray hadn't spoken to his three family members for more than twenty years, but he wanted to give them a decent burial. Bill was an ordained minister, but he didn't pray over the charred, sawed-up remains. "Baptists don't pray for the dead," he said. "They either accept Christ before they died or they didn't." He had his mother cremated in accordance with her oft-expressed wish. Her urn sat at the head of the burial vault, as was appropriate, for she had ruled the other two with an iron hand. She was Madalyn Murray O'Hair, 76, founder of American Atheists, and the Most Hated Woman in America—a sobriquet she relished. The other two were his half-brother, Jon Garth Murray, 40, and his daughter, Robin Murray-O'Hair, 30. It had taken five years to find them and bring them to the cemetery for the service, which was kept secret from the public. It was their second burial. Jerry Carruth, the prosecutor who had searched for the family for nearly four years, had watched them being excavated from their shallow mass grave on a South Texas ranch some months before. He was watching the shoveling, looking for the hip replacement joint Madalyn had gotten in 1988. When they found that, he'd know he'd found Madalyn. "There it was," he said, "shining in the sun like a trailer hitch.">

The Struggle for Free Speech in the United States, 1872-1915

The Struggle for Free Speech in the United States, 1872-1915
Author: Janice Ruth Wood
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2011-10-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135896372

This book chronicles the struggles of the Drs. Foote, examining not just their efforts to further individual rights and women's health but also the larger issues surrounding free speech and censorship in the Gilded Age of American history.

Sense and Sensibility in Islam

Sense and Sensibility in Islam
Author: Abdul Elah Nazer
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 815
Release: 2012-04-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1469148323

Islam, more than 1400 years after its revival by Prophet Muhammad is still misunderstood today. The traditional Islam practised today, is not the Islam of the Prophets, Abraham and Muhammad. It has been acutely syncretized with alien concepts of Paganism, Zoroastrian and Judeo-Christian. This book will attempt to explain some of the misunderstood verses using linguistics within its various contexts. Resorting to reason, Sense and Sensibility in Islam “sieves” out words and expressions of literalism from historicity. The resulting exegesis closely mirrors the message of the Quran as understood by the Pagan, Persian and the Judeo-Christian weltanschauung of the days of the Prophet Muhammad. The use of logic and context of the message is paramount. Arabic lexicons are frequently consulted and ancient metaphors revealed. Myths, legends, dogmas, miracles, superstitions, and historicity will be examined in the light of modern disciplines of archaeology and it sub-discipline of epigraphy, anthropology, cosmology and other scientifi c disciplines in deciphering and “teasing” out the message to its “original” rational intent. Contrary to popular perception, Islam is not a religion. It is in fact opposed to it, states Nazer. Traditional Islam today is a syncretic medley of traditions from Zoroastrian, Jewish and Christian traditions. While Nazer attempts to separate Original Islam from this syncretism, he asks various pertinent questions on the origins of Prophet Muhammad; the rituals perpetuated in the name of Islam by the Pagan Meccans of the Omayyad Period and later Abbasside Zoroastrian Persians and question their authenticity through linguistics, common sense and unveiled metaphors from Arabic Lexicons. Like separating wheat from chaff, Nazer “teases” out ancient words and metaphors from commonly translated rituals in today’s Islam. What was the essence of the ancient faith, he asks? Did Abraham travel all the way to Mecca to found a faith on the ritual of prayers, or did he found a system of socio-economic reforms, which Muhammad followed, for later generations? Did Abraham build the Kaaba in Mecca? Did Mecca exist during Abraham’s time? What do the words Kaaba and Bakkah really mean? Was Bakkah the Mecca of today, or was it the Baca or Bekah of the Judaic religion? Nazer explains these words through linguistics from context and the answer may surprise many, including the followers of traditional Islam today. Finally, Sense and Sensibility in Islam examines whether Islam is compatible with Western democracy. Is Islam a democracy or an autocracy, allied to patristic bondage as practiced in Iran and Saudi Arabia? He comes to the conclusions that Islam is a set of social reforms that lead to peace, security and human rights for all.

The Repeal of Reticence

The Repeal of Reticence
Author: Rochelle Gurstein
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 507
Release: 2016-01-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 146689542X

At a time when America's faculties of taste and judgment—along with the sense of the sacred and shameful—have become utterly vacant, Rochelle Gurstein's The Repeal of Reticence delivers an important and troubling warning. Covering landmark developments in America's modern culture and law, she charts the demise of what was dismissively called "gentility" in the face of First Amendment triumphs for journalists, sex educators, and novelists—from Margaret Sanger's advocacy of birth control to Judge Woolsey's celebrated defense of Ulysses. Weaving together a study of the legal debates over obscenity and free speech with a cultural study of the critics and writers who framed the issues, Gurstein offers a trenchant reconsideration of the sacred value of privacy.