Annie Laurie Gaylor
TPMA SecretaryAnnie Laurie Gaylor is a third-generation freethinker. She co-founded the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) with her mother, Anne Gaylor, as a college student in 1976. She has been co-president since 2004. Her student protest ended commencement prayers at the University Wisconsin–Madison.
Annis Laurie is a 1980 graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison Journalism School. In the late 1970s, she was an award-winning student reporter and recipient of the Ken Purdy scholarship. After graduation, she founded, edited and published the Feminist Connection, a monthly advocacy newspaper, from 1980-1985. She first joined the FFRF staff in 1985, serving as editor of Freethought Today, FFRF’s newspaper, from 1985 to 2009. Her book, Woe to the Women: The Bible Tells Me So, was first published by FFRF in 1981, now in its fourth printing.
In 1988, FFRF published Betrayal of Trust: Clergy Abuse of Children, the first book documenting widespread sexual abuse by clergy. Her 1997 anthology Women Without Superstition: “No Gods, No Masters” is the first collection of the writings of historic and contemporary women freethinkers. She has been a plaintiff in or overseen many state/church lawsuits and actions by FFRF. Dan Barker, whom she married in 1987, serves as FFRF co-president with her. They have one child together, born in 1989. She and Dan have produced and hosted FFRF’s weekly radio program Freethought Radio since 2006, and have produced and hosted FFRF’s talk show Freethought Matters since 2017.
Annie Laurie has appeared on a variety of TV news and talk shows, including Oprah, O’Reilly, Good Morning America, Univision, CNN and Fox News segments, CBS Evening News and ABC World News Tonight. She served on the board of the Women’s Medical Fund, the longest continuously-operating abortion fund in the nation, which was cofounded by her mother, from the late 1970s until 2021.