Positive Atheist in Philadelphia

Sally Cramer is the new president of the Freethought Society of Greater Philadephia. She had a nice article about her published in Sunday’s edition of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Cramer is a 24-year-old graduate of West Chester University, lives in West Chester and is an office worker at the Deveraux Foundation, which deals with troubled youths.

Her atheism was inherited, she said, from her mother’s experience “growing up with her eight siblings in East Stroudsburg, in a Catholic family.”

Her mother, who she said now practices no religion, “went to Catholic school and told me horror stories. She didn’t like it and she didn’t want to force anything like that on her children.”

Her identity as a humanist atheist, she said, “means not only do I not believe in God, but that I believe in good.

“I believe that humans are ultimately good and trying to understand each other better and working toward world peace.”

And like many social activists, Sally works with other groups which also have a progressive agenda:

In August 2006 she joined the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Chester County and, afer a year, was elected to its executive committee.

And in her senior year at WCU, she became president of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning and Ally Association.

As a college sophomore she said, she realized that she was bisexual.

“I had been engaged to my high school sweetheart,” she said, “and I just realized that love knows no gender.”

Cramer said she “dumped him. I was really cruel. I was going through some tough emotional, psychological [thinking].”

“I identify as queer,” she said. Though the term is a perjorative in the straight world, she said for her, “queer means that you’re attracted to the person, not the gender.”

It’s never easy to follow Margaret Downey (the immediate past president of FSGP) in any of her endeavors, but Sally looks like she’ll be a great representative for atheists in Philly.


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]