A pretty slick ad that’s pretty hard to find fault with.

I’ll skip over the fact the title needed a copy-editor* and who’s listed as the media contact** and instead focus on the fact that the latest post on their website is calling for donations for a billboard campaign that has been approved in Vancouver:

CBS Outdoor has accepted our ads, and they will be up in the Vancouver area in the next few days.

Within a week of Pattison rejecting an ad, CBS approves it and plans to hang it. This sounds to me like both companies were approached at the same time. This would imply that Pattison may simply have a policy to only run exclusive ads (something I could believe).

Let’s assume with CFI for a second, though, that the rejection was solely motivated by the content of the ad. The argument that CFI is making seems to be that since Pattison maintained an effective monopoly over advertising in Metro Vancouver, their rejection amounted to censorship. This is would invoke the 2009 Supreme Court of Canada case involving the BCTF.

But apparently another advertising agency is willing to host the ads, which seems to take some of the steam out of that argument. I mean, if you are still able to get your message out, you can’t really say you’re being censored. The right to freedom of expression does not necessarily guarantee one the right to a stage to promote that speech.

Nevertheless, I still agree that Pattison shouldn’t be rejecting the ad, especially without providing cause (benign or otherwise). So it will be interesting to see if CFI does pursue the human rights complaint and the results of that.

Finally, I also take exception with the last line of the press release, where CFI President Kevin Smith argues against “the use of human rights apparatuses as tools of censorship.” This line plays into the hands of the right-wing bigots and fear-mongers who promote the idea that the Human Rights Tribunals are kangaroo courts designed to persecute Christians and Libertarians. When, in reality, they are legitimate tools to achieve justice for marginalized communities that can’t afford to access the traditional justice system. Mostly they deal with issues of employment and housing but even their far less frequent use in defending victims of hate speech is laudable. But that’s an entire post on its own (see Joyce Arthur’s arguments in favour of hate speech laws for a start).

To summarize: Good luck to CFI with the complaint and the billboards. They look sharp and it’s good to see both genders (and hopefully some racial diversity in the next round). Just try to be a bit clearer on your messaging next time.

—

*Apparently you can say “New Round” twice in the same sentence if it’s the title.

**I thought he was leaving CFI Canada months to years ago now.

For those who believe the accusations (and I see little reason not to), it can be quite disheartening. From various comment threads on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook I have seen this frustration over and over as people worry about the ability of any major freethought organization to handle the larger issues of sexism and accountability.

Yet this strikes me not only as false but counterproductive.

The “institutional rot” that many see so far has been limited to 2 or 3 national US organizations (you can name them if you like). Every non-profit with a small staff, limited budget, and few active volunteers grapples with accountability and transparency in its decisions, yet the worst cases seem fairly isolated to me.

This is especially transparent if we look at the next generation of freethought leaders. The Secular Student Alliance and the Humanist Community at Harvard are arguably the two most progressive and forward thinking major organizations right now. Neither is remotely embroiled in scandal (that I’m aware of) and both are filled with bright, young activists.

Similarly, PZ Myers recently noted:

By the way, humanist organizations in general tend to discourage the kind of behavior that asshats take as a given privilege — if you’re looking for a group of people who won’t treat you as a piece of meat, look into the humanists.

As such we see the British Humanist Association and the American Humanist Association continuing in their good work without falling prey to the closed cultures of others. I like to think the BC Humanist Association follows on that path as well but I’m obviously biased.

By writing off the entire movement, these donors and volunteers forget how many people – and I suspect it’s a sizable majority – want to see things continually improve. By solely focusing on the negatives, they write off everyone who is actively working to make things better either within the troubled institutions (many of the local groups and volunteers are equally forward-thinking) or in independent organizations.

I guess my point is that we should not be so quick to dismiss the hard work of numerous organizations that are not involved in this mess. We can demand better and ought to work to see the movement we want to see.

At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.

The simple lesson for group organizers is that you have to start treating blogs like legitimate (but opinionated) media.

I first shared CFI’s vacuous statement on Facebook with the heading “a lesson on how not to handle PR.” I was criticized later in the thread on the basis that this was exactly what public relations ought to be:

Given the PR practices engaged in by, among others, the tobacco industry, oil and gas interests, and corporations such as Walmart that are notorious for horrible employment standards, this is exactly how PR is generally done. The entire purpose of PR is to save one’s image while making as few substantive changes as possible.

To which I thoroughly disagree. I’m in a number of classes to boost my ability to organize nonprofits, and one of them was on public relations. The aim of a successful PR program is to align your messaging with your audience so as to persuade them to adopt your stance. It doesn’t have to be malicious and it often involves internal changes if your target markets are shifting from the mission/product/service you’re providing.

Coming back to CFI, the first misstep was in Lindsay’s misguided speech. As Greta pointed out, it was a mistake both in terms of content and context; I am however, sympathetic to JT’s view that it was not likely intended to show contempt or offend. Nevertheless, without a clear statement from Lindsay or the Board otherwise, people are left to read whatever intentions they so choose (but I’m getting ahead of myself).

The second PR blunder was Lindsay’s lightning response to Rebecca Watson’s criticisms. The first obvious mistake was the vicious and condescending tone he took. Any statement that begins with “Rebecca Watson inhabits an alternate universe.  At least that is the most charitable explanation I can provide for her recent smear.” is not being charitable in any sense of the word. The second mistake was posting it on the same day. As CEO of the organization sponsoring the conference, he ought to have been schmoozing, attending fundraising dinners, and making people feel welcome. Hiding away to post a bitter, personal attack looks petty. The only good public relations move made by Lindsay or the Board was Lindsay’s subsequent apology for his “intemperate language.”

Next, as letters of complaint flowed in from speakers, attendees, bloggers, and other CFI supporters, the Board dropped the ball again by failing to deal with the issue in any urgent manner. This allowed the issue to go viral and reach far more voices then it needed to. The president could have easily made a quick statement or the Board could have held a quick conference call in the same week. The delay gives the impression that the Board doesn’t care about the issue or the voices being raised.

Finally, the Statement failed in every possible way. A properly crafted response to a PR crisis needs to: (a) address the concern to show that voices are being heard, (b) suggest restitution, and (c) explain how future situations won’t arise. The statement didn’t need to agree with the criticisms or take an extreme response, but it needs to show an understanding of why people are upset. Instead, the statement avoided the issue by not even using Ron Lindsay’s name or mentioning his speech and merely expressed the board’s “unhappiness.”

The subsequent explosion of condemnation (which is nearly unanimous by bloggers from across the internet, with the exception of no more than two) was therefore entirely predictable, and to not expect it was a failure of leadership on behalf of CFI.

I said at the beginning that the Board ought to think of bloggers as traditional media. It’s easy to understand why. PZ Myers alone over 130,000 people following him on Twitter, and undoubtedly more follow his blog. In a movement where groups with a membership of 10,000 are considered successful, you ought to care what these kinds of bloggers think. That isn’t to say you have to agree, but you need to put some thought into how your statements will be received.

Compare it to trying to reach out to Fox News viewers. You may not agree with the editors and hosts, but you know there are some in that audience worth reaching out to, so making sure you get your message through their medium without too much editorializing is important. Of course the analogy fails because I don’t know how frequently CFI will want to communicate with Fox News viewers, but I would hope they want to reach out to people who occasionally read or follow bloggers like PZ Myers (and others).

Put CFI’s response to this issue in light of David Silverman’s response to a report that a former employee is suing American Atheists for racial discrimination and wrongful dismissal. Rather than obfuscate the issue behind legal curtains, Silverman went directly to the claims and defended his organization. I’m not sure where the truth lies on this issue but I will give credit to Silverman for (once again) showing an understanding and appreciation for how social media has changed the game for organizations. This may partially be a reason why Sikivu Hutchinson’s is the only blog post really discussing the situation.*

As I’ve already hit 1000 words, I think I’ll end my discussion here. The freethought community has come a long way over the past decade since the publishing of the End of Faith (seriously, it was published 9 years ago) and the start of the “New Atheism.” Organizationally, we are learning many things but many groups still struggle to find strong leadership, while not succumbing to founder’s syndrome (where a group is shaped by a lone charismatic leader). We need to get better at communications, management, and a host of other skills, while continuing to fight for secularism, skepticism, and social justice.

*The other reasons may be less benign to my point: that the Lindsay controversy overshadowed it, that sexism/feminism is a bigger issue for more people than racism, or that the story broke on Skeptic Ink which has no credibility among many bloggers due to its founding as a revolt against Freethought Blogs.

What follows will be the story I’ve pieced together from a few sources over the past couple days. I haven’t been directly involved in CFI Canada for the past couple years and really have no horse in this race. I’ve met Michael a couple times and he’s seemed like a reasonable guy – what I can also say for the few board member’s I’ve met (who unfortunately are all guys). I’m going to try to be unbiased but I undoubtedly have my view of things.

If you have no interest in intraskeptical politics, perhaps you may want to skip on this post.

First, the official announcement that came from CFI Canada’s Board of Director’s late last night.

Announcement from the Board of Directors

Dear Freethinkers,

After serious consideration, the Board of Directors of CFI Canada made the decision early last week to relieve National Director Michael Payton of his duties. A management team is in place and the search for a new National Director is under way. If you have specific questions, please contact [email protected]

Michael played an integral role in the transition of CFI Canada over the past year. We appreciate his dedication to the principles of CFI Canada and wish him well in his future endeavours.

CFI Canada will be launching a new website shortly and its Vancouver ad campaign this summer. Look for the opening of new and revitalized branches during the coming year.

Board of Directors

Centre for Inquiry, Canada

I had been asked a few months ago to consider pushing to become a possible replacement for Michael at the national level this fall. Based on my having no desire to lead a national organization (take a quick look at the histories of CFI Canada and Humanist Canada to see the entirely new set of challenges that job creates to understand why), the continued and growing success here in BC, and my plans to head to the UK for a year in the fall, I turned the suggestion down. The point however, is that there was a sense of disappointment at the Board level with Michael’s leadership.

I can’t really speak at all to this. Most Western Canadian CFI branch leaders seemed to be very supportive of Michael but I guess there were a number of issues in Toronto between Michael and the various directors. Couple that with a desire to have a more charismatic leader and the Board had decided at some point to not renew Michael’s contract when it expired this fall.

The issue that expedited the process though was an incident with one previous CFI Ontario director. She had resigned, giving a month’s notice, to pursue a full-time opportunity and another job. Things came to a head and Michael decided to fire her a week before she was scheduled to depart. He then proceeded to turn up at her other workplace, demanding the keys to the CFI Toronto office. The move left the former staffer feeling quite threatened and led to the Board deciding to remove Michael sooner than planned. Recognizing his work for the organization through some pretty turbulent times, he was fired without cause, allowing him access to a severance package.

The new Board, which was elected this past weekend (and is essentially the same faces as the previous Board), now has the difficult task of finding someone to take over a national organization which shares a name with a fairly tarnished brand in the USA and has its own long history of controversy in Canada.

Couple this with CFI’s corporate structure which means only about a dozen the 34 people that are Associate Members are able to vote and run for the Board and the entire thing is quite messy.

Update 20 June 2013: I received the exact number of Associate Members by email, so I adjusted it. I didn’t intend it to sound so small, but I knew it was not on par with the hundreds or thousands of people who are ‘Friends of the Centre.’

The story went that the student wore the same shirt several days in a row (let’s assume he washed it or had multiple ones and wasn’t suspended for stinking up the place) and was suspended when he refused to obey a demand by the school’s principal that he no longer wear the shirt.

Quick to stand up for free speech and religious freedom, Centre for Inquiry Canada released a press release condemning the school.

"While CFI sponsored the Atheist Bus Campaign, we are a strong champion of freedom of speech and freedom of religion," said National Communications Director Justin Trottier. "This shirt causes no harm and is a perfectly acceptable contribution to the marketplace of ideas."

I could point out again how CFI did not sponsor the Atheist Bus Campaign (except in Kelowna) – the Freethought Association of Canada did – but that’s not my point here.

With any sensational news story, I think we all ought to put our skeptic hats and try to figure out what is really going on before we rush to comment. And in this case, it turns out there’s quite a bit more there.

Students said William Swinimer has been preaching and making them feel uncomfortable, and the shirt was the last straw so they complained.

"He’s told kids they’ll burn in hell if they don’t confess themselves to Jesus," student Riley Gibb-Smith said.

Katelyn Hiltz, student council vice-president, agreed the controversy didn’t begin with the T-shirt.

"It started with him preaching his religion to kids and then telling them to go to hell. A lot of kids don’t want to deal with this anymore," she said.

Furthermore, the students father has begun pulling William from any class beyond the basics.

"He will not attend this school unless they are having reading, writing and arithmetic — good old-fashioned academics," he said, waving a New Testament bible. "When they’re having forums, when they’re having other extra-curricular activity, he will not attend that school."

I guess that means no evolution, sex-ed, or critical thinking for poor William.

This background doesn’t change the fact that suspended a student for wearing a t-shirt is wrong, but it does give the context of why such a seemingly disproportionate measure was taken. The school was fed up with an obnoxious Jesus freak shoving his religion down everyone’s throats. The school administrators have a duty to ensure that all students feel welcome and safe at the school and are able to learn, if one student is compromising that security, then they’re bound to find a way to deal with it.

If anyone else had worn that t-shirt, they would have been fine, but couple it to a continued campaign of disruptions, and I can understand and potentially support the school’s actions.

Of course, we likely still don’t have a complete story. We don’t know the extent that William pushed his religion on others and we don’t know how many people complained about it. We likely never will.

But this is precisely why organizations that want to maintain some semblance of credibility on these issues ought to hesitate before crying wolf. It’s nice to be the first to comment, but without the full context, one can come off as ignorant and closed-minded.

Friendly Atheist and high school math teach Hemant Mehta was also generally supportive of the suspension.

I’ll start with myself, since I don’t claim to have anything to hide. I had re-joined CFI Canada last summer, opting to take advantage of the student rate with discounted subscriptions to both Free Inquiry and Skeptical Inquirer. After months of receiving no magazines and in light of the additional turmoil, I requested a refund for my subscriptions. After a bit more of a wait (due to the changes in leadership), interim National Executive Director (NED) Michael Payton called me, apologized for the delay, and said my full membership refund was in the mail and I was removed from all CFI mailing lists.

A new executive director has been hired for Vancouver. I met David Gordon last weekend and he seems like a nice and enthusiastic chap. He wants to see collaboration and cooperation between the various groups, which is good. I have the sense he’s still learning the ropes of how to build this local group, so it will be interesting to see it grow again.

CFI’s Committee for the Advancement of Scientific Skepticism (CASS) continues to chug along. Just yesterday they issued a press release exposing climate change denialism in a course at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Justin Trottier continues as the public face and voice of CFI Canada, now holding the title of National Outreach Coordinator. Although I may have that title wrong since the CFI Canada website remains horribly out of date (with several people who have resigned remaining on the personnel list). He also continues to advocate for so-called men’s rights, now posting through the “Canadian Association for Equality”:

From the description of the CAE Facebook group:

This facebook group will be used to organize volunteers of a new coalition which will present an alternative and balancing point of view on gender issues like parental and custody rights, violence, education, health, safety & security, poverty and the workplace.
The coalition shall focus on major public educational events and outreach campaigns to finally bring these issues into the living room of every family in Canada.

We’ll lift the veil off revisionist history and make people wonder why
* Men are one-third more likely to develop prostate cancer than women are to develop breast cancer, yet 50% more funding goes to women’s health over men’s
* Men and women commit domestic abuse against each other at roughly equal rates (for every level of severity), yet there is 1 men’s shelter in all of Canada and it just opened this year
* Men now account for under 60% of undergraduate enrollment while boys are performing significantly worse then girls in grade school, yet affirmative action programs continue to "empower women and girls" only
* Female genital mutilation is considered a UN human rights violation yet male genital mutilation is supported by doctors, ethicists and is frequently the basis of mockery on TV

This Canadian Men’s Rights Coalition (CMRC) is the result of 2 years of carefully thought out and planned strategy considerations and 10 months reading over a dozen books by the leading men’s rights champions. When I do things I do them right and BIG. So if you’re interested in helping found this group, of which I am dead serious, contact me at [email protected]. Our plan is to host a major debate in September "Is Society Anti-Male" followed by issue specific lectures throughout the year: poverty, health, violence, safety, etc.

Never minding the fact that the group hosts extremist columnists like Barbara Kay (who has spoken for the Christian group REAL Women of Canada), I want to draw your attention to just a couple things in this group description:

1. No sources are presented for any of the stats. They may exist but are likely biased.
2. I find it hard to be outraged that “men now account for under 60% of undergraduate enrolment”. Either their stat is wrong (and they spelled enrolment wrong) or they truly hate the fact women are attending PSE.
3. They clearly recognized the the “Canadian Men’s Rights Coalition” was a bad name, but not so bad that they forgot to change it in the group description.
4. Trottier lists his own email as the contact.

Perhaps the Board of CFI Canada doesn’t care about Trottier’s involvement in MRA activism but I point it out (again) here for those members, volunteers, and donors who do have a choice. I encourage you to write the board at [email protected] if you have any concerns.

Related to the entire theme though is a recent Dan Gardner article on leadership in isolation. In it he discusses recent studies that have found that we make poorer decisions the more power we get.

The concept can be understood in Darwinian terms. Ideas, like organisms, compete for their environment. A bad idea with a lot of competition will die off, while it may have a better chance if not exposed to variation. I’m not talking about memetics, since we actively select out good ideas when we can contrast them with bad ones.

If a leader is surrounded by yes-men and women who agree with him or her, the landscape of ideas generated will be very small. Meanwhile, when people are able to disagree without fear of punishment, more ideas can thrive and compete.

This is why, regardless of one’s own aptitudes and skills, power corrupts. Everyone is susceptible to it.

Being good skeptics, we need to identify and be aware of issues like this when we design our organizational structures. The root causes of the ongoing CFI Canada debacle are a lack of trust, transparency, and accountability. Without an open exchange of ideas, corruption and acrimony spread.

Such drama isn’t the exclusive purview of CFI and it’s corporate structure. Humanist Canada was embroiled in a strikingly similar controversy a year ago when their board split over the actions of their executive director. HAC seems to be getting back on track, potentially a testament of the ability of the membership to throw the board out and elect a new slate.

I don’t know the perfect solution to these types of divisions. I think there needs to be clear lines of accountability, and a means of dealing with divisions in boards that doesn’t make every issue so personal. I’m wide open to any and all ideas, and I’m definitely willing to try anything to ensure the stability and longevity of the BC Humanists for years to come.

Realizing that we all (generally) agree that humanism is good, I decided to mix it up a bit and my topic is now more focussed on the continuing spat between Greg Epstein and PZ Myers. Here’s the abstract I threw together this afternoon.

Humanism and Interfaith

Humanism can be described as atheism with a heart. Yet some New Atheists and Humanists have sparred recently over a number of issues. Some of these key issues are how we structure of our communities; the legitimacy of humanist chaplains; and whether secularists should engage in interfaith dialogues with the religious. Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard, calls humanism a faith in his 2009 bestseller Good Without God. He has recently announced plans for a new book to serve as a how-to manual to establish groups similar to his Harvard community. On the other side of the debate, many atheists recoil in disgust at terms like interfaith and chaplains. They argue that the unquestionable hierarchy of religion is antithetical to free inquiry. Such structures are to be demolished, not simply rebranded. Amidst the debates on Twitter and the blogosphere, humanist communities are thriving in cities and on campuses around the world. Progressive theists are also actively starting to seek out humanist representatives for interfaith panels.

In this discussion, I will attempt to weave our way through the arguments and concerns raised by both camps. What does a humanist community look like? Are humanists trying to create church for the unchurched? Is there a need for humanist chaplains and officiants? Is humanism a faith? And can, or should, atheists participate in interfaith events?

Some related reading and viewing:

Do Atheists Belong in the Interfaith Movement? Christ Stedman, 15 June 2011

Transfaith, The New Atheist Interfaith, Ed Clint – Secular Student Alliance, 18 August 2011

Nonbelievers striving for humanist connection, Boston Globe, 17 October 2011

Atheist church? NO THANK YOU. Pharyngula, 17 October 2011

Just don’t call it church then, Canadian Atheist, 17 October 2011

A Successful Humanist Community in Boston, Friendly Atheist, 18 October 2011

Just call me a Quaker, I guess, Pharyngula, 18 October 2011

What #HumanistComunity? Pharyngula, 19 October 2011

#HumanistCommunity, Twitter, ongoing

The event is scheduled for Saturday, November 19th at 11:00 am at SFU Harbour Centre and there should be coffee and donuts.

I haven’t written the talk yet (that has to wait for the 18th of course), so I’m open to any and all suggestions.

And I’ll post something about the Unitarian event closer to that date.

I’ve had my differences with CFI Canada in the past, but we are on the same side, and they continue to do the most for freethought in Canada. I therefore urge you to donate to their “Next Big Step” campaign to help raise half a million dollars, enough to lease or buy physical locations for each of their centres in Canada.

So go and donate now, and again, and get your friends to donate to the Next Big Step campaign.

The deadline is September 30th, so there’s not a lot of time to reach this goal.

There was a total of 146 entrants, of which the 135th scheduled entry was the BC Humanist Association. With the BCHA marched the SFU Skeptics and CFI Vancouver.

I had previously marched in the 2008 and 2009 Edmonton Pride Parades with the Society of Edmonton Atheists and they marched again this year with a great FSM sculpture (write up and photos). Our first year there was a bit tame, but we had a table and showed some spirit. It looks like they’ve gotten really good at parades since then.

I’m proud to say that yesterday’s turnout was fantastic. We had almost 20 people out, facepaint, banners and lots of dancing. We unfortunately weren’t quite organized early enough to get a table (I brought this idea to the BCHA in early June and the entry deadline was June 30).

(video and photos below fold)

There’s a few good write-ups already out there at Crommunist Manifesto and Intellectual Waste, and Crommunist has a video online (forgive the shaky hands since its hard to film while dancing):

And now for some photos:

(Photo credit: Glenn Hardie)

And our biggest fan (photo credit Crommunist):