I have taken a vacation day off work to fly across the country nearly 2,000 miles to spend one full day in Washington, D.C., and then return home the following night. What would possess me to perform such a crazy round trip in such a short time frame?

The answer is the Reason Rally. It is a day I have looked to with anticipation ever since the announcement was made that it was going to occur. I visit the Friendly Atheist blog daily and that is where I first heard of the news. I excitedly told my fiancé about the event and how amazing it would be to attend a celebration with other nonbelievers. After we were married in August, we had some extra money in our checking account due to wedding gifts. In October, we coordinated with our friend Rick to fly around the same time and meet us at the airport. He also decided to help with the cost of the room, fittingly called an Evolution Room at the Hilton Garden Inn, that I discovered had a discount on the Friendly Atheist blog. Our friend Rick is coming from Murdo, South Dakota. My husband and I are coming from Rock Springs, Wyoming. We are flying from Denver International Airport after stopping for lunch in Denver with a couple of our heathen brethren. We will be wearing our Wyoming Atheist shirts; I am a co-administrator of the Facebook group Wyoming Atheists https://www.facebook.com/groups/wyomingatheists/, which now has 42 members in this rural state. Michael Crowley, the writer of the site http://www.ungodlynews.com/, is the founder of the group and created a shirt that best represents Wyoming Atheists. He told me that, “it’s a play on the idea that some creationists believe that man and dinosaur lived on the planet at the same time. People started putting these pictures of Jesus riding a dinosaur online as a joke. I took that idea and used it as a jumping point. I figured our bucking bronco Wyoming logo would be amusing if replaced with a dinosaur, whose fossils as you know can be found in Wyoming. I used the colors of UW to represent education. So, Wyoming cowboy, Wyoming Dinosaurs, Wyoming colors with the shape of the state in the background.” Living in Wyoming, there is not much interaction with other atheists unless you already know them. I had tried to remedy this problem by creating a group on Think Atheist. It brought a few members but Facebook was more active and I announced the new group on the Think Atheist group http://www.thinkatheist.com/group/wyomingatheists . The Wyoming Atheist group formed when American Atheists asked people state by state to introduce themselves. After that, Michael Crowley found me and Wyoming Atheists was formed.

I have tried to get an actual live meeting with the Facebook group Wyoming Atheists. No luck yet but perhaps someday. Maybe even this summer. It excited me so much to be having a Reason Rally that is filled with people that also declare that no gods at all exist. In my experience thus far, atheists tend to be rather friendly and I believe that when I meet the people I have listened to on YouTube and read on blogs that my husband and I will naturally get along with them and easily make new friends. It is especially important to coordinate at this time in the wake of the presidential election, especially with potential Republican candidates declaring that President Obama has waged a war on religion. One of the most disturbing statements that I have heard thus far from one of the Republican presidential contenders is when Rick Santorum said, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.” Well this is opposite of what I believe America stands for. I believe that our country should keep religious policies totally separate from politics, even if they go against their personal beliefs. It is imperative that they go against their own beliefs because otherwise they are not representing the entire country, only a select part of the country that they believe should be right no matter what others think. For example, if a president believed because of his or her religion that there are absolutely no exceptions for an abortion, they should withhold their judgment on the entire country and instead enact policies that give women freedom of choice although it goes against the lawmaker’s personal convictions. Otherwise the country becomes like a monarchy with no voice for the minority. It is best for all remnants of religion to strictly remain at home, if at all. I am going to the Reason Rally to emphasize that secular minds matter and what is right in the eyes of one religion isn’t necessarily right for another religion or none at all. The realization that there are so many religions with various degrees of rightness is what helped lead me astray from any religion at all. One can’t be right since there are so many. There are so many that they can not possibility all be right. Therefore they must be all wrong since if there was a god, there should be one religion that everyone on the planet knows without having to bump into one another. Besides the political importance of attending the Reason Rally, I am excited about meeting new connections and becoming a member of some national groups and donating to worthy secular causes.

I think I first started to doubt an existence of a god as young as second grade. My parents made home movies when I was a kid of nearly everything. Sometimes over Christmas, we get together and watch them. I grew up in a very Catholic family and one of them is a video of me after my first Communion. I am in a pretty white dress and receiving gifts from my family. I can hear my mom or my aunts asking me how I felt or whether I felt different since I had eaten the body of Jesus who was apparently inside me. My facial expression as a very young girl is quite foreboding. I shrug my shoulders and quietly say not really … Years passed and I went to a Catholic school for the first time when I entered seventh grade. Prior to that grade I had gone to a public school since it was only a block away. Now my parents felt I needed to go to the Catholic school where my mom graduated from. It was a high school that began in the seventh grade. The town I grew up in was probably 80 percent Catholic in Dickinson, North Dakota. There were multiple elementary Catholic schools and even in the public schools there were so many Catholics that no meat was served on Fridays during Lent. Anyways, at my new school, the other kids were mean to me and did not make it easy at all to be friends. I would sit down at a lunch table and others would move away from me. I thought about entering the counselor’s office for help but timidness prevent me from doing so. This was a Catholic school. Weren’t kids supposed to be extra nice to one another? Guess not …

My family then moved to Green River, Wyoming, which wasn’t a prominently Catholic town. I immediately made friends and hardly any of them went to church on a regular basis. They were the ones that were the friendliest it seemed. Confirmation classes began and I went but I honestly wasn’t feeling any joy in the occasion. My only thought was that I was doing this for my parents and that I wouldn’t go to church once I didn’t live at home. One thing that greatly bothered me in church were when the priest would seemingly scold people for not giving money in the offering basket while some gave to the church every week. That didn’t seem very nice to me. I thought that people shouldn’t be forced to give money. Also I hated it when the priest would say he would not advocate a candidate but it strongly seemed like he was since he was advocating their values. He would say if you vote for one thing, vote to save unborn babies and the candidate that opposes abortion the most. Even at a young age, I knew there was something wrong with that. I knew that there was much more to a candidate than that one certain issue, such as war policies. Sometimes a friend and I would skip confirmation class. Sometimes I would openly mock the services with my friends. For example, as the priest was performing the transfiguration of the body and blood, I quietly said “Eat Me” like from “Alice in Wonderland” since it popped in my head as quite humorous, to the laughter of my friends and to the dismay of an elderly lady behind me who scolded me afterward. Sometimes my brother and I would skip church and say we went, bringing a bulletin home as “proof” since I am such a “good” influence on my little brother. In college I dabbled in church services some more, a non-Catholic Christian church and a Catholic church near the University of Wyoming. Both left me feeling numb inside and yearning for factual evidence. Unfortunately my university didn’t have a secular organization at the time or else I would have joined.

When I moved back home, my dad forced me to go to church on Sundays with them or else I couldn’t live with them. Being a recent college graduate with a degree in English, there was no other option except bide my time until I found an apartment to live in that I could afford. There were times when my brother and I skipped church and I would go through the classified ads in the newspaper looking for an apartment. My boyfriend, now my husband, was in South Dakota. But if I found a place to live, he would move down and live with me helping me pay for an apartment and work at the first job he found. He is also an atheist. We met online through a mutual friend. One of the first things he told me was that he was an atheist and asked about my religion and background and I told him how I felt. Our mutual identity with atheism brought us closer together and strengthened our relationship since we could have philosophical discussions without the involvement of religion. My dad told my boyfriend he was sending me to hell since I was moving in with him, emphasizing the hateful rhetoric of religion. If a god exists, it would be awfully petty of me being sent to hell for moving in with my boyfriend and having premarital sex. My best friend is also an atheist, one reason we are best friends perhaps since we agree on so many things. He is also gay, which also emphasizes my discontent with religion and why I believe the Reason Rally is important. Like abortion, gay marriage has become a political issue although it is only an issue since many have a problem with it due to their religion. I believe being gay is completely natural, especially since animals in the wild have been proved to be gay as well. Unfortunately, many politicians and their constituents are not capable of seeing past their religion and believe the Bible says Adam and Eve set the standard for marriage. Even my dad who likes my best friend has said the often quoted, “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” which is hateful speech since that is like saying someone who is gay can never express the deepest form of intimate love to another person through sex. I have unfortunately made a few bloopers with friends in regards to religion. I recall one night playing a silly game with friends where we had to say the best of two circumstances. One card I got said Hell and another word, which I do not recall. I immediately said Hell and when asked why, I immediately replied that it doesn’t exist. I was met with awkward silence and glares.

Ever since then, I have tried to tread more carefully. I worked at a bookstore in a  cafe and spent my time reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens in my spare time. I now work as a newsroom proofreader where the publisher had admitted to be an atheist. I also searched on the Internet for atheist blogs. I came across one in particular: The Friendly Atheist. With this blog and its comment section I felt at home with other like-minded people. I didn’t feel so alone anymore. I have followed this blog for at least four years now and still visit daily for updates, news stories, humor, cartoons, Ask Richard, and much more. For this reason, although probably not the most famous on stage at the Reason Rally, I am most looking forward to hearing Hemant Mehta. I am of course excited for Richard Dawkins, whose books I have read as well and bringing with me on the plane to reread. But Hemant Mehta sticks out as the most influential atheist in my life. Besides being handsome, I admire his friendly nature and his passion and hard work he has put into everything that I have noticed on his site. I can also tell he has put his heart and mind into helping plan the Reason Rally. I have read his book “I Sold my Soul on eBay” and felt I could relate to what he felt when he didn’t get anything out of going to church services. I want to meet him at the Unofficial Post Reason Rally Celebration! and thank him for helping me realize that it was OK to be passionate about my non-belief. I keep a Richard Dawkins “A” pin on my desk at work. Not sure if anyone else at work knows what it means but the fact that it is there means a lot to me and if a coworker realizes what it means and that I’m atheist, they will know that I am friendly too like the Friendly Atheist. My dad had outed me once before in North Dakota in front of my family. Then I felt ashamed and didn’t know how to explain my atheism. Now, because of Friendly Atheist, other bloggers and atheists I have met on the Internet, I feel proud of my atheism and want people to know where I stand and why religion is harmful to society, especially in the public arena. I am coming to the Reason Rally to feel more empowered and to help others around me feel this way as well. It will be an event that will encourage many people, including me, to speak up more about atheism and why having a voice for reason is critical, especially in this present time in the election season.

Well I better get to sleep since in five hours from now, my husband and I will be on the road. Even if my husband and I do not receive the opportunity to sit in V.I.P. sitting, I know we’ll enjoy the Reason Rally from wherever we are. I have been looking forward to this day for a very long time and can not believe it is finally here. Hopefully change will happen as politicians realize we are a viable voting block and a strong voice. But even if change doesn’t happen immediately, I will have been around an extraordinary large amount of famous people in my eyes, even if many people haven’t heard of the people I view as rock stars that seem larger than life to see on stage. Also connections with other atheists and organizations will be made by us and many others which will greatly strengthen our cause.