Sunday, September 03, 2023

LIBERTARIAN RELIGION

How after-school clubs became a new battleground in the Satanic Temple’s push to preserve separation of church and state

The controversial – and often misunderstood – extracurricular groups tend to raise controversy. But under equal access laws, schools can’t discriminate against a club based on its point of view.

Lucien Greaves, spokesman for the Satanic Temple, which has pushed to establish after-school clubs. (Josh Reynolds for The Washington Post via Getty Images)

August 8, 2023

Charles J. Russo

(The Conversation) — As the start of the school year rapidly approaches, controversy can’t be far behind. But not all hot-button topics in education are about what goes on in class.

Over the past few years, conflict has trailed attempts to establish After School Satan Clubs sponsored by the Satanic Temple, which the U.S. government recognizes as a religious group.

Organizers have tried to form clubs in California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Organizers in Broome County, New York, also formed a summer Satan Club that meets at a local library.

Though there are estimates that only a handful of Satan Clubs are up and running, the groups raise significant questions about freedom of speech in K-12 public schools, particularly around religious issues – topics I teach and write about frequently as a faculty member specializing in education law.

A handful of people stand at a protest, with one holding a rosary and a sign that says, 'Satan is evil. EVIL HAS NO RIGHTS.'

A Christian activist group demonstrates outside the Satanic Temple’s SatanCon, a convention held in Boston, on April 28, 2023.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

More ‘science’ than ‘Satan”

Members of the Satanic Temple, which was founded in 2013, do not profess beliefs about supernatural beings. The group emphasizes “the seven tenets,” which celebrate ideas like rationality, compassion and bodily autonomy.

What often draws attention, though, are the temple’s political and legal activities. The group has a history of filing suits to try to gain the same rights afforded to Christian groups, in an attempt to highlight and critique religion’s role in American society.

Because organizers of Satan Clubs object to introducing religion into public education, they try to offer an alternative at schools hosting faith-based extracurricular groups. The Satanic Temple promotes clubs that focus on science, critical thinking, free inquiry and community projects, emphasizing that “no proselytization or religious instruction takes place” in meetings.

Litigation around Satan Clubs arose in 2023 when a school board in Pennsylvania refused to allow a club to meet in an elementary school. In May, a federal trial court ruled that the school board could not ban the club, since it allowed other types of clubs. By allowing groups to use school facilities, the court explained, officials had created a public forum. Therefore, excluding any group because of its views would constitute discrimination, violating organizers’ First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.

Equal access

The principle that all student-organized extracurricular groups have equal access to educational facilities was established in 1981 with Widmar v. Vincent, a dispute from a public university in Kansas City, Missouri. The Supreme Court determined that once campus officials had created a forum for the free exchange of ideas by student groups, they could not prevent a faith-based club from meeting solely due to the religious content of its speech.

That requirement was extended to secondary schools under the Equal Access Act, which Congress adopted in 1984. The act applies to public secondary schools where educators create “limited open fora,” meaning non-instructional time when clubs run by students, not school staff, are allowed to meet. Officials cannot deny clubs opportunities to gather due to “the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings.”

The Equal Access Act specifies that voluntary, student-initiated clubs cannot “materially or substantially interfere” with educational activities. Further, groups cannot be sponsored by school officials, and educators may only be present if they do not participate directly. Finally, the act forbids people who are not affiliated with the school, such as local residents or parents, from directing, conducting, controlling or regularly attending club activities.

The Supreme Court upheld and extended the Equal Access Act’s logic in two major cases. In 1990’s Board of Education of Westside Community Schools v. Mergens, for example, the justices reasoned that because allowing a religious club in a public school in Nebraska did not endorse religion, it had to be permitted. Afterward, federal courts in California, Indiana, Florida and Kentucky expanded the act’s reach to GSA Clubs, formerly known as Gay-Straight Alliances – clarifying that “viewpoint discrimination” was impermissible against other nonreligious clubs.

In the recent dispute from Pennsylvania, the Satan Club’s organizers relied on Good News Club v. Milford Central School, a 2001 case from New York. The dispute arose when a school board refused to permit the Good News Club – a non-school-sponsored, faith-based group that has several thousand branches in the U.S. – to meet after class with participants’ parental consent. Yet officials allowed the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and 4-H Club to meet and talk about similar topics from secular points of view in an elementary school, so the Supreme Court decided that its refusal constituted unlawful viewpoint discrimination. Given students’ ages, parents or other adults are allowed to be involved in elementary school activities.

Eight teenagers, seen from above, Istand in an empty church while holding hands and bowing their heads.

In many districts, religious groups can meet in schools after classes – but only under certain conditions.
pastorscott/E+ via Getty News

Expose children to new ideas?

Following the Equal Access Act, some boards banned all non-curriculum-related clubs in attempts to avoid controversy. Perhaps the Pennsylvania board will go this route as well.

In an increasingly intellectually diverse world, though, children are bound to encounter ideas with which they disagree – and I would argue each encounter can sharpen their critical thinking. As a federal trial court judge in Missouri once observed, provocative speech “is most in need of the protections of the First Amendment. … The First Amendment was designed for this very purpose.”

(Charles J. Russo, Joseph Panzer Chair in Education and Research Professor of Law, University of Dayton. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: New Age Libertarian Manifesto

HERESIOLOGY

Opinion

How a mysterious Indian religious figure united Hindus and Muslims

The life and words of Shirdi Sai Baba could prove to be an inspiration to those seeking to rebuild the bridges between followers of both faiths.

Shirdi Sai Baba in an undated image. Photo courtesy Wikimedia/Creative Commons

August 4, 2023

Murali Balaji

(RNS) — In recent years, India has seen growing tensions — and sometimes violence — between Hindus and the country’s large Muslim minority, often stoked by some of the country’s numerous political parties and extremist groups from both religions. The fraught relations between the two groups trace back centuries, from the persecution of Hindus and Sikhs by some Muslim rulers, to tensions perpetuated by the British in colonial India and the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947.

But in the past, devotion united Indians of both faiths, as the story of a late-19th century and early 20th century Indian religious leader and his followers reminds us.

Shirdi Sai Baba’s real name, birthdate and origins are unknown, but according to his Hindu and Muslim followers, he was born in the 1830s and followed an ascetic lifestyle from an early age, living under a neem tree and spending long hours in meditation. He wore Islamic garb but offered prayers at both the local mosque and temple.

Shirdi Sai Baba’s influence was monumental in shaping Indian spirituality. Sufi mystics praised how his idea of seeing divinity in all beings corresponded with their core philosophy and that of Advaita Hinduism, which preaches non-dualism between living beings and the Divine. Sai Baba influenced a Zoroastrian mystic, Meher Baba, who credited him with articulating a philosophy of looking inward for realization.

Sai Baba was a proponent of “bhakti,” a feeling of intimate personal connection, and urged his followers to surrender themselves to the divine without getting caught up in the orthodoxy of rituals.

He encouraged both his Hindu and Muslim followers to read their respective holy texts to become the best versions of themselves. He rejected material offerings and spent his life in contemplation, eschewing orthodoxy. His life was chronicled by his followers in a book called “Shri Sai Satcharitra,” which was an important text to members of my family, a number of whom were devotees of Shirdi Sai Baba.

Shirdi Sai Baba in an undated image. Photo courtesy Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Shirdi Sai Baba preached the oneness of both Hindu and Muslim teachings by highlighting how both taught their followers to find the true realized versions of themselves. After his death in 1918, a Hindu temple in Shirdi was built that welcomed both Hindu and Muslim (and Zoroastrian) devotees.

Years later, a Hindu religious leader named Satya Sai Baba claimed to be an incarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba and preached the idea of “loving all and serving all,” a philosophy that drew hundreds of thousands of non-Indian followers from around the world. In fact, Satya Sai Baba became far more remembered in the West, particularly after influencing Americans such as Isaac Tigrett, the co-founder of Hard Rock Cafe, and the musician Alice Coltrane.

While Satya Sai Baba became an international celebrity, Shirdi Sai Baba was known more to locals and members of the Indian diaspora who were familiar with his life and teachings. For years, including in the decades after partition, Hindus and Muslims worshipped at the temple in Shirdi, and at least to a limited degree, Hindus and Muslims outside of India would attend ceremonies honoring his life or visit temples created in his honor.

Shirdi Sai Baba’s teachings brought together Hindus and Muslims of different castes as well. During times when lower-caste Hindus and lower-caste Muslims were frequently marginalized by upper-caste Hindus and upper-caste Muslims (known as Ashrafs), Shirdi Sai Baba rejected caste as anything grounded in religion.

In recent years, however, the co-worshipping has diminished. Today, the vast majority of Shirdi Sai Baba devotees are Hindus, a product of a number of factors, including increased hostilities between followers of both faiths, calls by Indian Muslims to reject any reverence to any religious figures or deities except Allah, and a generational shift in how both Hindus and Muslims now practice their religions.

Still, Shirdi Sai Baba left an indelible mark on both the syncretic nature of Indian spirituality and communal harmony. His life and words could prove to be an inspiration to those seeking to rebuild the bridges between followers of both faiths.

(Murali Balaji is a journalist and a lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include “Digital Hinduism” and “The Professor and the Pupil,” a political biography of W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

FETISHISM

Shaligrams, the sacred fossils that have been worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists for over 2,000 years, are becoming rarer because of climate change

Many Hindus, Buddhists and people who follow the shamanic religion of Bon undertake a pilgrimage each year to northern Nepal to look for Shaligrams, believed to be a manifestation of Lord Vishnu.

CC BY-SA)" >

A Shaligram on top of a bed of small rocks. (Holly Walters,CC BY-SA)

August 4, 2023

Holly Walters

(The Conversation) — For more than 2,000 years, Hinduism, Buddhism and the shamanic Himalayan religion of Bon have venerated Shaligrams – ancient fossils of ammonites, a class of extinct sea creatures related to modern squids.

Originating from a single remote region in northern Nepal – the Kali Gandaki River Valley of Mustang – Shaligram stones are viewed primarily as manifestations of the Hindu god Vishnu. Because they are not human-made, but created by the landscape, they are believed to have an intrinsic consciousness of their own. As a result, Shaligrams are kept in homes and in temples, where they are treated as both living gods and active community members.

I went on my first Shaligram pilgrimage in 2015. After arriving at the village of Jomsom in Mustang, I, along with a group of Indian and Nepali pilgrims, started the five-day trek northeast from there to the temple of Muktinath, where the journey culminates.

Making our way through the winding river passage, between 26,000-foot (8,000-meter) mountain peaks, we carefully looked for Shaligrams in the fast-moving water and gathered up any we could reach.

Since then, as an anthropologist, I have documented a wide variety of Shaligram practices while working with devotees in Nepal and in India. In 2020 I wrote the first ethnographic account, “Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas,” which demonstrates how popular and important the pilgrimage is among South Asian and the wider global Hindu diasporas.

However, my ongoing work focuses more on how climate change and gravel mining are altering the course of the river, which is endangering the pilgrimage by making it harder to find Shaligrams.

Living fossils

The mythology of Shaligrams is associated with two legends. The first is told in a series of three Hindu scriptures, the Varaha, Padma and Brahmavaivarta Puranas.

In each version of this story, the Hindu god Vishnu, believed to be the supreme creator, is cursed by the goddess Tulsi, who is also called Brinda, because he compromises her chastity. As the story is told, Vishnu disguised himself as her husband Jalandhar so that the god Shiva could kill the demon in a fight. This was because Jalandhar, born from Shiva’s third eye, had previously won a boon from the god Brahma that his wife’s chastity would keep him invincible in any battle.

Angry at the deception, Tulsi transformed herself into a river – the Kali Gandaki – and turned Vishnu into a river stone, a Shaligram. In this way, Vishnu would be continuously born from her, like a child, in repayment for the karmic debt of killing her husband and making her a widow. The landscape of Mustang thus represents the bodies of Tulsi and Vishnu, producing Shaligram stones as divine manifestations from the waters of the Kali Gandaki.

The second legend is told in the Skanda Purana, which explains that Shaligrams are physically created by a type of celestial worm called the vajra-kita – translated as thunderbolt or adamantine worm – which is responsible for carving out the holes and coiled spiral formations that appear on the stones.

As a result, the beliefs around the mythological formation of Shaligrams involve both legends. As part of the first legend, Vishnu takes up residence within a sacred stone that appears in the Kali Gandaki River of Nepal. The story of the second legend is expressed in the carving of that stone by the vajra-kita to give it its uniquely smooth, rounded shape and the characteristic spirals both inside and on the surface.

Rivers and roads

Shaligram pilgrimage takes place high in the Himalayas, usually between April and June and again between late August and November. This helps avoid both the worst of the July monsoon rains and the December snows.

Snow-capped mountain peaks near a flowing river.

Mount Nilgiri seen from the bed of the Kali Gandaki River.
Holly Walters, CC BY

Mustang, however, is currently divided into the upper or the northern region and the lower or the southern region. In 1950, both Upper and Lower Mustang were closed to travel following China’s annexation of Tibet. But though Lower Mustang was reopened to pilgrimage and trekking in 1992, Upper Mustang remains highly restricted.

This means that the current Shaligram pilgrimage route does not include visiting the Damodar Kund – the glacial lake that produces Shaligrams from the high-altitude fossil beds – because pilgrims are still not allowed to freely cross into Upper Mustang

The village of Kagbeni marks the principal boundary between the two divisions and is also one of the main stops on the Shaligram pilgrimage route. The village sits directly on the banks of the Kali Gandaki and is one of the few areas where pilgrims can reliably find significant numbers of Shaligrams by wading through the river themselves and by watching the river bed for any signs of a black spiral emerging from the sand.

The last destination on the pilgrimage route, at roughly 13,000 feet (4,000 meters), is the temple site of Muktinath, which contains multiple sacred areas of worship for Hindus, Buddhists and followers of Bon. As a place of Hindu worship, Muktinath offers a central shrine to the deity Vishnu as well as 108 water spouts under which pilgrims must pass. The water spouts themselves are hammered directly into the mountain side, which contains a natural aquifer, and provide one last opportunity for practitioners to bathe themselves and their Shaligrams in the waters of Mustang.

As a Bon sanctuary, Muktinath is home to the “Jwala Mai,” or the mother flame, a natural gas vent that produces a continuous flame that burns next to the constant flow of water from the mountain aquifer. Along with the high winds of the Himalayas, representing the element of air, and Shaligrams, representing the element of stone, Jwala Mai contributes to Bon practitioners’ view of Muktinath as a rare place where all of the sacred elements of their religion come together.

As a Buddhist complex, Muktinath is more commonly referred to as “Chumig-Gyatsa,” or the Hundred Waters, and the icon that is worshipped by Hindus as Vishnu is venerated by Buddhists as Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. In 2016, Muktinath also became home to the largest statue of the Buddha ever built in Nepal.

Climate change and Shaligrams

These traditions then come together to provide a place to ritually welcome all of the new Shaligrams that have just been taken from the water into the lives of the people who venerate them. But Shaligrams are becoming rarer.

Climate change, faster glacial melting, and gravel mining in the Kali Gandaki are changing the course of the river, which means fewer Shaligrams are appearing each year. This is mainly because the Kali Gandaki is fed by meltwater from the Southern Tibetan Plateau. But with the glacier disappearing, the river is becoming smaller and shifting away from the fossil beds that contain the ammonites needed to become Shaligrams.

A snow capped mountain with blue clouds in the distance.

The Kali Gandaki riverbed near the village of Kagbeni.
Holly Walters, CC BY

For the moment, though, the majority of pilgrims are still able to find at least a few Shaligrams every time they travel to Mustang, but it’s getting harder. Even so, once the new Shaligrams are introduced to worship at Muktinath, it is time for pilgrims to leave Mustang and return home.

For many, this is a bittersweet moment that marks the birth of their new household deities into the family but also means that they will be leaving the beauty of the high Himalayas and the place where deities come to Earth.

But all the pilgrims, me included, look forward to the days when we can return to walk the pilgrimage paths again, hopeful that Shaligrams will still appear.

(Holly Walters, Visiting Lecturer in Anthropology, Wellesley College. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Vatican financial scandals: Corruption, stupidity or both?

A deeply tangled tale must be followed by systemic reform and effective oversight.

A Vatican trial of 10 people accused of financial crimes, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, has gone on for two years. File photo from Nov. 17, 2021, by Vatican Media

August 1, 2023

Thomas Reese

(RNS) — For Americans, making sense of the Vatican trial of 10 defendants charged with financial crimes is nearly impossible.

The charges are a tangle of alleged corruption and misconduct. At the heart of the trial is a London luxury property investment that lost the Vatican almost $200 million. Then there are payments to a woman who was supposed to help free some nuns from kidnappers but allegedly spent the money on luxury goods, holidays and other extravagancies.

Finally, there were loans and other payments made to a charity run by a cardinal’s brother. Investigators found forged invoices and receipts introducing doubt as to whether the money was used for charitable purposes.

Next, there is the legal process that is foreign to American audiences raised on watching legal TV shows featuring juries, judges who act as referees and the right to a speedy trial. The Vatican trial does not have a jury; instead it has three judges who can direct probing questions at the prosecution and defense. The judges will rule on the guilt or innocence of the accused at the end of a proceeding that has gone on for two years.

But at its heart are the complexities of any trial. What are the facts? How does the law apply? And which figures in the trial are credible?

One thing is clear. Those involved in the scandal were either corrupt, stupid or both.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, left, and Cecilia Marogna. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, left. Image via social media, right)

The central defendant in the trial is Cardinal Angelo Becciu, formerly sostituto, or chief of staff, in the Vatican Secretariat of State, and traditionally the third most powerful post in the church. He was involved in the London real estate deal and made payments to his brother’s charity and to Cecilia Marogna, a self-styled diplomacy and national security consultant who, they say, was hired by Becciu to save the nuns.

As the trial began, Pope Francis removed Becciu from his Vatican job and from the College of Cardinals.

Others accused include Vatican officials, Italian businessmen and lawyers with whom the Vatican made deals or paid commissions. The charges include fraud, money laundering, extortion, embezzlement and abuse of office. Some of the accused outsiders are refusing to show up for the trial.

Becciu denies all wrongdoing, but neither a 125,000-euro donation to his brother’s charity nor the more than half a million euros paid to Marogna pass the smell test: There is an obvious conflict of interest when an official gives money to his brother. Prosecutors say Marogna lacked the qualifications for the work she was supposed to perform for Becciu.

The London real estate fiasco, with its multiple deals and contracts of dubious value to the Vatican, raises the most pertinent question: Did the businessmen outside the Vatican take advantage of foolish and incompetent officials, or were the Vatican officials conspiring with the outsiders? Did the scandal start with stupidity but transition into criminality as the players attempted to cover up their mistakes?

The London property at the heart of the Vatican financial scandal. Image via Google Maps

For example, when the Vatican attempted to exit from the London deal it decided to first buy out its partner. The contract that the Vatican signed allowed the Italian investors to retain control over the fate of the London property. As a result, the Vatican had to pay more money to finally get control of the investment in order to sell it.

Why did no legal expert spot the problem before the contract was signed?

The prosecution has not been without its problems. Until recently, the prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, has been saying that the money for the London real estate deal came exclusively from Peter’s Pence, the pope’s collection for the poor. Just last week, as closing arguments began, the lead prosecutor finally acknowledged that money came from other Vatican sources.

The prosecution has made some odd choices in its indictments, particularly that of René Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer with a stellar reputation, whose watchdog authority only extends to the Vatican Bank, not the London investment.

When the prosecution rests it case and the defense has had its opportunity to respond, the judges will have until December to pass judgment.

There is a silver lining to the scandal. In the past, all of this would have been swept under the rug. The money would have been lost, but it would have been kept quiet to avoid scandal. In 2019, when the Vatican bank refused a bailout loan to the Secretariat of State, the current cover-up began to unravel. The bank reported the problem to the appropriate Vatican authorities, who then began an investigation that led to the prosecutions.

An exterior view of the offices of the Vatican bank in Vatican City, Jan. 28, 2014. (AP Photo/Domenico Stinellis)

The Vatican bank, thanks to reforms begun by Pope Benedict XVI, is now the most reputable financial agency in the Vatican. There is a lesson here.

The Vatican bank was cleaned up by submitting it to outside supervision from Moneyval, the international monitoring body created by the Council of Europe to crack down on money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Cleaning up the bank involved bringing in outside auditors and experts. Since forensic accountants are not cheap, this was an expensive process.

Francis has not been willing to spend the equivalent amount of money to clean up other aspects of Vatican finances. This is penny-wise and pound-foolish.

The pope needs to appoint and adequately pay a lay finance czar with the authority and sufficient staff to manage Vatican finances. This includes the power to investigate every office and person in the Vatican, including the Secretariat of State and the cardinals. Anyone who does not cooperate must be fired.

This is not rocket science. Governments, as well as for-profit and nonprofit corporations, have been doing this for decades. But it will not be cheap if the Vatican hires, as it must, financial experts at competitive salaries. This is the only way to clean up the Vatican and restore confidence in its financial management.

The Vatican response to financial scandal must not be one-off dealing with the symptoms. Systemic reform is called for so that scandals do not continue.

Opinion

Richard Dawkins has abandoned science to justify his transphobia

It’s jarring to see the world’s most famous atheist use his massive platform to downplay or deny trans identities.

HE SHOULD HAVE JUDITH BUTLER ON HIS SHOW

Richard Dawkins displays Helen Joyce’s book “Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality” while interviewing Joyce during an episode of Dawkins’ podcast called “The Poetry of Reality.” Video screen grab

August 1, 2023

Hemant Mehta

(RNS) — For decades, the renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins urged his readers to use science and reason to counter religious misinformation. Now Dawkins is abandoning both to spread anti-transgender rhetoric embraced by religious conservatives.

During a recent episode of his podcast “The Poetry of Reality,” Dawkins spoke with author Helen Joyce about the “influence of gender ideology on society.” There was no mention of how Joyce has previously said transgender people who have transitioned are “damaged” and “a huge problem to a sane world.” Nor did Dawkins bring up how she believes “reducing” the number of people who transition is a moral imperative.

Dawkins not only agreed with many of her points, he added that “sex really is binary” and that kids are choosing to be trans under pressure from both their peers and teachers. He also insisted that people like him were the real victims of abuse, wondering why “all the bullying (goes) one way.” (In fact, a study from 2021 found that trans people are four times more likely than cisgender people to “experience violent victimization.”)

The podcast episode dropped days after Dawkins wrote an essay for the British magazine The New Statesman answering the question, “What is a woman?” Dawkins’ reductive response boiled down to “A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes,” as if the absence of a single chromosome answers the question. That flies in the face of what many scientists have said about the subject.

“There are cisgender women who have XY sex chromosomes, and many other exceptions to binary sex. Around 1 in 1,000 people are intersex,” said Jey McCreight, a science communicator with a Ph.D. in genomics who has consulted on trans inclusivity for biotech companies. McCreight added in an email: “That’s pretty common as far as biology goes. A study may treat sex as binary out of practicality, but scientists understand that reality is more nuanced.”

Despite acknowledging those exceptions exist, Dawkins casually dismisses them, just as he dismisses the genetic influences many experts believe contribute to the development of trans identities. Those exceptions and influences are reasons the American Medical Association and other major medical organizations have supported gender-affirming care.

Dawkins also rejects definitions of womanhood that extend beyond chromosomes. In 2021, he went even further, comparing trans people to Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who famously (and controversially) identified as Black. Suggesting trans people were making a similar choice, he tweeted, “Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men.” He insisted he wasn’t disparaging trans people — most of whom say their gender identity is not a choice at all, but rather just who they are — and said he used their names and pronouns as a “courtesy.”

But that didn’t smooth things over. The American Humanist Association, which gave Dawkins its 1996 Humanist of the Year award, rescinded the honor in response.

At a time when 76% of atheists accept the existence of trans people, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, while only 38% of all American adults feel the same, it’s jarring to see the world’s most famous atheist use his massive platform to downplay or deny trans identities. That’s especially true when trans people in the U.S. are under attack from conservative media outlets and legislators eager to label them predators or “groomers.” The advocacy group GLAAD said 2023 was “on pace to be a record-setting year for state legislation targeting LGBTQ adults and youth,” including laws banning or limiting trans individuals’ access to health care and participation in sports.

For decades, the most vocal opponents of LGBTQ rights were religious conservatives making the argument that acceptance violated God’s wishes. Lately, though, as the lines between politics and religion have blurred, conservatives have been citing science, rather than religion, to justify their positions. In response to a trans-supporting colleague, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene hung a sign outside her office saying “There are TWO genders … Trust The Science!” A recent anti-trans film by conservative provocateur Matt Walsh attempted to make a scientific rather than religious case against trans people. And author J.K. Rowling, whom Dawkins called “very brave” in his podcast, has couched her inflammatory rhetoric in biological terms.

What’s most frustrating about Dawkins’ shift in focus is that his otherwise excellent science writing is being tarnished by his bizarre obsession.

Much as fans of the Harry Potter series are now conflicted about the book and movie franchise and its creator, I can no longer recommend Dawkins’ books to people who want to educate themselves about evolution.

It’s also maddening because Dawkins remains the go-to atheist for reporters and media outlets. There are more atheists who are LGBTQ, women and people of color than ever before, yet it’s Dawkins who often takes center stage whenever there are public conversations about atheism. That’s not his fault, of course: He literally wrote the most popular book on the subject. But it’s irresponsible to use his platforms to spread ignorance on a topic that critics have repeatedly said he doesn’t understand and often gets flat-out wrong.

His words also have the effect of further alienating LGBTQ people when they’re already marginalized by many powerful religious leaders. Why would they want to become atheists when supposedly “reasonable” people are spreading the same lies they hear in churches?

Trans people are currently subject to political attacks and dehumanizing laws. Dawkins should spend less time acting like this issue boils down to basic biology and more time advocating for LGBTQ people who have been harmed by religious — and now supposedly scientific — bigotry.

(Hemant Mehta is a writer, podcaster and atheist activist. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)