Secular Coalition for America appoints former Nevada State Senator Lori Lipman Brown as director/lobbyist
Aug. 22, 2005
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Secular Coalition for America announced today the appointment of Lori Lipman Brown - politician, attorney, educator and activist - as its first director and lobbyist. She will begin her duties on Sept. 19.
Brown served as Nevada State Senator from 1992 to 1994. Her
legislative record in the arenas of public education, mental health care
and the repeal of consensual sex crimes resulted in her being named Civil
Libertarian of the Year by the Southern Nevada chapter of the American
Civil Liberties Union and Legislator of the Year by the Nevada chapter of
the National Association of Social Workers.
Brown has been a frequent political commentator on television and radio and a regular columnist in a variety of print media. A former private practice lawyer, she served most recently on the faculty of the University of Phoenix, where she taught constitutional law, American history and education law. She has also taught high school English, speech and drama.
She has facilitated or presented at numerous events, including conferences of the American Humanist Association, the Secular Student Alliance and the Humanist Association of Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. She also served as the National Education Association's diversity trainer from 1996 to 2000.
Brown will direct the coalition's activities and lobby U.S. Congressional representatives on issues arising out of the inappropriate incursion of religion into civil law. She will be addressing the interests and concerns of America's atheists, freethinkers, humanists and other secularists.
"I'm thrilled that there will finally be a voice from the secular community dedicated to making progress on Capitol Hill," said Brown. "And I'm especially excited to be SCA's representative on issues related to separation of religion and government."
Organized in 2002 as the nation's first 501(c)4 lobbying organization for freethinkers, the Secular Coalition for America works to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints within the larger culture and to protect and strengthen secular government as the best guarantee of freedom for all.
Founding members of the coalition are the Atheist Alliance International, the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Secular Student Alliance, and the Secular Web (Internet Infidels). The American Humanist Association joined the coalition in 2005.
"I am delighted by the appointment of Lori Lipman Brown as the first director/lobbyist of the Secular Coalition for America," said Herb Silverman, president of the coalition. "Bias against nonbelievers is the last civil rights struggle in which blatant discrimination by politicians is viewed as acceptable behavior. That situation is about to change."