They had not received any guidance yet. I had just showed up with a copy of the Stars & Stripes newspaper and showed them the article about the seaman winning the case. They had to find out if this was going to apply service-wide, and how to code the paperwork properly. Their system wasn't set up with it as an option, so they had to figure out how to manually override and get it entered. If I remember correctly, it took a few days before I was notified that my tags were ready for me to go pick up (usually these were done on the spot, while you waited).
The DC convention would have been during that bastard Reagan's first term, when evangelical fervor was ramping up and being encouraged by people in and around his administration. Jerry Falwell was a big name back then.
Yeah, there was a lot of paranoia at the time...when I went to the Atheists convention in Denver a few years later we had a march to a rally on the steps of the capitol. That morning the police told Madalyn Murray O'Hair that she should change from the red dress she had on to a white one - 'so that we could more easily see if you got shot'. She wore the white. After the rally 4 of us went to a little cafe/restaurant nearby for lunch, and one of the religious nuts followed us there and stood across the street with a portable PA system 'spreading the gospel' to us, until the police came by and told him to shut it down and let us eat in peace. He shut off the PA, but still stood across the street spouting his stuff, and as soon as we left the restaurant he turned it back on and followed us most of the way back to the hotel, spouting all the way.
Then there was the guy that followed groups of convention-goers around while dragging an 8-10' cross with little wheels on the end so it rolled nicely. He wasn't too happy when we asked him about his crucifix with the training wheels.
At one of the banquets a friend from the NYC chapter of American Gay Atheists (now, *there* is a group the knew persecution from multiple directions!) came dressed in his pope outfit, complete with a frog on a cross. He wandered around the banquet room handing out 'corpse cookies' that he had bought at a local religious supply store. The serving staff from the hotel was completely shocked, and a few of them would cross themselves every time they left the room. A bunch of them stood just outside the doorway staring in.
Fun times!
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