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Couple things:

The article in my local paper (linked in the OP) reminded me of the "What do you think" graphics in the Onion.

Of course I understand that an organization like AHA is for like-minded people to get together, exchange ideas, etc. I guess I just always thought of Humanism in the same way that I think of branches of philosophy like phenomenology, metaphysics, existentialism, epistomology.... I am obviously wrong in that perception.

It appears that capital H Humanism is a movement or organization not unlike a religion with its own dogmatic constructs. This is what didn't gibe with my earlier perception.

Since I stumbled across this article I've done some poking around at the AHA site. There clearly is an agenda - they're setting themselves up as the antithesis to the religious right (which they call Christian Nationalists).

They are distancing themselves from atheism (I guess the term has reverted to a pejorative). One article I read compared atheism to racism in that non-racists don't seem to need a word to describe themselves, so non-theists shouldn't need a moniker either. This is silly semantics IMO.

I've been working through my belief system for years but have started to articulate my world view better now. I see similarities in some of what the AHA site uses to define Humanism, but I'm uncomfortable with the "manifesto" aspect of it, and the level of propaganda in the articles posted or linked on the AHA site.

Lastly, when I think of "Free Thought" I tend to take that literally: explore your own ideas, challenge yourself, question why you believe what you believe, learn a new skill. This is quite different from learning an organization's rhetoric and parroting it back.

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Humanism is an idea, not an organization. This organization did not invent the idea and is not the arbiter of it, nor does the idea depend on it.

I wouldn't bother tying the idea to the organization. It could only be misleading.