“I think atheism is done for this time. I have failed in marriage,
motherhood, as a politician. … At age 58, I have never had a bedroom
of my own,” wrote atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair in one of her diary
entries.
It might seem like an astonishing confession for a woman who devoted
her life to the cause of atheism and battling the influences of religion
— especially Christianity — on American society.
But the words do not surprise her son, William J. Murray, the
born-again Christian activist who, as a youngster, served as the U.S.
Supreme Court test case that effectively ended formal prayer in public
schools.
Murray told WorldNetDaily that his mother had a “desperate need for
power and property,” and said that since she really only had one
successful victory (the prayer case), she felt like a failure. Murray
also says it appears that money and power were her primary interests.
Murray doesn’t believe the release of his mother’s diaries on Jan. 23
will really have any effect on the public.
“She was a public person,” he said. “The truth of the matter is that
many people sell their journals later in life and call them
autobiographies.”
The diaries support the fact that O’Hair felt she was unloved.
“Somebody, somewhere, love me,” she wrote.
Murray feels the reason his mother may have felt unloved is because
she had an inability to understand any kind of meaning of love as a
result of her controlling personality and dysfunctional home.
“Most people that are not involved in a loving compassionate
relationship
with God, regardless of their religious beliefs, have a difficulty with
human love,” he said.
According to Murray, his mother’s concept of love was someone giving
her complete obedience. Obviously, O’Hair believed there was no God, and
without God, Murray added, people won’t realize that “they aren’t going
to have the total obedience of everyone around them doing their will.”
O’Hair has been missing since September 1995 and her diaries will be
put up for auction by the Internal Revenue Service Jan. 23 to pay
creditors and back taxes, totaling $250,000. The IRS also took her
possessions and home. Ellen Johnson, president of American Atheists,
Inc., believes auctioning the journals is an invasion of privacy and
intends to buy the diaries for the archives of the American Atheists.
But, Murray doesn’t believe that they will sell for much money.
“I think that an IRS decision to sell somebody’s personal journals
really indicates what the new IRS is about. … They claim that Congress
has put them under scrutiny, but apparently they’re no different. The
IRS will do anything to collect taxes,” he said.
“She (O’Hair) wanted to be in the media all her life and this is just
the
natural outcropping of it,” he said. “However, I think that the Internal
Revenue Service is going to find out that those journals are not worth
very much money. I really doubt that you could get a quarter of a
million dollars for a U.S. senator’s diary. In fact, I know you
couldn’t.”
Murray says there is no historical significance to the diaries; they
just
show a very troubled and disturbed woman.
See William Murray’s Websites:
http://www.rfcnet.org
http://www.wjmurray.com
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Tim Graham