ybvdadminuser(RNS) — The nation’s largest freethought organization has dissolved its honorary board after three of its prominent members resigned in an ideological battle over transgender issues.
The resignations from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group that fights for church and state separation, included well-known evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne and psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker.
The three resigned after the foundation published, and then removed, an article by Coyne in which he argued that sex is mostly binary (either male or female) and that transgender women are more likely to be sexual predators than other women.
The post, which drew intense backlash, was taken down on Dec. 28, one day after it was published, prompting Coyne, Dawkins and Pinker to resign from the foundation. That led the foundation to dissolve the honorary board.
The flap offers a peek at a roiling controversy among a select group of New Atheists who have expressed views that are anti-transgender and more generally “anti-woke.” It is a position taken by another atheist group, the Center for Inquiry. But it is also hotly contested by most in the nonbeliever community. In 2021, the American Humanist Association withdrew its “Humanist of the Year” award from Dawkins over his anti-trans comments.
In an interview with RNS, Annie Laurie Gaylor, the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, took responsibility for publishing and then removing Coyne’s article.
“We simply should have said no,” Gaylor told RNS. “We just made the wrong call.”
She said there was a lack of clarity about whether honorary board members were entitled to publish articles to the foundation’s blog and that the organization was now reviewing its publication policies. In 2011, Coyne received the foundation’s “The Emperor Has No Clothes” award, given to public figures who call out religion in a way reminiscent of the little child in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale who is not afraid to admit the truth. Coyne was an ally of the foundation’s.
But over time he began to criticize the foundation on his own blog, “Why Evolution is True,” and in other settings, arguing it had strayed from its mission.
Gaylor said she initially thought a disclaimer that appeared above Coyne’s article, stating that the views of the author are not those of the Freedom of Religion Foundation, was sufficient. Then she realized she was wrong.
The foundation, which she founded with her mother, Anne Nicol Gaylor, in 1978 has grown significantly over the years. It has 40,000 members across North America and advocates for atheists and agnostics. But may be best known for its vigorous legal arm. Its team of lawyers send out notices of violations of church-state separation to schools and local government bodies at a rate of 500 a year.
The foundation is part of a coalition of groups suing the state of Louisiana over a law that requires schools to post displays of the Ten Commandments in every classroom. It is also suing Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters for his attempts to force schools to teach Christian-based Bible lessons.
Coyne said he found the foundation’s behavior bizarre.
“I find it strange that an organization that is pro-science all of a sudden is acting in a quasi-religious manner, suppressing dissent, calling out blasphemy and heresy by censoring those people who go against their preferred definition of woman,” Coyne said.
He said he wanted to publish the piece to counter the article “What is a woman?” written by a former legal fellow, Kat Grant. In that article Grant argued that “a woman is whoever she says she is,” a position Coyne said elides a clear biological definition.
Coyne said he believes in full legal rights for transgender people but objects to transgender women competing in sports with other women. In his article, he also claimed trans women should not serve as rape counselors or work in battered women’s shelters because they are more sexually predatory .
Gaylor said 97% of the foundation’s members support LGBTQ+ rights, and 13% of the group’s members are themselves LGBTQ+.
The rise of Christian nationalism and its assault on trans rights makes it an important issue for the foundation, Gaylor said.
“It’s very natural that the LGBTQ individuals would gravitate to groups that support separation of state and church because Christian nationalists are the enemy of their civil rights,” she said. “This is a very, very natural allyship and one we’re committed to and will continue to be committed to.”
Gaylor said the organization is now eager to move on.
“We weren’t looking for a fight,” she said.”We have thanked them very much for their serving on our (honorary) board for so many years but we did think that this parting of ways was probably inevitable.”
