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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
 Posted - 08/13/2006 : 09:17:35
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Below are two emails, a letter from Woody Kaplan to Edd Doerr, and then Edd Doerr's response. These two guys have been leaders in the Humanist movement, particularly the American Humanist Association (AHA). The AHA is currently having its election for the Board of Directors, and a highly controversial one! The AHA has sort of stagnated as an organization ever since Paul Kurtz left a few decades ago (to found the Council for Secular Humanism) and the nom com has attempted to create a board that would be more dynamic (more women, more younger people, and people with fresh new ideas.) Edd Doerr wasn't nominated and managed to get himself back on the ballet with a petition. http://www.americanhumanist.org/election/index.php
Anyway, I'm posting this here because these two guys are basically debating a general approach for promoting freethought and philosophical humanism - whether or not to include "atheism" in the rhetoric and work with explicitely atheistic organizations. Kaplain is for, and Doerr against such a thing.
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Edd:
As you know, I've supported you and your work. I'm afraid I can, no longer. A lot of things led me to this point and I have no wish to bash you needlessly, so I will not belabor this e-mail with the whole litany of issues, but I will mention a few, just to demonstrate my point.
Briefly, your recent actions seem to be mean-spirited and more self-serving than productive. They remind me a little of Joe Lieberman, who seems to feel the election is about him and not about our country.
To wit:
1. You wrote: "Does anybody think that a lobbyist representing 'atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheists' is going to get to first base with Nancy Pelosi or any other MC [member of Congress]? My forty years of experience in Washington lead me to understand ... why would anyone think that SCA [Secular Coalition for America] is going to accomplish anything other than raising false hopes ... it's time to get real."
Well, if you go to the SCA web site (www.secular.org), there is a photo of Lori Lipman Brown, the Director of SCA, meeting with Nancy Pelosi. Furthermore, I've been with Lori as she has met with other members of the US House and at least thirty US Senators. I have been alone with her in Senators' offices (she meets with the Senators themselves, not just their staff). She is making a difference.
Perhaps you are correct that in your forty years in Washington you were not able to get to first base with these people. Nonetheless, Lori is passing first base and heading toward second. Perhaps it was your approach that was the problem.
2. You are have been taking credit for the work of others. Americans United and American Humanist Association have prospered without you. You owe them respect, not derision. It is about a movement, not about you.
3. You have offended me, personally, by denigrating atheism and assuming it needs to stay in the closet. I take solace in the GLBT movement's success and hope we can emulate it. I want out of the closet and your insistence that I stay in it makes my beliefs seem somehow shameful. I am not ashamed to be an atheist.
4. When the AHA nominating committee failed to select you as a candidate for the Board, you wrote me, excoriating me (a member of the committee) for not choosing you. You wrote: "Woody, you just don't get it." Well Edd, I did get it. I won't say the basis on which my fellow committee members voted, but my vote not to nominate you was based, at least partially, on the fact that I saw you as destructive, self-aggrandizing and non-collegial. In other words, exactly the wrong kind of person to serve on a board.
Enough. I will stop. As I read this it is much more venomous than I intended, but it does begin to touch on a few of the issues. I hope you will look at this as a new beginning. I hope it will remind you that you entered this movement to make a difference and help you see what you have become.
I have copied this e-mail to several folks and they have my permission to circulate it, as they see fit.
Woody
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Woody:
I only just read your message of Aug 7. Press of business. I note that it has been very widely disseminated -- clearly with your encouragement -- among AHA members, and since it amounts to campaigning I am rather sure it violates AHA rules. I am bound by those rules and cannot campaign for or against any board candidate, myself included. This message, then, is not campaigning but, rather, a response to your scurrilous attack on me.
As a member of the nom com you had a right to oppose my nomination, even if your reasons were totally unsound, but as a member of the nom com you are way out of line in attempting to promote or attack a candidate. In all my years in the AHA I have never seen a member of the nom com behave in such an outrageously inappropriate way.
As a supporter of Ned Lamont, I resent being compared to Joe Lieberman, with whom I have disagreed for many years. And I do not understand what you mean by alleged "mean-spirited" actions. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a pretty even-tempered , easygoing guy.
You and I met at least a couple of times when I was on the Maryland ACLU board (for 25 years) and once at an AHA conference, at which, I recall, you stated publicly that you were not at that time an AHA member.
Let me remind you that I have been an AHA member for 55 years, that I was elected to the board 5 times and elected by the board 7 times to head the organization. I have been active in lobbying and litigation for the AHA, Americans for Religious Liberty, and Americans United. I was responsible for most of AHA's legal work and some of AU's. I'm the guy who got AU into the Lemon v Kurtzman and subsequent cases and helped to suppress an AU suit that would have screwed up Lemon.
Let me respond to each of your points.
1. I do not doubt that the SCA rep has visited many congressional offices. But 40 years of experience here have convinced me that any group representing specifically atheist or infidel organizations will not in the long run make a significant difference. Having successfully battled school prayer amendments in Congress for 40 years I can state with certainty that the presence of atheist groups would have doomed us to failure. Let me also remind you that I was fired from Americans United in Jan 1982 because I was a humanist, a Unitarian, a member of the Maryland ACLU board, and active in the prochoice movement. That's how afraid AU was at that time about anyone with "questionable" religious views.
You snidely remark that my approach might have been defective. Well, I was a co-founder of the National Coalition for Public Education and Religious Liberty (with Leo Pfeffer and others ) , which did a great deal of the church-state litigation, and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, testified at a number of congressional hearings, had material printed in the Congressional Record. Given that I had numerous other functions, I'd say I didn't do badly. And do you know any other humanist who has published over 3,000 books, sections of books, articles, columns, book and film reviews, translations, letters, short stories, and poems, mostly on church-state, civil liberties, and women's rights issues of central concern to humanists? I do not need to be lectured to by amateurs.
It needs to be said that I am not opposed to atheists but, rather, very conscious of the need to think and operate strategically. I might remind you that top ACLU officials agree with me that the Newdow pledge case was strategically the opposite of smart.
2. You claim that I have taken credit for the work of others. Where's your evidence? There is none. I have always given credit to others for their accomplishments. You may recall that when I received the AHA award at the spring 2003 conference I stated that whatever I may have accomplished was because I was standing on the shoulders of giants , like Leo Pfeffer and Paul Blanshard . I show respect where it is due, as anyone who knows me will testify. Of course "it is about a movement", and that is what I have devoted my career to for 50 years.
You assert that AU and AHA have "prospered without me". You seem unaware that throughout the 1970s I edited AU's magazine, played a major role in their legal program, and represented them at congressional hearings. As for the AHA, I headed the organization for 14 years, longer than anyone else in its history, and raised a considerable amount of money.
3. I'm sorry if you are touchy about your atheism. I am a scientific naturalist like Sagan and Asimov, with whom I have worked, but have concluded that it is better for humanism and the promotion of humanist values to emphasize the positive rather than the negative. I spent years in the freethought/rationalist movement (I edited the American Rationalist and wrote for The Liberal, Progressive World, and Lyle Stuart's Independent) and found that at the end of the day they had accomplished little. As the saying goes, if one repeats the same actions and expects a different result he is nuts. Not long ago a San Francisco paper ran an interview with the SCA rep. Of the article's 34 or so paragraphs well over half referred to atheism. Humanism was mentioned only once and then in connection with atheism. This is hardly good PR. Broadcasting that one is an atheist tells nothing about what one is for. (Madalyn O'Hair and Larry Darby are examples of atheists who give others a bad name).
4. I don't buy your explanation. The nom com picked 8 people for 7 board slots. This is hardly democratic and suggests a lack of faith in the judgment of the members. The non com rejected two respected and effective sitting board members -- unheard of, to the best of my knowledge -- a leading Florida activist, two qualified women, Beth Lamont and Mary Beaty, and myself. Why not trust the membership to pick the board? During my14 years as head of the AHA no board member ever criticized me for how things were going. Why was I elected to head the AHA SEVEN times if I'm such a bad guy ?
Woody, we are both long time active civil libertarians, so I am really puzzled by your attitude. You don't really know me and it appears to me that you have been listening to a lot of baloney from people who are not really in the humanist mainstream. My only wish as a candidate is to see the AHA as a respected mainstream organization, like the ACLU or PFAW. Your letter that is being widely disseminated can only confuse AHA members and divide our all too small organization. We should be on the same side and I hope you will come to see that.
By the way, I am mailing you a copy of my 2004 memoir "My Life as a Humanist", which I dashed off one weekend, and other material .
Anyone who cares to may share this communication witrh others.
Regards
Edd Doerr
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Personally, I gotta side with Kaplan here. Times have changed and Doerr seems a little caught in the past and into a mindset where nothing will ever change. Kaplain makes an excellent point that the Secular Coalition for America is making a difference. Lori Lipman Brown has been on Bill O'Reilly twice, and both times she was calm, friendly, and didn't take any of the bait Bill used to try to get a rise out of her. It is foolish to focus on atheism because that is negative and is defining ourselves based on beliefs we oppose, but Doerr wants to exclude atheism. It is important to try to get rid of the stigma against atheism, even if it is an uphill battle for a long time.
Edited to add: As a young person who has only 10 years of experience with the movement because that's how long I've been an adult, I find Doerr's statement about Kaplan not being involved long enough insulting and discriminatory. People who have been involved in a movement for 40 years and people who have been involved for 5 have different points of view, both of which are valuable. The older has more wisdom in regards to the culture of the movement and a first hand perspective on recent history. But the younger has a better grasp of the culture now, which is untainted by past prejudices. Both are necessary to a healthy movement and should work together.
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Edited by - marfknox on 08/13/2006 09:26:57
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 08/13/2006 : 11:58:26 [Permalink]
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Not to mention a new member might still have held humanist views for much longer than the membership.
I think there is at least an issue where we in the skeptical community should be working against the attempt to equate atheism with a religion. The same is true when the attempt is made to claim science is just a different set of beliefs and again equal to religious beliefs. These are used as wedges and the analogies are close enough to fool many people. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2006 : 00:28:40 [Permalink]
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| beskeptical, you've really hit on the heart of the issue: while the scientific method, freethought (freedom from authority) and many of the philosophical aspects of humanism should extend to all modern worldviews (including religious ones), putting "atheism" itself on par with religious groups makes it seem like science and faith are equal methods for "knowing" things about reality. But that's complicated to think about and most people don't like complicated so they end up simplfying it to antiquated nonsense such as science vs. religion. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 08/14/2006 00:29:57 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 08/14/2006 : 00:32:19 [Permalink]
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| I do wish "atheism" as a concept would lose emphasis not because I have any shame over my own atheism or fear of being stimgatized, but because I feel it is such a narrow and minor point and because it defines itself by what it is not. I don't want to define my worldview based on how it is different from the mainstream. And the issues revolving around religious freedom, morality, ethics are so much bigger and more complex than mere atheism. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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