American Atheists, Inc.
                 P O Box 140195, Austin, TX 78714-0195
      Voice:(512) 458-1244  FAX:(512) 467-9525  BBS:(512) 302-0223
                      E-mail:postmaster@atheist.org


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, July 13, 1995
Contact: R. Murray-O'Hair (512) 458-1244


                    AMERICAN ATHEISTS REPRIMANDS CLINTON
           Jon Murray Labels Speech "Vote Solicitation" Message

    Jon Murray, president of American Atheists, issued the following statement
regarding remarks made by President Clinton yesterday at James Madison High
School in Vienna, Virginia.

    "Atheists in the United States, comprising 10 percent of the population,
necessarily slunk further into the closet yesterday when President Clinton
exalted the teaching and the preaching of religion in the public schools in
exchange for votes in the next presidential election.

    "With the usual falseness of religious logic he equated all values and
morals with religion and with eager and open arms invited the intrusion of
religion into the public school system -- throwing away a secular education
system of 220 years standing.

    "Atheist, drug-free Americans are shocked to learn from the President
that the more religious children become, the less likely they are to use drugs.
Those who deal with juvenile crime are stunned to learn that they may quit
their jobs and rely on Sunday school attendance to reduce the drug rate, the
crime rate, the violence rate, and the self-destruction rate.

    "Mr. Clinton -- who has consistently refused to meet with American Atheists
concerned with the denial of their civil rights (particularly, their right to
hold public office) -- demands that the caterwauling of the religious be
substituted for logical discourse on the place of religion in the culture: the
heart, the hearth, and the home, not our secular public school system.

    "I exhort my fellow Americans, particularly American Atheists, to take
heart and to brandish reason as the prime weapon in the religious arguments
which will be foisted on the nation during the next presidential campaign.
At the same time, I feel it my duty as the Atheist leader of the nation to
chastise Mr. Clinton for whoring after the religious vote."