Lori Lipman Brown is Director of the  Secular Coalition for America, where she serves as the first Congressional lobbyist representing atheists.  She is also a speaker on the SSA's Speaker's Bureau.  She writes a weekly blog for The Humanist; we reprint select articles with permission.

April 3 - It's Getting Bigger

No, this is not a spam about increasing your inches (I have no idea why so many e-mailers think I want to do that).  It’s the Secular Coalition for America hiring a second full-time lobbyist.

With the expanding role that the Secular Coalition has played in Congress since its hire of the very first lobbyist explicitly representing nontheist Americans, the need for a second full-time lobbyist was obvious.  The Secular Coalition for America is still the only national organization whose primary purpose is to lobby Congress on behalf of Americans who do not hold a belief in deities.  Thanks in large part to an influx of new supporters, especially among donors who have chosen to give on a monthly basis, the Secular Coalition – this week -- increased its capacity to continue representing you in Congress.

Welcome Sasha Bartolf, legislative associate.  Sasha previously worked for Congressional Quarterly, an inside-the-beltway publication which follows legislation, legislators, and issues in Congress generally.  She has a great grasp on the ins and outs of moving legislation (and stopping bad bills as well).


April 7 - Better Get To Know THIS Lobby

Stephen Colbert hasn’t called me!  Ever since he started his 35,000 part series way back in early 2008, Better Get to Know a Lobby, he has featured the gay lobby and the marijuana lobby, but there is a deadly silence in terms of the nontheist lobby.  What’s up with that?

It’s time for the Secular Coalition Nation to rise up and ask Mr. Colbert why he hasn’t introduced the Colbert Nation to the nontheist lobby.  I’ve appeared on Papa Bear’s (Bill O’Reilly’s) show four times now, but have yet to have the pleasure of taking on his better half and mirror image, Stephen Colbert himself.  So, all you friends (and foes) of Colbert, lets start a campaign to get the Colbert Report to cover this important lobby representing humanists, atheists, and other Americans who don’t hold a belief in deities.  If Stephen Colbert can change the number of elephants with an internet campaign, surely a series of net contacts to Comedy Central can convince Colbert to have the Secular Coalition for America on his Better Get to Know a Lobby segment.