The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.

The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women’s issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. We appreciate the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us. Going forward, we will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to enhance our common values and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and respect for women around the world.

For the past two years I’ve worked my ass off to make their annual CSICon a success, by hosting their parties, getting the SGU and other popular speakers involved, helping them create a gender-equal schedule, coordinating a blood drive through Maria Walters, facilitating scholarships through Surly Amy, and just promoting the hell out of it. This year they have yet to issue me an invite. With this statement, it couldn’t be clearer: my participation is not wanted...

...I’m boycotting and I hope you do, too. I’m not giving any more of my time or money to Center for Inquiry, just as I’ll no longer give any time or money to the JREF and Richard Dawkins. But in addition to this personal decision I’ve made, I’m actually asking you to do the same.

Do not support an organization that does not have the courage to stand up for women. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If you are a speaker at a paid event for these organizations, cancel your appearance. If you regularly donate money to them, stop. If you work for them, look for a new job. I have a lot of friends and loved ones who currently do one, some, or all of those things, and I trust we’ll continue to be friends regardless of what happens. But I do think that continued support of CFI will send a message that it’s okay for a supposedly humanist organization to never take a stand to help the women in its community.

I think it’s really nice of CFI to do fundraising for American Atheists like this.

Many of us put lots of thought, effort, discussion, and revision into the letters we sent to the board expressing why Dr. Lindsay’s remarks were inappropriate. To respond to those letters with three paragraphs that say absolutely nothing about what actually happened–not to mention no apology–is patronizing and dismissive. Were our letters even read?

Whether or not the board meant it this way, claiming “unhappiness with the controversy” comes across not as unhappiness that their CEO behaved so rudely and inappropriately, but that everyone had to go and get their knickers in a bunch over it. It’s the typical “I’m sorry you got upset,” except without even the “I’m sorry” part.

“…surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.”

Surrounding the conference.

Not “surrounding Ron Lindsay’s opening remarks at the conference.” Not “surrounding Ron Lindsay’s subsequent writings defending these remarks.” Surrounding the conference.

I am going to spell this out as calmly and clearly as I can: The problem was not the conference. The conference was incredible. The conference was first-rate. The conference was one of the best I’ve ever attended… and I’ve attended a lot. The problem was with Ron Lindsay’s opening remarks, and with his subsequent writings defending these remarks.

So. Translation: “The CFI board wishes to use misdirection, equivocation, obfuscation, and corporate bafflegab to deflect attention away from the anger at Ron Lindsay, and to re-direct it towards the conference itself.”

The mission of the Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular society based on science, reason, freedom of inquiry, and humanist values.

In fact, that’s what CFI was doing when it decided to host Women in Secularism. Let’s be clear: The anti-feminist faction disapproved of the conference even existing. A handful of anti-feminists specifically showed up at the conference with the intention of disrupting it, which they were mildly successful in doing insofar as Ron Lindsay helped them out. They flooded a Twitter hashtag dedicated to the conference in hopes that people would be unable to follow what was going on there. There isn’t going to be peaceful co-existence with them. They want feminism and all its claims, particularly about the full equality of women, to go the fuck away. And they will do whatever it takes to get that done.

By claiming not to pick sides, the CFI leadership* ended up picking the side of the pro-harassers who oppose greater reach and diversity for the secularist movement. That is their choice, and they are too cowardly to admit it. If you have any doubts, look at the reactions out there: Feminists are dismayed, while people who want to stomp feminism out of the movement are elated. Real world evidence should trump empty bullshit on this account. Especially if you call yourself a “skeptic”.

Dear CFI Board of Directors:

It pains me to do this, but I am withdrawing my support from the CFI national organization, and am cutting ties with all events, projects, and publications connected with it.

This includes the following:

* I am withdrawing as a speaker from the CFI Summit in Tacoma in October.
* I am resigning my position as columnist for Free Inquiry magazine.
* I am declining the honorarium I earned for my recent speaking engagement at CFI headquarters in Amherst, NY. Please re-direct this payment to the Secular Student Alliance. If that is not possible, please go ahead and send it to me, and I will donate it to the SSA.
* My wife and I are cancelling our subscription to Skeptical Inquirer magazine. This last one makes me extremely sad: Skeptical Inquirer played an enormous role in my process of becoming a non-believer, and it was the first publication to publish my godless writing. But I am no longer willing to be connected with your organization.

I will continue to support local CFI groups, as they are largely independent of the national organization. But unless I see tangible evidence that Ron Lindsay’s words and actions at Women in Secularism 2 do not represent CFI, and that this is not the direction CFI intends to take in the future, I cannot support or participate in the national organization.

I now know what sort of organization you are. You are the kind of organization that will ignore years of determined harassment in the interests of some mythical unity. You are the kind of people that will pay lip service to women while embracing their abusers. You would rather blame everything that happened on the people who were offended and the conference they attended rather than admit for one instant that your CEO did the slightest thing wrong. You are the kind of people who believe the Supreme Leader must never sully his lips with an apology. And you are the kind of people who either believe skeptic women are stupid enough to accept your statement as a proper close to this painful chapter, and if we turn out to be smarter than that, you figure you can do without us.

We’ll be happy to watch you try.