This is the article that appeared in the September 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
Bill Donohue
There are many ways to assess any public person. My interest here is to assess Kamala Harris from a Catholic perspective.
Before issuing an abbreviated rendition of this article at the end of July, the last news release I wrote about Harris was in May. It was occasioned by her foul mouth. Everyone concedes that politicians of all stripes are known to curse, but they typically do so among themselves, or at private events. Not her.
On May 13, with the cameras rolling, she spoke at an Asian American organization, saying, “We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won’t, and then you need to kick that f**king door down.” She then descended into her proverbial cackle.
Why the obscenity in a public forum? She is the Vice President of the United States. Nice role model for young minority girls.
Sometimes Harris says things that embarrasses her family. Her father, who is from Jamaica, took umbrage at a comment she made suggesting that Jamaicans are all a bunch of potheads.
In 2019, Harris was asked on a radio talk show if she supported legalizing marijuana. She responded, “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?”
Her father, Donald Harris, quickly rebuked her, saying his grandmothers and deceased parents “must be turning over in their graves right now to see their family name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”
Harris not only makes offensive comments, her feminist views are so extreme that she reflexively sides with women who accuse men of sexual harassment.
When Brett Kavanaugh was being considered for a seat on the Supreme Court, he was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexually assaulting her when they were teenagers. But under stiff questioning, her account fell apart. In March 2024, the Washington Examiner ran a piece that said it all. “Half a Decade Later, Christine Blasey Ford Still Has No Corroborating Witness.”
At the time, Harris sat on the Senate Judiciary Committee; it was charged with assessing Kavanaugh’s suitability to be on the Supreme Court. Before he uttered one word at the hearing, Harris said of Ford, “I believe her.” After Ford came off as a fraud, Harris stuck to her guns and tweeted that Kavanaugh “lied.”
At least she is consistent. In 2019, when she was a senator, Biden was accused by women of touching them inappropriately. At a presidential campaign event in Nevada, she said, “I believe them.” She even wrote a piece for The Hill that was titled, “Harris: ‘I Believe’ Biden accusers.” Fortunately for her, the media never ask her to explain herself.
Of primary interest to Catholics is Harris’ position on social and cultural issues. Let’s begin by assessing her definition of culture. She spoke about this at the 2023 Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans.
“Culture is—it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know…it comes in the morning.” She then broke out into a fit of laughter. But she was not done.
“We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it that way, too.” No one knew what she was talking about.
Harris may be incoherent in her speeches, but her policy decisions, especially on social and cultural issues, are not in doubt.
On September 13, 2019, I wrote a news release titled, “Kamala Harris’ Lust For Abortion.” Earlier in the year, I said, she defended abortion at any time during pregnancy, right up until birth. She also wanted to force states that restrict abortions to obtain federal approval from the Department of Justice before implementing them.
When Harris was California’s attorney general, she bludgeoned pro-life activist David Daleiden. He used undercover videos to expose how abortion operatives harvest and sell aborted fetal organs. She authorized her office to raid his home: they seized his camera equipment and copies of revealing videos that implicated many of those who work in the abortion industry.
In her role as California AG she also sought to cripple crisis pregnancy centers with draconian regulations. Specifically, she supported a bill that would force these centers to inform clients where they could obtain an abortion. She was sued and lost in the Supreme Court three years later.
Like many other Democrats, Harris is not content to sanction child abuse in the womb. Even when they are born, she is okay with letting those who survive an abortion die.
To be specific, on February 25, 2020, Sen. Harris voted against the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill that would “prohibit a health care practitioner from failing to exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion.” That’s called infanticide.
Harris’ record on abortion and infanticide is at odds with her opposition to the death penalty. When it comes to convicted serial rapists and mass shooters, she wants to spare their lives. In 2019, she was explicitly asked if she opposed the death penalty for acts of treason. She said she did.
There we have it. Harris says that those who endanger the safety of all Americans by attempting a violent overthrow of the government, or spying on the military for a foreign enemy, should have their lives spared, but innocent children who are moments away from being born are not entitled to have their lives spared. And children who survive an abortion, but are in need of medical attention, can be left to die on the table, and no one will be held accountable.
The Democratic Party is the proud party of homosexual activists and transgender radicals.
Harris is so happy to see two people of the same sex “marry” that she actually performed “marriages” between gay couples in 2004. She also opposed Proposition 8, the California initiative barring gay marriage. The people spoke—they voted for it—but she does not believe in “power to the people”: she believes in power to the ruling class (which won in the Supreme Court). No wonder her voting record earned her a perfect score of 100 percent by the anti-women and anti-science gay behemoth, the Human Rights Campaign.
When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis supported a bill that would prohibit teachers in the early grades, K-3rd grade, from being indoctrinated with gay and transgender propaganda, she opposed it. In doing so she also showed her contempt for parental rights; the bill prohibited efforts to undermine them.
Harris’ enthusiasm for transgender rights includes allowing females who claim to be men to join the military and males who claim to be female to compete against girls and women in sports.
Religious liberty is a First Amendment right, but her deeds suggest she is not supportive of it. She is good at “God talk”—when referring to a specific year she occasionally says “in the year of our Lord.” But talk is cheap. As a U.S. senator, she co-sponsored the “Do No Harm Act” that would force religious institutions to violate their doctrinal prerogatives.
Harris even co-sponsored the most anti-religious liberty bill ever introduced, the Equality Act. It would coerce Catholic doctors and hospitals to perform abortions and to mutilate the genitals of young people seeking to transition to the opposite sex. This bill would sideline the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton ensuring that the government does not encroach on religious rights.
In 2018, the Catholic League was among the first organizations in the nation to protest her attack on a Catholic nominee for a federal district judge post. She badgered Brian Buescher at a hearing, simply because he was a member of the Knights of Columbus, a male entity.
As I pointed out at the time, Harris has never objected to Jewish women groups or the League of Women Voters. Just a Catholic male group. What really got her goat is Buescher’s membership in a Catholic organization that is pro-life and pro-marriage, rightly understood. In other words, she was invoking a religious test for public office, which is unconstitutional.
Not only does Harris harbor an animus against Catholics, she has no respect for separation of church and state. In 2021, she created a video to be played in Virginia black churches urging everyone to vote for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe. The video aired in 300 churches for several weeks. Harris starred in it, beckoning congregants to vote for him.
Harris is no friend of the black poor. She has consistently voted against school choice, thus keeping inner-city blacks in their place. If she truly believed in social justice, she would work to see that poor blacks have the same opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice. Instead, she consigns them to schools that no member of the ruling class would ever elect for their own kids.
Her biography explains why she is so insensitive to the black poor. She was raised in a home of privilege, and has lived a privileged life ever since. She has successfully exploited her connections to advance her career, having been anointed most of her posts. She even secured her first job out of law school as a deputy district attorney in Alameda County even though she was not a lawyer (she failed the bar the first time around).
Being a beneficiary of black privilege explains why she is so uncharitable. When she was California attorney general, her 2011-2013 tax returns showed she made $158,000 but did not give a dime to charity. Liberals do not believe they need to have any skin in the game—it’s the job of government to pay for the poor.
Another way the government is supposed to fulfill her social justice agenda is by supporting reparations for slavery. When she was in the senate, she co-sponsored a bill to do just that. In doing so, she put herself in an awkward position. Her ancestors were slavemasters.
Her father, Donald Harris, who is a Stanford professor of economics, said in 2018 that his grandmother was a descendant of Hamilton Brown, who was a plantation and slave owner in northern Jamaica. Brown didn’t own one or two slaves—he owned scores of them. Most of them were brought from Africa, which has a long history of slavery (it still exists today in some countries).
As I said four years ago, “if the average American has to pay X amount for slavery, Harris should at least have to pay 10X. Isn’t that what redistributive justice is all about? Catholics need to know.”