A powerful (and depressing) comment by trinioler on PZ’s excellent response to Ron Lindsay’s post:
Okay, so, people believe that the slyme pitters are just trolls on “the internet”. Well, disabuse yourselves of that notion.
So, we have a local CFI branch. It started out as fairly libertarian, focused on laughing at creationists, etc.
So, some of the original organizers were the branch of libertarian skeptics/atheists we are having so much trouble with now.
Now, given that, what impact does this have now? Well, its had a pretty severe impact, as several of the younger organizers (nearly all women) have left CFI or stopped participating.
The Facebook page for the branch is filled with assholes who mislead, lie, make comments about breasts, lie, use slurs willy-nilly, etc, and no one stops them anymore.
Everyone who had fought them, while getting in trouble for “causing trouble” has left.
Essentially by NOT throwing out the racists, the sexists, the ones who lie and mislead and are not skeptical at all, they’ve lost most of the next generation of skeptical organizers. They’ve lost volunteers and dues-paying members.
In effect, they’ve doomed the local CFI branch, which could have been and was starting to do good things.
THIS is the cost. THIS is the divisiveness. You lose willing and hard-working young volunteers, who want and expect better from the leaders. You turn them apathetic and cynical. They burn out from the fighting, without a lack of support.
So to whoever says this divisiveness is bad? It really is, for your organizations, not ours. It will cost you volunteers and members and energy, because you won’t do what’s necessary.