William A. Donohue

The United States is the richest and most powerful nation on earth.

New York City is largely regarded as the number-one international city.

The New York Yankees have the most World Series wins and the richest history of any major league team. The Catholic Church is seen as the most influential religious body in the world.

Being #1 is everyone’s dream. In some cases, it can be a nightmare.

Hating the United States is not only a popular sport abroad, it is very popular on our own college campuses. When I was in the Air Force, the First Sergeant, a Southerner, made it known that he hated New Yorkers (he knew from my accent). The Yankees are hated as much as they are revered. And the Catholic Church is singled out for acrimony more than any other religion.

The word schadenfreude is German for the joy that some have over the misfortunes of others. It speaks to our very human, yet dark, side. So when 9/11 happened, there was dancing in the streets of some foreign cities. When the clergy sexual abuse scandal hit the papers a year later, Catholic haters were basking in joy. Being #1 made the Church an easy target.

As can be seen from this issue of Catalyst, those who harbor an animus against Catholicism are very active these days. When there are no more contemporary cases of sexual abuse to report on, journalists like those at The Week resurrect old cases, trying to give them currency. It’s pathetic.

Kids are being raped by public school teachers and the offenders are still being moved from school district to school district. In school lingo, it’s called “passing the trash.” Yet few bother to comment on it.

The New York Times reports on new documents that were found by historians that prove how brave and noble our priests and nuns were during the Holocaust, sheltering over 3,000 Jews. But the reporter could not resist saying that “this doesn’t change” the negative portrait of Pope Pius XII. Not for people like her. She’s already made up her mind. She said he was “silent” during the Holocaust. But that’s not what her newspaper said about him in 1941 and 1942. It said just the opposite.

Two years ago, anti-Catholic activists and government officials in Canada were making wild accusations about “mass graves” found at residential schools for indigenous children; some of them were administered by the Catholic Church. But now that the excavations have turned up no “mass graves”—not a single body has been found—where are the apologies? There are none.

If hating the Catholic Church for being #1 is a full-time sport, it makes its occurrence no less odious. Why can’t some just move on and let go?

The Catholic Church is not a target simply because of its history, size and influence—it is being singled out because of the threat it poses to secular elites. They loathe the moral mantle that the Church occupies and they want to destroy it.

The teachings of the Catholic Church on sexuality is what makes its enemies mad. Never mind that we acquired our notions of sexual reticence from our Jewish brothers and sisters, the focus is not on Jews but on us (most Jews today are secular and the Orthodox are too small to matter). Never mind that those who throw sexual restraint to the wind live a short and ugly life, we still get the blame.

The goal of the enemies of the Catholic Church is to silence its voice. They want to intimidate the clergy, quiet the laity, and erase the presence of the Church from the public square. Unfortunately, too many of us have been obliging. We should instead be defiant.

Being defiant is what led Catholics to hammer the Los Angeles Dodgers when they honored an anti-Catholic group of gay men dressed as nuns. We were delighted to lead the way. There is no virtue in being passive when our sensibilities are being assaulted.

There are other encouraging signs on the horizon. The FBI is now in the spotlight after reports surfaced that agents were spying on Catholics. Mothers are being more vigilant than ever before about what is going on in the public schools. The pushback against transgenderism—the mad idea that we can switch our sex—is growing, even among gays. And surveys indicate that Catholics want their priests and bishops to be more vocal.

When urban terrorists interrupted Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in December 1989, Cardinal John O’Connor was shaken. He was reminded by Father Benedict Groeschel that it was a backhanded compliment to the prestige of the Catholic Church. They didn’t go after the mainline Protestants, he noted.

So, yes, there is a price to be paid for being #1. The Catholic Church may have lost some of its luster—for making lousy decisions—but it still commands the attention of the ruling class. We should be less shy about flexing our moral muscles in public.

William A. Donohue

This article originally appeared in The American Spectator  on July 3, 2023.

It was just a matter of time. Decent Americans have had a radical race and LGBT agenda shoved in their face for too long, and now they are fighting back. Too bad not all conservatives are on board.

Former congressman Paul Ryan recently said that he was not a “cultural war guy,” contending that he is more concerned about the debt crisis. This is what we would expect from someone who found his home sitting on the board of directors of Fox News’ parent company, Fox Corporation.

Under its founder, Roger Ailes, Fox News Network covered what I call the three “M’s” of conservatism: missiles, markets and morality. But in more recent times, with some notable exceptions, Fox News has been more concerned about the first two “M’s.” Ryan’s influence is obvious. Tucker Carlson’s absence is only one clear example.

As it turns out, Fox News is on the wrong side of history. The country is becoming more socially and culturally conservative. Consider three recent Gallup surveys.

In a Gallup poll released June 8, we learned that “More Americans this year (38%) say they are very conservative or conservative on social issues than said so in 2022 (33%) and 2021 (30%). Those who identify as very liberal or liberal on social issues are in decline.” What makes these figures so impressive is that in the past two years, the increase in conservative identification is found among nearly all political and demographic subgroups.

The Gallup poll published June 16 found that support for same-sex marriage is declining: it went from 71 percent to 64 percent in the past year, which is dramatic. This helps to explain the increase in social conservatism.

Why this is happening can be gleaned from a Gallup poll released June 9. The title says it all: “Views of State of Moral Values in U.S. at New Low.” Public assessments on the state of moral values is the worst since Gallup took these measures 22 years ago. “The 54% of U.S. adults who rate moral values in the country as ‘poor’ marks a four-percentage-point increase since last year and the first time the reading has reached the majority level.”

A third of Americans, 33 percent, say our moral values are “only fair”; 10 percent say they are “good”; and a mere 1 percent rate them as “excellent.”

No wonder social conservatism is rebounding—most are convinced we are morally troubled, to say the least. I hasten to add that there are reasons for optimism. Some very good things are happening.

While Covid was a tough time for many Americans, there is one good thing that came of it. Parents, especially moms, found out what some of the schools were doing to their children. Instead of education, there was indoctrination. The content of this proselytization—and that is what it is—is also objectionable: students are being told how racist America is, and that they can switch their sex. Both are invidious lies.

As a result of this kind of activism, we now have Moms for Liberty, and similar other groups. Proof that they are having an effect is the ruling by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center to name them on its “hate map.” That is a badge of honor.

Disney is being beaten up all over the place. It has decided to adopt the radical LGBT agenda, most notably by inviting children to believe that they can change their sex, and that there are many sexes besides male and female. Both are palpable lies.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis led the way in taking Disney to task for adopting the woke agenda. The Catholic League documentary, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom,” added to their problems. The blowback from customers showed up on its bottom line: it has taken quite a hit. We are also happy to note that its summertime film, “Elemental,” featuring a “non-binary” character, bombed at the box office.

Bud Light is still reeling from trying to push trans politics down our throats. It now regrets hiring a trans person to market its beer. It should never have done so in the first place. Ditto for the U.S. Navy which hired a drag queen, a man dressed as a woman, to recruit new sailors. It was a monumental flop—recruitment numbers are down.

Target got into the act by selling “tuck-friendly” swimwear—with “extra crotch coverage”—for men trying to pass as a woman. Ever since, they have been feeling the pinch of a boycott.

Muslims run the Michigan town of Hamtramck, and their city council has banned the LGBT pride flag, making the case that only the American flag should be flown.

The pushback against the Dodgers for honoring drag queens who mock Catholicism, which the Catholic League led, made international news. From all accounts, the message has been received.

Moreover, surveys show that most Americans do not believe men should be able to compete in women’s sports. They also oppose sex-reassignment surgery performed on children.

These are encouraging developments. The culture war is far from over.

William A. Donohue

July 1 marked my 30th year as president and CEO of the Catholic League. Bernadette Brady-Egan, our vice president, celebrated her 28th anniversary on the same day. We’ve had a good run, and we’re not done.

One reason for not retiring is the state of our country. Never have I seen our country more polarized or disfigured. There is an angry and mean-spirited segment of our society that loathes the United States, traffics in lies, and espouses a wide range of pernicious ideas and policies. At root, they are motivated by a hatred of our religious heritage, and they are hell bent on shoving their militant secular agenda down our throat. They must be stopped.

When I began in 1993, coming home to New York after 15 years teaching college in Pittsburgh and a year in residence at The Heritage Foundation, I inherited an organizational and financial mess. Fr. Virgil Blum, the founder, died in 1990, and at that point the headquarters moved from Milwaukee to a suburb of Philadelphia.

The leadership at that time was abysmal, and after going through a half dozen presidents, the headquarters relocated to New York City in November 1992; the new home was in the headquarters of the Archdiocese of New York.

How did they find me? After word got out that I was about to start a counter Catholic civil rights organization in Pittsburgh, with the blessings of Bishop Donald Wuerl, I was courted by a New York search firm.

When I came to the interview at La Guardia Airport, the head hunter told me that many people were interested in the job, and that Anna Quindlen had someone in mind. She was a very liberal columnist for the New York Times, and not exactly in line with Catholic teachings on a lot of issues. Without blinking an eye, I said something to the effect that “if you want someone like her, you don’t want me.” He smiled.

He smiled because I obviously said what he was hoping I would say. He then called the three people who were interested in interviewing me at the new headquarters (they would not have wasted their time if the head hunter had given me the thumbs down). The meeting went well. After I underwent back surgery in Pittsburgh, I made the move to New York.

The first thing that the board of directors asked me to do was to stop the bleeding. The Catholic League had been so badly managed that it was losing $10,000-$20,000 a month, with not much in reserve. The board asked me to go around the country, meeting with the heads of the chapters, assessing the situation.

I traveled to Minneapolis, Boston, Washington, Milwaukee, Chicago and Pasadena. When I was asked by the head of the Pasadena chapter—who was not a Catholic—what my five-year plan was, I told him I wasn’t sure we would be around for even half that time.

Then he told me that he had scheduled to fly me to Las Vegas the next day. I was slated to talk about the Catholic League to a large group of Notre Dame guys after they spent hours drinking beer and watching a football game (this was an annual event, I was told). To top things off, all of this was to be done on the Catholic League’s dime. As you might expect, I never boarded the plane.
With few exceptions, what I uncovered was gross incompetence. The board of directors was also to blame: they allowed some chapters to be full-time positions; some were part-time; some were paid; others were volunteers.

I had warned all of the chapter leaders that tough decisions were likely to be made. By the end of the year, all but two chapters were closed (and those two didn’t last long).

When I started half way through 1993, a board member told me the Catholic League was expected to run a deficit of $150,000 by the end of the year. In six months, I cut it in half. The next year we posted a profit, and we have been on good grounds ever since.

Before I left Pittsburgh, a priest friend asked how I was going to jump start the organization. I know how to work the media, I said, and that will generate free publicity, resulting in new members. It worked.

I was already a regular on CNN’s “Larry King Live” and “Crossfire,” as well as NBC’s “Phil Donahue” show. So I just picked up where I left off. In 1996, Fox News was launched, and immediately I became a regular on Bill O’Reilly’s show and “Hannity and Colmes.” Then I became a regular on MSNBC, especially with shows hosted by Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough. It was these opportunities, along with other media exposure, that were responsible for giving the Catholic League the platform to grow.

I had a physical in May and everything is good. I am writing as fast as ever, and my passion for righting wrongs is still strong. There is much work to be done.

William A. Donohue

On April 27, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Catholic League at the New York Athletic Club. In attendance was the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Bishop Peter Byrne, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New York, Bishop Joseph Coffey of the Archdiocese for the Military, and several priests, including Father Gerry Murray of EWTN fame.

Several notable lay people were also in attendance. They included Tom Monaghan, founder of Ave Maria University and Ave Maria Law School; Chris Ruddy, founder of Newsmax; Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center; Lauren Green, Fox News religion reporter; Bob Royal, editor in chief of The Catholic Thing; George Schwartz, CEO of Ave Maria Funds, and many other distinguished persons.

EWTN host and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo was the Master of Ceremonies. As expected, he had everyone laughing. He introduced Walter Knysz, the chairman of the board of the Catholic League. He spoke at some length about our founder, Father Virgil Blum, and how we have grown since his death in 1990. Cardinal Dolan also addressed how the Catholic League has changed since 1973, offering his personal reflections about it. I wound up the program.

My comments were mostly on the changing face of anti-Catholicism. From colonial times to the mid-twentieth century, our nation’s “last acceptable prejudice” was driven by the WASP elite, mostly over theological differences.

The animus against Catholic individuals waned once JFK was elected president in 1960. However, hatred of the institutional Church continued, with even greater vigor. This time it was militant secularists who were the biggest bigots on the block, bashing the Church for its teachings on marriage and sexuality.

When I took over in 1993—I will be president and CEO for 30 years on July 1—most of the anti-Catholicism emanated from the media, the entertainment industry, the arts, education and activist legal organizations.

The first big change, I told the crowd, became evident in the late 2000s when Barack Obama was elected president. Now the government had become the biggest threat to Catholicism, especially with Obama’s Health and Human Services mandate; it tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor, and other Catholic non-profits, to provide for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans.

Matters have only gotten worse under President Biden. Though he identifies as a Catholic, he is presiding over the most anti-Catholic administration in modern times, perhaps ever.

Never a pessimist, I ended my talk mentioning several things that give us hope. The extraordinary reaction to our Disney movie—millions have watched it—surely has something to do with the fact that Disney’s subscribers have taken a deep dive. The blowback that Anheuser-Busch is experiencing for hiring a transgender person to hawk Bud Light is encouraging. I offered many other examples.

I cited the movement by African Americans, Asians, Hispanics and Muslims toward a more aggressive embrace of traditional moral values as another example of how things are changing. I told the attendees that at the end of the day we have only two choices: we can either quit or fight. For us, it’s a no-brainer.

While there is reason to be optimistic, I would be lying if I said Catholics are not worried about our society.

During the cocktail hour, and later in the evening, I had a chance to talk to many people. Virtually everyone I spoke to, male or female, young or old, clergy or lay—it made no difference—is seriously concerned about the state of our country. On so many levels, our country is going south, especially culturally.

We are tired of being lied to. From Covid to transgenderism, we have been lied to incessantly. Indeed, in my closing remarks I said we should be skeptical of elites. To be specific, I said that the next time you hear some “expert”—the ones with the alphabets after their name—say something that strikes you as nutty, trust your gut, not them.

We know that the Catholic Church has the answers to what ails us. Unfortunately, that voice of reason is being thwarted by the ruling class, the elites who run our major institutions. They have broken bread with the so-called progressives, or what is more accurately called the woke mob. But they don’t have to have the last word.

Enough of that. Back to the party.

If there is one thing that happened at our Gala dinner that stood out, it was the way Cardinal Dolan worked the room. He met virtually everyone, going around from table to table. He won a lot of people over, and no one was happier with his affability and graciousness than the boys from my local pub. They are now his biggest fans. They are also the thirstiest people I have ever known.
On pp. 8-9, you’ll find an assortment of pictures from this event. It would not have been such a success without the work that our vice president put into it, Bernadette Brady-Egan. She will be VP for 28 years come July 1. This was one of her many shining moments.

William A. Donohue

War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class is Killing the American Dream is a book I had to get off my chest. To be blunt, I am seething mad at the smug, arrogant, patronizing, condescending and frankly racist white ruling class who are working overtime to undermine the prospects of realizing the American dream for millions of Americans, especially African Americans.

I was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, largely by my grandparents who moved from Ireland to the Bronx. As a boy, I was never interested in anything but sports and clowning around. I was always in trouble in elementary school and high school, and I got thrown out of college. I finally grew up when I enlisted in the Air Force.

My years at Beale Air Force base in northern California, during the late 1960s, were spent reading voraciously about the civil rights movement. This was a new experience.

What drew me to the civil rights movement was jazz. At a young age, I fell in love with Billy Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others. The only magazine I read with any regularity was Downbeat, the premier jazz magazine. No one can read about jazz without learning about black history.

In the course of my readings, I learned much about the racism and discrimination that blacks had to endure. This really struck home during the civil rights movement. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. captured my attention. So did Robert Kennedy, whom I shook hands with about a week before he was assassinated.

Prior to this time, I had no political preference. But that soon changed, and, like so many other young people at that time, I became a liberal.

While in the Air Force, I had taken courses at the nearby community college, and for the first time in my life, I excelled in school. When I was discharged, I completed three years of college in two years at New York University. It was then that my flirtation with liberalism ended.

At NYU, I wrote satirical articles for the student newspaper, taking turns lampooning conservatives one day, and liberals the next; I was finding myself politically. After a while, I noticed that my pieces satirizing liberals were no longer published. When I confronted the editors, they acted as though no politics were involved. They were lying, and I told them to their face. I quit.

I soon began to read a lot of articles and books on subjects that I was studying, but were written from a conservative perspective; they challenged the assigned readings in my sociology and political science courses.

Next I found myself debating liberal students in the classroom; I realized they couldn’t mount a credible defense. Then I started questioning my professors, and when I realized that they would either explode at me, or failed to persuade, I realized I was happy being a conservative.

After graduating, I went to the New School for Social Research, another Greenwich Village institution. It was even more radical than NYU. Upon receiving my Masters, I went back to NYU for my Ph.D.; I worked during the day at a Catholic school in Spanish Harlem and took classes at night.

My left-wing professors, and mostly left-wing classmates, proved to be unconvincing. But that alone did not push me to the right—it was their unabiding hypocrisy that pushed me over the edge. For example, they spoke endlessly about oppression, yet they defended the genocidal maniac, Mao Zedong. They expressed solidarity with blacks, but when I asked my Ph.D. classmates to go to Spanish Harlem on weekends to tutor my black and Puerto Rican students, none volunteered.

After working with blacks in Spanish Harlem, and again as a professor in Pittsburgh—I was the faculty advisor to the basketball team, working closely with black students—I came to know that if teachers made it their priority to see to it that they learned, and had high expectations of them, most did well. I also identified with these students; I, too, came from a fatherless family.

Today, it is the white ruling class that has given up on them. These elites don’t treat African Americans as equals. If they did they would encourage the inculcation of the vital virtues—self-control, personal responsibility and perseverance. Instead, they are undermining them.

We will never have racial equality until more blacks earn their way to the middle class. It can’t be forced top down.

To do that the ruling class has to stop undermining the black family with hand-out programs and promises of reparations. They need to stop dumbing down standards and start helping blacks to succeed; they also need to support school choice. They need to stop declaring war on the police—blacks don’t want it. They need to stop telling all white people they are racists (this does nothing but create division and does not improve the life of one black person).

In short, the white ruling class is the problem.

William A. Donohue

Fr. Virgil Blum founded the Catholic League in April 1973. On April 27, we will celebrate our 50th anniversary.

Fr. Blum was a Jesuit professor of political science at Marquette University, and he made it his mission to found an organization that would allow lay Catholics to become the defenders of the faith. That was the same year that the Supreme Court legalized abortion, and although this was an issue vital to Fr. Blum, his number-one issue for the Catholic League was fighting anti-Catholicism. His own pet peeve was the battle for school choice.

Blum chose to call his new organization the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He did so because both religious and civil rights were being threatened by the onslaught of militant secularism that emerged in the 1960s. While many important battles have been won since that time, the threat continues to mount.

Blum died in 1990. For the next couple of years, the Catholic League floundered under the leadership of several persons. When I took over in 1993, it was a financial and organizational mess. Fortunately, that is no longer true.

In 1992, Pittsburgh Bishop Donald Wuerl asked me to consider running the Pittsburgh chapter of the Catholic League. I was teaching at La Roche College, now a university, in the North Hills, ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Wuerl knew of me by reading my op-ed articles in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and through my radio and TV appearances.

When I met with him at a luncheon at the Duquesne Club, there were many prominent Catholics in attendance. The guest speaker was president of the Catholic League. He took me aside and said he wanted me to be his director of communications, and that the headquarters was relocating from suburban Philadelphia to New York City, my home town. As it turned out, he never contacted me, and when I contacted him, he pretended that he never asked me to work with him.

At that point, I told Bishop Wuerl that since the Catholic League did not seem to know what they were doing, it would make more sense for me to start my own rival organization. He agreed. After I wrote about my plans in the diocesan paper, some lay Catholics found out about it and notified the new chairman of the board of the Catholic League, Fr. Philip Eichner.

Eichner was in charge of finding a new president and CEO, and he called me at the college asking if I would consider being interviewed for the position. I said no. I told him that from what I knew, the Catholic League was badly run and I wanted nothing to do with it. He was not at all defensive. Indeed, he agreed with my observation, but hastened to note that he was new and things were about to change with the relocation to New York City.

I was impressed with Eichner’s honesty and agreed to be interviewed. Those who joined him on the search committee knew of my TV appearances with Larry King, Phil Donahue, “Crossfire,” and other shows. The committee also knew of my two books and my stint as a resident scholar at The Heritage Foundation.

I started at the Catholic League on July 1, 1993. At that time we were located in the headquarters of the Archdiocese of New York. It was my great honor to have the strong support of Cardinal John O’Connor.

People asked me how I was going to jump start an organization that was losing money hand over fist, and was an organizational disaster. Do I know rich people? Not a one, I said. But I do know how to work the media and get us into the news. Once we became known—it didn’t take long—we would find it easier to grow.

The board asked me to visit the chapters around the country, and to stop by the Milwaukee office (it was still in charge of maintaining our membership rolls). When I returned, I asked the board in November 1993 to close all but two offices (in short order, those two would also close). I had to stop the financial bleeding. Quite frankly, we were not getting what we paid for.

The newsletter had to go. Instead, I decided to have a 16-page journal cataloging what we do. I chose the name Catalyst because I wanted to convey the idea that we are a forward-looking organization.

I am proud to have such a small but dedicated staff. Bernadette Brady-Egan started as vice president exactly two years to the day after I did. She is an operations specialist par excellence.

What makes me the proudest is the fact that we are one of the only grass-roots advocacy organizations left in the country. Almost all the others are funded by foundations or sugar daddies. Not us.

What the next 50 years will bring is anyone’s guess. But it is my sincere hope that the Catholic League will continue to thrive and beat back the bigots with vigor.

Being ethically inconsistent is a trait that is universal, no matter how hard we try to be consistent. Usually, it doesn’t matter too much, and that is because our shortcomings are limited to a small group, mostly family, friends, neighbors and work associates. But when it comes to public persons—those whose values and behavior affect a large segment of society—it matters a great deal.

Regrettably, we live in a time when a record number of public persons has let us down. From congressmen to school superintendents, surveys reveal tremendous disappointment. What’s worse is when we are lied to by these people, or when they become rank hypocrites: it gets infuriating when we learn that there is one standard for them, and another for us.

In this regard, Disney is among the worst. It continues to make children’s movies that are politically charged, inappropriate, and in some cases indecent. Yet it always obeys its bosses in Muslim-run Middle Eastern nations, as well as in Communist China—Disney gives them a pass and refuses to insist that they show the same entertainment fare that they foist on us at home.

It was reported in February that in deference to their Communist masters, Disney deleted an episode of “The Simpsons.” Why would they do that? The show mentioned forced labor in China.

If there is one thing that Disney, the Muslim-run nations, and Communist China have in common, it’s that they loathe Christians. For instance, Disney continues to make movies that offend Christian sensibilities. Muslim and Chinese dictators up the ante: If they are not culturally raping Christians, stopping them from practicing their religion, they are literally killing them.

There are people at Disney who hate America. That is a strong charge, but how else to explain why they lie to children about American history.

A recent episode of Disney+’s “Proud Family” titled “Louder and Prouder,” featured a song that began with the lyric, “This country was built on slavery—which means slaves built this country”; it was repeated over and over.

Then there is the plea for cash. “We the descendants of slaves in America have earned reparations for their suffering. And continue to earn reparations every moment we spend submerged in a systemic prejudice, racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not atoned for.”

In truth, slaves—who were sold by their African ancestors to the Europeans—were only a small minority, so to claim that they built this country is preposterous. More important, those who enslaved blacks, which included black slavemasters, are all dead, so to shakedown innocent persons to pony up for offenses they never committed is morally abhorrent.

Even more important, were it not for Christianity, and the natural law principles embedded in our founding documents, slavery would not have been outlawed. And by the way, slavery exists today in many countries, mostly in Africa. Who’s going to shakedown today’s masters? Rep. Ilhan Omar? Somalia, her home country, is a slave nation.

Disney has no monopoly on dishonesty. At the Grammys, when Beyoncé accepted an award, she said, “I’d like to thank the queer community for your love.” She cried saying it, so we know she was sincere. But was she?

Two weeks earlier Beyoncé sang in Dubai, where it is illegal to be gay. Moreover, she conveniently chose not to sing any of her pro-LGBT songs, lest she offend her gracious hosts. Her deference may also have something to do with the fact that she was paid $24 million for her gig. Looks like her love for the queer community has its price

Politicians have long lied to us, so no examples need to be given. But what about those in the business community? To be sure, they have lied to us in the past about their products and services, but at least they didn’t pose as patriots while trying to subvert American values.

There is a new database called the 1792 Exchange. Its goal is to alert the public to dishonest companies who try to hide their left-wing agenda. For example, most of these entities promote the Equality Act, the proposed congressional legislation (backed by President Biden) that would force Catholic doctors and hospitals to perform abortions, as well as sex-reassignment surgeries; they either cooperate or they will be shut down.

Now it is one thing for a corporation to deviate here and there, quite another when it becomes a radical activist. According to the database, the following ten companies are the worst at adopting the politics of the Left: Alaska Airlines; Allstate; Comcast; CVS; Ford; Kohl’s; Kroger; Marriott; Mattel; and Pfizer.

Dishonesty is the new norm. To be sure, most of those who work in these corporations are good Americans, but the sad fact is that those at the top cannot be trusted.

The elites have let us down. The ruling class does not believe in the same traditional moral values that most Americans still believe in. We need to make them the outliers—the odd man out—and not let them sideline us.

William A. Donohue

No institution in American history has been more resolute in its opposition to abortion than the Catholic Church. Protestants and Jews were almost in lockstep praising Roe v. Wade in 1973, largely because our side was against it. Then things changed.

In the 1970s, evangelical Protestants moved away from their reflexive anti-Catholicism and took a more sober look at what abortion entailed. They joined our side. Regrettably, most of the mainline Protestants—the United Church of Christ, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, American Baptists, and Episcopalians—stayed in the abortion rights camp.

Among Jews, those who are observant—the practicing Jews—may not share the Catholic understanding of abortion altogether, but they are much closer to us than they are to their secular cousins; they clearly reject abortion-on-demand. Unfortunately, most Jews are secularists and are therefore on the pro-abortion side.

The political parties flipped in the 1970s. The Republicans, led by the WASP elite, were always on the side of the abortion activists. They founded Planned Parenthood with Rockefeller money, quietly saying that abortion was the answer to the “urban problem,” meaning blacks. By the end of the decade, most Republicans became pro-life.

Until the 1970s, the Democrats, led by Catholics, wanted nothing to do with abortion. But the radical feminists booted Catholics from power and took over the party. In the early 1970s, Sen. Edward Kennedy wrote passionately against abortion (I have a copy of one of his letters) and Rev. Jesse Jackson said it was “genocide” against black people. Both became abortion proponents by the end of the decade.

All along, the Catholic Church stood fast. We were the only ones who were both consistent and on the right side of the issue. We should never forget that, and indeed more Catholic students should be made aware of this verity.

After almost a half century of legal abortion, the issue was returned to the states last year. We are now in the post-Roe era, and this means we must adjust our strategies to meet current needs.

Ever since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe, many in the pro-life camp decided to change state laws in a dramatic fashion, hoping to make abortion illegal in every case, or at least in most cases. Voters, who certainly did not approve of the very liberal abortion laws in the states prior to Dobbs, did not want to go full circle either. They hit the pause button on initiatives that would ban virtually all abortions.

The all-or-nothing strategy doesn’t work. We need to start with the most indefensible of all abortions—late term abortions—and work our way back. If we have a choice of trying to ban all abortions, and failing, and banning many of them, and succeeding, the latter is preferable. After all, each abortion not performed means another life saved.

We also need to challenge the myth that everyone who is an abortion rights advocate is not truly pro-abortion. While this may be true of most Americans on the abortion rights side, it is not true of all of them, and it most certainly is not true of abortion activists who exploit women by telling them they should feel good about their abortions.

The Nation magazine is the oldest radical left-wing publication in the country. In the last century, it proudly defended Stalin, even after his mass murders were exposed. Virulently pro-abortion, it recently offered a Thanksgiving gift to its readers. It published the comments of nine women who bragged about their abortions. Six of them admitted to having more than one.

The common denominator was their happiness over having children when they felt like it. One woman said, “I am thankful for both of my abortions. I am thankful that I didn’t want to be a parent then, so I didn’t have to be a parent then (her italics).” Another woman said, “I am thankful for the freedom of self. Some people may call this selfish, but I don’t think it is.” The others voiced similar sentiments.

Their self-absorption is stunning. It’s all about me. What I want and when I want it. They make it sound like they are ordering from a fast-food joint, tailoring their order to fit their wants.
The men in their lives come out as winners. After they get what they want, they hand over their credit card and tell their pregnant girlfriend (if she is even that) to get rid of the baby on her lunch hour.

Young women need to be educated. Not about sex—unwanted pregnancies and STDs have spiked since sex ed became mandatory decades ago—but about being exploited. They need to know that there are legions of men who will use them as a means to their ends. They need a radical wake-up call.

The young men also need to be educated, morally speaking. They need to learn why engaging in reckless sex hurts themselves and others, and they need adult men to tell them this to their face.

We won on Roe, and now we have to set our sights on more victories. We need to adjust our sails, without ever losing our resolve.

William A. Donohue

When I was in the 7th grade, I was asked by one of my nun teachers who was the person I most admired. I said Walt Disney. When asked why, I simply said it is because he makes so many people happy.

That was then. Over the years, beginning in large measure in the 1990s, Disney turned against its family-friendly image, making and distributing fare that sharply broke with its moorings. I know because one of the first big victories I had was in 1995 when I confronted Disney senior officials, ordering them out of the headquarters of the New York Archdiocese, where we were located at that time.

The occasion was the movie “Priest,” a diabolical film that featured totally dysfunctional priests, all of whose problems were a function of their priesthood. Miramax, owned by Harvey and Bob Weinstein (Harvey is in prison for his sexual escapades) was the distributor of the film, and it had just been bought by Disney.

I held a press conference denouncing the movie, and when I learned that some of the Disney top brass were in the audience, I told them to get out. They did, much to the delight of the TV crew who were looking for a good story. Disney/Miramax did one anti-Catholic movie after another, leading to more confrontations.

Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC in 1995, and in short order they produced several Catholic-bashing shows, the most prominent of which was “Nothing Sacred.” We killed that one, too.

Fast forward to this year. On March 28, Disney released a statement condemning a Florida bill that barred teaching students K-3 about sexuality and gender identity. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill, arguing that children that young should not be subject to such content.

I was taken aback by what the “family-friendly” giant did. Walt would never sanction this form of child abuse. I figured that evangelicals would be aghast at Disney’s stance as well, so I called my friend Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, asking if he would join me in requesting a meeting with Bob Chapek, the CEO of Walt Disney Company. If Chapek stiffed us, I said, we would respond with vigor.

When Chapek never responded, I decided something must be done to register our outrage. If the Catholic League were to produce a documentary on how Disney has changed from its beginnings—it has joined forces with the most radical elements of the gay and transgender movement—that could have a significant cultural impact.

So what’s going on at Disney these days? Disney Corporate President Karey Burke boasts that she has “one transgender child and one pansexual child,” and that Disney has “many, many, many LBGTQIA characters.” She said her goal is to have a minimum of 50% of characters being of an “LGBT” orientation and racial minority. Roy P. Disney, grand nephew of Walt, has a transgender child.

Former writers tell how Disney is sexualizing children. One of them said the company has “a history of exposing its young actors to convicted child molesters,” and is bent on grooming kids with gay and transgender messaging.

In fact, its latest animated feature film, “Strange World,” includes the first openly gay teen romance in a children’s movie. Its upcoming “Baymax!” features a transgender man buying tampons, and floats the idea that men can have periods, too. They are targeting kids as young as two-years-old. They even have a line of queer clothing.

Disney is bent on normalizing aberrant sexual behavior, but not everywhere. It knows that the Communist Chinese don’t buy into this insanity, and neither do Muslim-run nations in the Middle East. So guess what? Disney, ever the unethical capitalist, has decided to respect their wishes and not send them their slimy fare.

There are signs that Disney is in over its head. Hundreds of Christians showed up at a rally in the spring pushing back against its morally debased presentations and activities. Similarly, it has been warned by investors not to push their sexual agenda too far. Not only that, but a “silent majority” of Disney employees have had it with the company’s radical politics.

Last year, noted transgender clinical psychologist Erica Anderson, who helped to promote this movement, stunned liberals when she said, “I think it’s gone too far.” She noted that they’ve gone beyond asking for tolerance. She is not alone. In a recent poll, nearly 75% of American voters said the targeting of underage minors in the transgender movement has gone too far.

The participants in the movie were chosen by Jason Meath, the film maker, and me. We have a star-studded cast. Jason has done a magnificent job with the documentary and has been a joy to work with.

“Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom: How Disney is Losing its Way” is a film I never envisioned producing. But if we lose Disney to the radical left that is at war with our Judeo-Christian heritage, that is a very bad sign. Our goal is to help turn things around.

William A. Donohue

There have always been extremists on the right and the left who are completely intolerant, and while both sides need to be condemned, the real danger comes more from the left. Not because the right-wing extremists are less intolerant, but because those on the left are more numerous and they occupy the command centers of our culture.

I know from a lifetime of working with those in education, activist circles and the media just how intolerant the left can be. Indeed, I could fill a book with my personal experiences. They have kept me from getting jobs, and have tried to get me kicked out of jobs, including this one. They are masters of the politics of personal destruction.

More objectively, we have the wholesale attacks on free speech and the destruction of property conducted by the likes of Antifa, the urban terrorists. Let’s not forget about the Silicon Valley elites who gave us the cancel culture. We also have recent polling data that prove my point.

In 2020, a Cato survey found that 77 percent of conservatives, 64 percent of moderates, and 52 percent of liberals were afraid to say what they think. Why are conservatives the most afraid? It’s not because the moderates are guilty of creating a “chilling effect” on the free speech of conservatives. We know who the guilty are.

An even more recent survey, conducted in February, and commissioned by the New York Times and Siena College, found that only 34 percent of Americans said they believed that all Americans enjoyed freedom of speech completely. It also revealed that 84 percent said it is a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem.

As we shall see, Republicans and conservatives are the least likely to enjoy freedom of speech.

On several issues, respondents were asked, “Do you feel more free, less free, or as free as you did before to express your viewpoint in most situations on a daily basis today than you did 10 years ago?” What they found was striking.

When it comes to expressing yourself on politics, 28 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said they felt more free; the figures for liberals and conservatives were 29 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

On the subject of religion, 33 percent of Democrats felt more free as compared to just 14 percent of Republicans; it was 32 percent for liberals and 18 percent for conservatives. We know from many studies that Democrats and liberals are much more likely to be secularists, therefore Republicans and conservatives, who are more likely to be religious, suffer the most.

The findings of the Catholic League’s survey, which were released in September, found that 62 percent of Catholics agree that “it is getting harder to practice your faith publicly in America.” While two out of three practicing Catholics (weekly and monthly churchgoers) say it is getting harder, even 58 percent of those who rarely or never go to church agree that it is.

When asked how free they are about discussing gender identity, the majority of Democrats (54 percent) said they felt more free today but only 20 percent of Republicans felt that way. Similarly, the figures for liberals and conservatives were 58 percent and 18 percent, respectively. That’s quite a difference. In other words, those who have the greatest reservations about gender identity are the most afraid of speaking their mind.

When asked about race relations, more than twice as many Democrats (37 percent) as Republicans (15 percent) felt they were more free to discuss this issue today than they were 10 years ago. This suggests that those who don’t follow the thinking set by elites on racial issues are seen as a problem.

None of this is hard to figure out. The ruling class has adopted the politics of the left, making it harder for conservatives and people of faith to speak their mind in public.

Further proof of the intolerant streak on the left can be ascertained by examining the responses to a question about the limits of free speech. “While I support free speech, sometimes you have to shut down speech that is anti-democratic, bigoted or simply untrue.”

The poll found that 4l percent of Democrats and 16 percent of Republicans agreed with this statement; the figures were 39 percent for liberals and 25 percent for conservatives.

Notice that respondents were not asked if they supported the abridgement of speech for reasons that threatened public safety: the issue was speech that someone might object to, and that is a very different matter.

It is this kind of thinking that led the University of California, Berkeley, to recently create “Jewish-free zones” on campus, places where students can safely discuss support for Israel. That’s just how sick this state of affairs has become. This proves a point I have long made: there is more free speech allowed in neighborhood pubs than in neighborhood colleges and universities.

We are at a serious juncture in American history. If people cannot express their political views—especially on college campuses—the entire nation is at risk.