Three prominent atheists resigned from FFRF's Honorary Board. Good riddance.

Jerry Coyne, Steven Pinker, and Richard Dawkins are big mad that FFRF removed an anti-trans article from their website

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Somehow, there are even more updates to the anti-trans controversy I first wrote about on Saturday.

In case you missed it, the short version is that biologist Jerry Coyne, author of Why Evolution is True and Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible, wrote an article trashing transgender people. He insisted sex is binary, that trans women are more likely to be sexual predators (using misleading statistics), argued that trans women shouldn’t be allowed to counsel women who have been physically abused, rejected even the possibility of trans women playing women’s sports at any age, and said trans women shouldn’t be placed in women’s prisons (even though the alternative is disastrous).

Along the way, he just ignored the countless ways the trans community is under attack, largely by people making similar arguments.

None of this was shocking to those of us who have watched him go from a defender of science to an amplifier of right-wing propaganda.

But the problem wasn’t just that he wrote the piece. It was that the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group that I believe does excellent work defending church/state separation, published it on their own blog. Despite including a disclaimer stating Coyne’s views didn’t necessarily reflect their own, they shared that post with their members and it was reasonable to conclude they were either comfortable with what he wrote or felt trans rights were worthy of debate. Neither option was a good one and the backlash was fierce.

FFRF responded by taking down Coyne’s piece and publishing a hastily written letter restating their support for LGBTQ rights. The letter didn’t explain how the article got approved in the first place. The words “sorry” or “apology” or “yeah, we really fucked this one up” didn’t appear anywhere in it. Dr. Aaron Rabinowitz, ethics director at the Creator Accountability Network, told me he was hoping to see a more direct challenge to what Coyne got wrong in order to justify their removal of the piece:

That would require them to admit they either didn't catch that before publishing Coyne's piece, or they considered his piece a legitimate position at the time and are simply apologizing for that fact. That is far more ethical than leaving the problem undefined, as that allows Coyne to mischaracterize the situation as trans advocates silencing legitimate debate. Until FFRF corrects the record there will be ongoing harms as a result of their original decision to publish Coyne's piece.

It was also a somewhat hollow letter because, at the end of the day, Coyne was still on FFRF’s Honorary Board, along with Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, two guys who have spread the same kind of anti-trans rhetoric.

But here’s some welcome news: All three of those men have now resigned from that board. The trash is taking itself out.

(From L to R) Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne (screenshots via YouTube)

Coyne’s letter called FFRF’s removal of his article “censorious behavior I cannot abide,” He also said he was appalled because the move “implies that what I wrote was transphobic.” (Spoiler: It was.) Finally, he warned the FFRF from making political statements… which is a ridiculous thing to say when you consider how Republicans are intent on destroying the wall of separation between church and state by using Christianity as a weapon especially against LGBTQ people and women:

This was in fact the third time that I and others have tried to warn the FFRF about the dangers of expanding its mission into political territory. But it is now clear that this is exactly what you intend to do. Our efforts have been fruitless, and if there are bad consequences I don’t want to be connected with them.

I will add one more thing. The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (“a woman is whoever she says she is”), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.

That last part is Coyne showing his whole ass to everyone. Apparently acknowledging the humanity of trans people, and defending their civil rights, and not falling for right-wing lies about who they are is a religion unto itself.

Again, good riddance to him.

Coyne then shared Pinker’s letter. Pinker, too, pretends there’s censorship at play here before going all in on the idea that defending trans people amounts to religion:

With this action, the Foundation is no longer a defender of freedom from religion but the imposer of a new religion, complete with dogma, blasphemy, and heretics. It has turned its back on reason: if your readers “wrongfully perceive” the opposite of a clear statement that you support the expression of contesting opinions, the appropriate response is to stand by your statement, not ratify their error. It has turned the names Freethought Today and Freethought Now into sad jokes, inviting ridicule from its worse foes. And it has shown contempt for the reasoned advice of its own board members.

“Reasoned advice”? Coyne flat-out lied about trans people being sex predators and here’s Pinker implying that if it came out of Coyne’s mouth, it must be honored. That’s religious thinking.

And then came Dawkins’ resignation, in which he treats Coyne like a king who can do no wrong because he’s a “distinguished scientist from the relevant field of Biology.” (Biologists have their blind spots, too, and plenty of scientists do not share Coyne’s anti-trans bigotry.)

Publishing the silly and unscientific “What is a Woman” article by Kat Grant was a minor error of judgment, redeemed by the decision to publish a rebuttal by a distinguished scientist from the relevant field of Biology, Jerry Coyne. But alas, the sequel was an act of unseemly panic when you caved in to hysterical squeals from predictable quarters and retrospectively censored that excellent rebuttal.

All the letters sound identical because these guys all amplify each other’s worst ideas.

The only disappointing thing about the three resignations is that it deprives FFRF of the opportunity to get rid of them themselves. I urge FFRF, if it wants to keep its “Honorary Board,” to replace them with thoughtful people instead of guys whose old reputations have withered away and grown stale. They should find people who advance their cause instead of setting it back. There are plenty of great options out there!

Speaking of which, this is a good time to remind people of what this “Honorary Board” even does. When groups have these, it’s usually nothing more than a signal to potential supporters that the cause is worth supporting. Look! If Famous Person X likes us, you should consider liking us too! Maybe they’ll use those names when sending out fundraising letters. That’s about it. The Board doesn’t have any say in what the group does; they’re just lending their names to a cause.

But Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins have been on this board for well over a decade. (The Internet Archive shows all three were on it in August of 2013.) FFRF’s membership has grown much larger since then—from roughly 20,000 in 2013 to about 40,000 in 2024— and it has taken on far more church/state battles in that time. Whatever benefits their names gave the organization in the past are no longer useful today when those guys are laughingstocks outside their inner circles.

FFRF is doing just fine on its own and it doesn’t need famous names—certainly not those famous names—to get anyone’s attention. Not anymore. The loss of those three guys shouldn’t affect them in the least. If anything, the board is more “honorary” now as a result of them leaving. And I think, at some level, those guys know that, which is why all their resignation letters share the same whiny “anti-woke” wording you expect to read in conservative outlets like The Free Press. Give it a minute and I’m sure we’ll see the resignation letters pop up on there.

Hell, Coyne is already desperately trying to get the attention of prominent transphobe JK Rowling, hoping she’ll boost his signal:

It’s not like anyone was paying attention to the Honorary Board, anyway. (Seriously! Without looking, can you name anyone else on it? I doubt it.) It’s the same thing that happened when the American Humanist Association rescinded an old award they gave Dawkins in light of his bigotry. It became a huge scandal… even though virtually no one outside the organization even knew that award existed, and even though you’d be hard-pressed to find vocal atheists who could tell you recent winners of it. But for conservatives who think condemning one of their own amounts to blasphemy, a purely symbolic gesture was seen as some sort of major travesty. The controversy helped raise Dawkins’ stature among the sort of bigots he now attracts.

That’s the thing about the resignation letters these guys are letting Coyne post on his website. They’re not trying to sway FFRF’s leaders; they’re using this controversy to make themselves look stronger to their increasingly right-wing, reactionary base. That’s who their allies are now. All the more reason for other atheist/skeptic groups to cut their ties with guys like these as soon as possible.

(On a side note, the actual board of directors for the Center For Inquiry, which merged with Dawkins’ foundation years ago, doesn’t have a single woman on it. There are merely two women listed as “honorary board members,” whatever that means, and they’ve been labeled as such for several years.)

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