The Gadfly Controversy: A Year Later
Nearly a year ago, I wrote an article detailing my criticisms of the way the narrative of events in Todd Eklof’s The Gadfly Papers was constructed. It was not an exhaustive deconstruction of Eklof’s ideas but, rather, a questioning of whether his version of events, events which he mostly had no personal knowledge of and he mostly seems to have reconstructed through biased one-sided second- and third-hand accounts. What his version universally shows is a perchance towards a telling of events that supports his narrative while leaving out details that would challenge his version of events, even going so far as quoting random Facebook comments from people who had nothing to do with the events either.
I never sought to deconstruct the ideas of The Gadfly Papers. For one, the theories presented in the book were largely based on Greg Lukianoff and
Jonathan Haidt’s The Coddling of the American Mind, which already has plenty of criticism against it that Eklof just doesn’t even acknowledge. More than that, though, I considered revisiting Eklof’s book to talk about the ideas, but there are now much better critiques of Gadfly than I could have ever come up with, so I didn’t feel it was necessary.
Instead, my contention, which I continue to stand by, is that, if Eklof’s narrative of events is as flawed as I believe it to be, then he has not shown that the ideas from Coddling apply to the Unitarian Universalist context, as Coddling is very much about the academic setting and not religious institutions. One does not even need to address the ideas themselves because he has sweepingly dismissed a number of concepts that make him uneasy without a good argument why. Neither he nor a single one of his defenders has convinced me otherwise in the year since. If one is not able to show the ideas they are presenting even apply to a particular context, then addressing the ideas themselves really just becomes a non-sequitur.
I’ve been really amazed by the response in the proceeding year, and it’s been mostly positive. Many of you have told me how helpful it was to read just how flawed Eklof’s narrative of events was. Others have taken a not-so-productive road. For a group that has claimed to be the rational and logical ones in the debate, I have received numerous personal attacks, accusing me of trying to censor Eklof for a single sentence that reported an ask from some people of color, or going so far to accuse this English and Philosophy major of not understanding the difference between an argumentative and expository essay, among other things. I’ve been told that he didn’t need to talk to anyone personally involved in the events he describes, although I continue to be confused how he was supposed to determine that safetyism and political correctness was happening if he didn’t know exactly what happened in the events he described.
And more of you chastised me than I expected for not directly engaging with his ideas in that first piece. Yes, congratulations, you found me out. I didn’t do the thing I didn’t say I was going to do and which wasn’t the aim of the article in the first place.
The proceeding year has been strange; people of color, queer and trans folks, and disabled folks who agree with Eklof’s ideas have been strategically placed at the front, kind of a perverse centering to make a “Hey, we have supporters, too!” move that does not reflect on how this, in itself, is tokenism and a manifestation of white supremacy. Meanwhile, authors of color such as Ibram X. Kendi have been cherry picked to agree with the gadflies’ major points while ignoring the larger context of their work or points that do not align with Eklof.
More than this, though, the controversy has largely been portrayed as a crusade of free speech, with most supporters nearly completely forgetting about the ideas of the original book. No doubt, after today’s announcement, those calls will intensify, with over-dramatic insistence that Eklof is being censored or that we just don’t want him to be able to present his arguments.
I honestly see no constructive dialogue coming out of this controversy. It is an asking to go backwards in our progress towards building a more covenantal faith, a desire to sacrifice our values to appease the fragility of folks who would project their own insecurities on words and phrases, who refuse to be held accountable for their words, actions, and ideas, who wish for a time when folks weren’t so uppity. The world is changing so fast, and they would like it if we could just pause things so they don’t have to catch up.
I have no interest in a faith that would be so wishy washy.
But that’s not even what this is about; I am under no illusions that those who have dug in so far are likely to be convinced. It’s about our willingness as religious people to be held accountable for the words we speak, to participate in processes, formal and informal, that maintain a relationship of covenant. Nearly a year ago, I publicly invited Eklof to have a dialogue with me regarding his narrative of the events in The Gadfly Papers. To this day, he has not responded to my offer. It’s easy for me to believe reports, then, that he has continued to refuse to participate in other attempts at dialogue and mediation.
His good officer recently claimed that they have done so because they do not believe such processes would be fair. However, when you refuse to even sit down and talk about ground rules, when you refuse to participate in any process that you are not completely certain will find in your favor, that’s not a fear of unfairness; that’s a desire to shape the process into something that will strengthen your position and center your demands, no matter how unsound and unfair, and diminish your opponents, and that’s not the way covenant works.
Time and time again, supporters of The Gadfly Papers have demanded dialogue, but only if we do it on their terms or if we don’t use language that offends their sensibilities. In fact, in the year since I published my article, only one Gadfly-supporter has bothered to even listen seriously to my side of events. That’s not dialogue; that’s white supremacy.
We are a covenantal faith, and there have always been consequences to breaking covenant. The writers of The Cambridge Platform, the congregationalist document that our polity is still largely based upon, wisely recognized there would be times when people in the faith would need to be admonished and brought back into covenant. They believed there would be consequences for a refusal to be held accountable. Accountability is built into the bedrock of our polity. To refuse to hold each other accountable is antithetical to our way of being religious. To use unfounded accusations of dogmatism and censorship to try to prevent others from being being held accountable is antithetical to our values of a free and RESPONSIBLE search for truth and meaning.
In the last few weeks, I have been engaging with local leaders in my area to protest the systemic racial violence in our city and our nation. I have watched young Black voices in my city rise up and find their voice and I’ve been listening to them. They are asking us to hold our religious institutions accountable as to whether our congregations are supporting Black liberation or encouraging white supremacy. As a queer agender minister who knows all too well the mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical toll that systemic oppression can take, I intend to do just that.
It is so hard in the times we live in to imagine how any Unitarian Universalist could become so distracted by semantics that, rather than engage in the struggle for Black liberation, they would rather debate whether “white supremacy” is the right word for our system of racial injustice. Ironically, asking Black folks to pause their struggle and debate the meaning of words with you because their use of the word makes you uncomfortable is, in itself, evidence that white supremacy is, indeed, the right word, because it’s asking Black folks to take some time to center white discomfort, white fragility, and white attempts to rationalize the term with white experience, which never will be a Black experience. All while Black folks are literally dying in the streets.
White folks, we should be the ones doing what we can to comfort our siblings of color rather than demanding they make us comfortable.
It is the hallmark of white supremacy that we believe our own experience is a counter to the experience of every person who reality is different from our own. I call my fellow white Unitarian Universalists to develop of system of relational ethics in which we each listen to the experiences of other people not like us and, to paraphrase Parker Palmer, we quit trying to fix, save, advise, and correct people whose lives are not like our own.
I opt out of the semantic debate. I’d rather be using my limited energy trying to keep more Black folks from being murdered by police and vigilantes. I believe that’s what justice calls me to do. I have no interest in concern trolls who would say that the telling of their experiences is too sensitive, safetyist, or politically correct.
Justice work can be intensely rewarding and spiritually fulfilling, but it is not for the faint of heart. It will ask you to examine your innermost convictions, to look at the side of you that you’d rather pretend doesn’t exist, to peek into your own inner racism and sexism and classism and homophobia and transphobia and ableism and xenophobia. If you expect this to be comfortable work, to be work that will just pat you on the back and tell you, “Good job!” for doing the minimum necessary to performatively oppose systemic oppression, you are doing it for all the wrong reasons.
If you think you’re doing justice work and you’re comfortable, if nothing’s upsetting the balance of what you thought was true in the world, you better examine yourself! This is damned hard, damned uncomfortable work.
Too often, progress towards Beloved Community has been halted by liberal white folks who say, “Well, isn’t that enough?” No, it’s not enough until every iota of prejudice, systemic injustice, and oppression is rooted out. I don’t want equality; I want liberation!
