(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.
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