REVISITING PEDOPHILIA AND HOMOSEXUALITY

This is the article that appeared in the July/August 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.

Pedophilia, which is sex between an adult and a prepubescent child, is different from homosexuality, which is sex between adults of the same sex. Though they are different, unfortunately there are prominent gay leaders who have been supportive of adults having sex with minors, and some even justify man-boy rape. Moreover, while there are heterosexual pedophiles as well, the only ones who have an organization dedicated to pedophilia are gays.

June was Gay Pride Month. We called attention to this issue, asking gay leaders to speak to it with clarity. If everyone can’t agree that the sexual abuse of children is an abomination, we will never get rid of this problem.

The following is our report on this subject. For a slightly longer version, which notes the sources for these entries, see our website for our news release of June 3rd, titled, “Pedophilia and Homosexuality Revisited.”

Harry Hay

Harry Hay was “The founder of the gay movement in America.”

“…[I]f the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

Larry Kramer

Larry Kramer was a leading gay rights activist and founder of the “queer-led” terrorist organization ACT UP.

“In those cases where children do have sex with their homosexual elders… I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it, either because of a natural curiosity… or because he or she is homosexual and innately knows it…. And unlike girls or women forced into rape or traumatized, most gay men have warm memories of their earliest and early sexual encounters; when we share these stories with each other, they are invariably positive ones.”

Harvey Milk

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office; he served as a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978.

“[Harvey] Milk’s sexual history with young people is well documented. Milk’s biographer Randy Shilts in ‘The Mayor of Castro: the Life and Times of Harvey Milk,’ spends half a dozen pages detailing the 33-year-old’s sexual relationship with a 16-year-old.”

Craig Rodwell

Craig Rodwell, a leading gay activist, told his biographer that from the age of 13 to 14 he had sex with “hundreds of men.” Rodwell went on to say, “This is what I lived for, literally. And that’s all I thought about all day long, just so I could get downtown and go cruising.…It had a great sense of freedom about it and adventure and, oh, I met all kinds of guys….”

Prostasia Foundation

While it claims to be a “child protection organization,” Prostasia is in fact one of the leading advocacy groups to normalize sexual relationships between adults and minors, or as it prefers to call them “Minor-Attracted Persons.” The group regularly downplays the criminality of such relationships and instead focuses on reducing the “stigma” surrounding individuals who engage in such abhorrent acts.

Prostasia blog editor Sheila van den Heuvel-Collins tweeted, “Merry Christmas to everyone, including the nepiophiles [someone who has sex with infants], pedophiles, hebephiles [someone who has sex with minors between 11 and 14] and ephebophiles [someone who has sex with adolescents between 15 and 19] who have to put up with stigma every single day of the year.”

B4U-Act

Another advocacy group for “Minor-Attracted Persons,” B4U-Act also works to normalize perverse relationships between adults and minors. In addition to countering “stigma,” B4U-Act has additionally supported studies to provide a “scientific basis” for its advocacy. Some of these studies have been conducted at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom, Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, and McGill University in Montreal.

NAMBLA

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was founded in 1978 with the stated goal of ending “the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships.”

“NAMBLA is working to change public perceptions and laws about consensual sexual relationships between adults and minors. Today, the law and public prejudice make little or no distinction between a man who forcibly rapes a child and one who genuinely cares for and loves a boy. Some judges have condemned boy-lovers as being ‘worse than murderers,’ even though their only ‘crime’ has been to share their body and affection with a boy in a friendship that includes mutually enjoyable sexual experiences. It is a shame that in American society, it is a greater crime to love a child than it is to beat—or even kill—a child.”

TRUMP TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT ABORTION

The “fact checkers” at the Associated Press, CNN, the Washington Post and WCBS radio (NY) are claiming that former president Donald Trump was wrong to say in the debate that not only do late-term abortions and partial-birth abortions still occur, babies are being killed after an abortion, and that the Democrats support it. They are wrong. Trump is right. Here are some facts they overlook.

1977: Dr. C. Everett Koop, later U.S. Surgeon General, told the American Academy of Pediatrics, “Well, you know that infanticide is being practiced right now in this country…I am concerned that there is no outcry…I am concerned about this because when the first 273,000 German aged, infirm, and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession either, and it was not far from there to Auschwitz.” He titled his speech, “The Slide to Auschwitz.”
1995: Partial-birth abortionist Dr. George Tiller said, “We have some experience with late terminations; about 10,000 patients between 24 and 36 weeks and something like 800 fetal anomalies between 26 and 36 weeks in the past 5 years.”
1997: Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, admitted on national TV that he “lied through [his] teeth” when he “just went out there and spouted the party line” about how rare partial-birth abortions are.
2001-2003: Illinois State Senator Barack Obama opposed bills that would have mandated that a child born alive as a result of a botched abortion be given medical care.
2003: The U.S. Senate voted 64-33 to outlaw partial-birth abortion. Of the 33, 29 were Democrats, 3 were Republican, and 1 was an Independent.
2007: Senator Joe Biden, who voted for the ban on partial-birth abortion in 2003, changed his mind and said the ban on killing a baby who is 80 percent born is “paternalistic.”
2019: The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute admits that at least 12,000 late-term abortions take place annually in the U.S.
2019: New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs a bill that removes legal penalties to any medical staff personnel who intentionally allow a child born as a result of a botched abortion to die.
2019: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam said that if a mother sought to abort her baby, but the baby was born anyway, “the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and her family decide, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” He added that the baby would be “kept comfortable” before they put him down or let him die.
2019: Montana Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a law that would have required children born alive who survived an abortion to be treated like any other human being.
2019: The Born-Alive Infant Abortion Survivors Protection Act was blocked by Senate Democrats Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren; all were presidential candidates.
2019: The Washington Post conceded that at least 10,000 late-term abortions take place each year.
2023: All but two congressional Democrats voted to kill the Born Alive-Infant Abortion Survivors Protection Act.

It’s time the media stopped lying and covering up for those who support late-term abortions, partial-birth abortions and infanticide.

VICIOUS ATTACK ON CAITLIN CLARK

Caitlin Clark has done more for women’s basketball than any other person. One would think that the superstar would be treated with applause by fellow players, the media and pundits. While many have lauded her, she has been savaged by others. The stench of bigotry is in the air.

Clark is a white heterosexual Irish Catholic with a boyfriend. That is hardly exceptional, but unfortunately for her, that matters to some of her critics.

Clark’s Catholic faith is important to her. In 2018, she gave an interview to the Des Moines Register about her time at Dowling Catholic High School. “We get to live our faith every day. Dowling starts every day with prayer and ends every day with prayer. This is a big reason why Dowling has such a special culture and is such a special place to go to school.”

Sports columnist and podcaster Jason Whitlock notes that “Caitlin Clark’s sanity cannot survive the racial, sexual, and political blender participation in the WNBA will cause. She’s a 22-year-old white woman with a boyfriend raised in the Catholic faith. She’s playing in a league that is hostile to virtually everything about her – skin color, sexuality, and faith.”

Clay Travis, the host of “Outkick,” notes that “Caitlin Clark is white and straight in a league that is primarily minority and lesbian. I told you this was going to be an issue, and now you got everybody acknowledging it all over the place.”

We are happy to report that basketball great LeBron James came to Clark’s defense.

POPE WORRIED ABOUT “FAGS” IN THE VATICAN

Pope Francis is obviously worried about “fags” in the seminaries, and even in the Vatican.

On May 28, it was reported that in a private meeting with 250 Italian bishops the week before, the pope said he opposed having openly homosexual men in the seminaries. He said the seminaries were already too full of “frociaggine,” or “faggotry.” After being criticized, the Vatican said the pope “extends his apologies.”

Later the Italian news agency, ANSA, reported that when the pope met privately with priests at the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome on June 11, he said, “In the Vatican, there is an air of ‘faggotry.'”

The use of the gay slur is not the real issue, though it is surprising to hear the pope speak this way twice within three weeks, and just two weeks after his apology was issued for the first infraction. The real issue is the prevalence of homosexuals in the seminaries and in the Vatican.

As Bill Donohue recounts in his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, the damage that homosexuals—not pedophiles—have done to the Catholic Church cannot be overstated. They are responsible for 81 percent of all the cases of the sexual abuse of minors from 1950 to 2002; almost all of the males were postpubescent.

Pope Francis didn’t need the data to know that homosexuals have taken over too much of the Catholic Church. He has previously spoken openly about the “gay lobby” and the “gay mentality” in the Church.

When a bishop told the Holy Father that it was no big deal that several priests in his diocese were homosexuals—it was just an “expression of affection”—the pope strongly disagreed. “In the consecrated life and in the priestly life, there is no place for that kind of affection,” the pope said. He also warned priests against aligning themselves with the “gay movement.”

Pope Benedict XVI has also warned of the damage that homosexuals have done to the priesthood. This explains why he said that those with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies” should not be ordained. Pope Francis has continued this policy.

It is not just Pope Francis who has expressed concern about the number of homosexuals in the Church. Father Andrew Greeley said in 1989 that “Blatantly active homosexual priests are appointed, transferred and promoted. Lavender rectories and seminaries are tolerated. National networks of active homosexual priests (many of them administrators) are tolerated.” In 2000, he testified that seminary professors “tell their students that they’re gay and take some of them to gay bars, and gay students sleep with each other.”

In 2002, Bishop Wilton Gregory (now a Cardinal) said, “One of the difficulties we do face in seminary life or recruitment is when there does exist a homosexual atmosphere or dynamic that makes heterosexual men think twice” about joining the priesthood. He said it is “an ongoing struggle” and that the Church must be careful not to be “dominated by homosexual men.”

Pope Francis is clearly worried that there are still too many homosexuals in the priesthood. Calling gays “fags” should not mask what is bugging the pope. His critics are trying to divert attention from the real problem.

BIDEN GUILTY OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM

The Biden Administration never stops telling us about the virtue of diversity and how we must respect it. Yet when it comes to the diversity that foreign countries exhibit, especially in matters relating to sexuality, it shows nothing but contempt. Instead of respecting the diverse cultural norms and values that exist in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, the Biden administration is shoving down their throats the corrupt sexual agenda of western nations.

[We prepared a report, “Biden Admin LGBT Imperialism,” that documents the extent to which the administration is guilty of cultural imperialism. See our website.]

President Biden hit the ground running, rolling out a slew of radical LGBT policies literally two weeks after he was inaugurated. He issued a memorandum on “Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Person Around the World.” It was given a national security number (NSM-4) to show its importance.

But who asked Biden to promote his queer agenda around the world? And why the urgency? Aside from elites and wealthy left-wing advocacy organizations—who do not represent the masses—no one did.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is enthralled with this agenda. Early on he bragged that “We are engaging around the world in cultural diplomacy.” Wrong. The administration is engaging in cultural imperialism.

When U.S. embassies fly Pride Flags in countries that are averse to this indoctrination—including the Holy See—they are showing how little they respect the diversity that these nations represent. When the United States Agency for International Development tells educators what pronouns to use, and advises that when they learn of a girl who thinks she is a boy that they are under no obligation to tell her parents, this is a classic example of cultural imperialism.

The manipulation of religious groups, as has been done in Botswana, to promote LGBT policies that they reject, is another example of this malady. It got so bad in Ghana they even threatened to withhold funding unless officials there adopted laws on sexuality that the Biden administration favors. And why was it necessary to fund a film to be distributed in Portugal that features drag queens and depictions of incest and pedophilia? Do we have perverts working for us?

Most of the world wants nothing to do with this sick agenda. We need to respect it.

DEBUNKING SLAVERY MYTHS

We recently celebrated the Fourth of July, and as usual some sages told us how slavery is as American as apple pie. They have no idea what they are talking about.

As Harvard sociologist Orlando Paterson has shown, there is not a place on the globe that has not known slavery. Aristotle thought it was so much a part of the human condition that he justified it on the basis of the natural law. It took the Catholic Church to proclaim that slavery violated the natural law.

The New York Times’ “1619 Project” tells readers that America was founded in slavery. Wrong. It was founded in a revolution in 1776. Just as wrongheaded is Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Biden. She told reporters in 2021 that “the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles.” This is a bastardization of history.

Those who accept the ambassador’s view claim that the Constitution justified slavery and that it regarded blacks as three-fifths human. This is false.

The Constitution makes no mention of the words “slave,” “slavery,” “race,” “white,” “black,” or “color.” And nowhere does it say that blacks are three-fifths human. The three-fifths language is in Article I, Section 2, which speaks to the issue of apportionment. To determine the number of representatives each state should have, the total was to be determined by “adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.” In other words, count free persons, do not count those Indians not taxed, and add three-fifths of the slaves. This last part has been grossly distorted.

The Northern delegates did not want to count slaves at all, and the Southern delegates wanted them counted as equal to free persons. According to the twisted logic offered by left-wing ideologues, this would suggest that the North was more pro-slavery than the South. This is absurd.

If blacks weren’t counted at all, it would weaken the Southern base: the slave states would have only 41 percent of the seats in the House of Representatives. If they were counted as equal to whites, the slave states would have 50 percent of the House seats. The compromise—counting slaves as three-fifths—meant that the slave states wound up with 47 percent of the seats. That is the truth of the story.

The Constitution, without mentioning slavery directly, provided that the international slave trade would end on January 1, 1808. The president who made good on that pledge was Thomas Jefferson.

When the United States was founded, the only place in the world that had banned slavery was Great Britain. It was abolished in the United States in 1865. Africa banned it in 1981, yet it still exists there today in Mauritania and Somalia.

The Europeans did not kidnap African slaves. They bought them. Moreover, the African slavemasters facilitated the transfer by bundling the slaves in cages for the white boys. Common sense should tell us that if a handful of white boys showed up in Africa looking for slaves, why didn’t the Africans say to them—they vastly outnumbered the Europeans—yes, there is going to be slavery, but you are going to be the slaves and we are going to be the masters?

Defending slavery were white “progressives.” George Fitzhugh was America’s first sociologist. He railed against capitalism but defended slavery.

In his work, “The Universal Law of Slavery,” written in 1850, Fitzhugh explained that “the Negro is but a grown up child and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian.” He said slavery had a positive effect. “The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world.”

Blacks, he said, could not compete with the white man under capitalism, so it was better to keep them in slavery.

“The negro is improvident [and] would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has a right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race….”

During the Progressive Era, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Richard T. Ely was one of the most prominent leaders in the social-justice crusade. He was considered sympathetic to blacks, yet he expressed the same views as Fitzhugh. “Negroes, are for the most part grown up children, and should be treated as such.”

It must be said that not much has changed. Today’s “progressives” have low expectations for blacks, which is why they are bent on lowering the bar for black students—they should instead be helping them to clear it! White liberal racism is endemic.

America bashers love to ruin our Fourth of July. They are as ignorant as they are malicious.

ATTACK ON CHIEFS’ BUTKER; BIGOTRY IN PLAY

This is the article that appeared in the June 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.

Harrison Butker, the phenomenal kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, gave a commencement address at Benedictine College in Kansas on May 11 that espoused traditional Catholic values. The practicing Catholic was criticized by the NFL, slammed on social media and was the subject of a change.org petition.

The attack had three targets: Butker, Benedictine College and Catholicism. Make no mistake, the war on Butker was driven by anti-Catholicism.

Butker was condemned for his remarks about women, abortion, President Biden, Gay Pride Month, gender ideology, and the emasculation of men. Those who signed the petition didn’t want to debate him—they wanted him fired. “We call upon the Kansas City Chiefs management to dismiss Harrison Butker immediately for his inappropriate conduct.”

Bill Donohue responded by saying, “Spoken like true fascists. Moreover, they are plain dumb: they don’t know the difference between speech and conduct.”

Most of the vitriol aimed at Butker was about his comments praising moms who elect to work at home taking care of their children. He noted how blessed he is to have a wife who embraces “one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.”

Butker actually spoke for most moms.

In a Gallup poll released in 2019, 50 percent of women with children under age 18 said they would prefer to stay at home; 45 percent disagreed.
Butker spoke the truth about abortion, IVF, surrogacy and euthanasia, referring to them as stemming from “the pervasiveness of disorder.” But to those who like abortion, this was grounds to fire him.

Butker referenced Biden when he took him to task for making the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally. He was also right to call attention to the “deadly sins” associated with Pride month. His reference to “dangerous gender ideologies” was understated—we are dealing with a child abuse crisis.

Bigotry was the driving force behind these attacks. It was Butker’s unabashed defense of Catholic moral theology that set his critics off.

The Associated Press let the cat out of the bag. It unleashed a string of red flags about Benedictine College being “part of a constellation of conservative Catholic colleges that tout their adherence to church teachings and practice—part of a larger conservative movement in parts of the U.S. Catholic Church.”

This comes on the heels of an AP story sounding the alarms about the growth of orthodox Catholicism.

We were happy to come to Butker’s defense. We did so with greater effect than any other Catholic organization in the nation. We had a list of email subscribers contact Stephen D. Minnis, president of Benedictine College, to show their support for him and for Butker.

NFL SIDES WITH BIGOTS

The National Football League (NFL) sided with the anti-Catholic bigots in the Harrison Butker controversy. Speaking of the Kansas City football player, the NFL said, “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization.” It cited its allegiance to inclusion.

Bill Donohue wrote a stinging letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “So by stigmatizing Butker—in effect excluding him—for defending Catholic moral theology, you are flexing your inclusion muscles? Nice to know what you think about Catholicism—that is the real issue. Too bad you couldn’t cite a single sentence that was objectionable.”

Donohue then listed several instances where the NFL showed its duplicity, beginning with his letter to Goodell in 2011 about his decision to invite Madonna to perform at the 2012 Super Bowl. Donohue reminded Goodell that in 2004 it disinvited a rap singer from performing during the halftime of the Pro Bowl game because of his sexist lyrics.

Donohue drew a comparison with the NFL’s handling of Madonna, citing her repeated mocking of “the heart and soul of Christianity: Jesus, Our Blessed Mother, the Eucharist and the Crucifixion.” But none of that mattered.

Earlier this year the NFL gave a platform to an anti-Catholic organization, GLAAD, during the Super Bowl. This is the same group that heralded the decision of the Dodgers to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a viciously anti-Catholic group.

Goodell’s phoniness is matched only by his tolerance for anti-Catholicism.

OUR PAMPERED ELITES

William A. Donohue

When I did the chapter on transgenderism for my upcoming book, Cultural Meltdown, I was struck by the fact that blacks are the least likely to believe in the fiction that the sexes are interchangeable. The biggest dopes are white people. Not just any white persons—those with post-graduate degrees are the dumbest.

Why are white well-educated people so stupid? To begin with, the ability to stay in school is not a good index of how bright someone is. Some of the brightest people I have ever met never went to college, and some of the biggest air heads I have ever met are college professors. This explains why I was not surprised to learn that those with post-graduate degrees are the most likely to believe that we can change our sex.

Does education corrupt? Depending on the course of study, and who the professors are, it may. For example, it can corrupt our cognitive faculties when we put common sense aside and allow ideology to run riot. Add to this the tendency of those with alphabets after their name to look down on the masses—it gives them a mantle of moral superiority—and the scene is set to ride off a cliff. Here’s a real-life example.

A recent Rasmussen poll asked respondents if they agreed with Disney official Karey Burke when she bragged how good it is for the company to have “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters.” Those who were the most likely to say this is appropriate for children under 12 were those in the highest income bracket—earning more than $200,000 a year. They are among the most “well educated” in the country, having graduated from elite schools.

Are the rich morally corrupt? Some are. To be specific, they are more likely to be secularists, and this matters greatly: their distrust in God allows them to put their trust in themselves. And given their insular existence—they love gated communities, chauffeurs, and their own security—they can rest assured knowing that whatever the masses believe in is probably wrong.

Rich well-schooled young people have dominated the domestic news lately. From Berkeley to Columbia, they rioted, vandalized, burned American flags, camped out on campus property, attacked Jews, barricaded themselves in college offices, blocked traffic, assaulted the police and cheered for Hamas. According to the NYPD, most of those arrested at Columbia were students.

No one doubts, however, that outsiders played a key role, especially in organizing and strategizing how to win. Where did they get their money and training? From well-schooled rich people, of course.

It was hardly a shocker to learn that George Soros was involved. He loves to create anarchy, and uses his Open Society Foundations to great effect. David Rockefeller is another big player. Susan and Nick Pritzker are awash with left-wing money (Nick is the uncle of J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire governor of Illinois).

One of the most generous donors to left-wing causes is the Tides Foundation. According to Capital Research Center, which does yeoman work tracking how the rich undermine America, “If the Left does it, Tides funds it.” It is one of the masters of “dark money,” funds that are hard to trace. It specializes in “pass-through funding,” a mechanism that shuffles money to communist-inspired organizations such as the Working Family Party.

Not only has Soros lavishly funded Tides, so has the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation and K. Kellogg Foundation.

The Tides Foundation managed to grease two of the most pro-Hamas organizations responsible for the campus riots, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow. Another source of money for this crusade is Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s behemoth financial organization.
Here’s how the game is played.

Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund funnels money to The People’s Forum, a radical left-wing entity with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. It is backed by American businessman Neville Roy Singham. He uses Goldman Sachs’ charity arm as a pass-through to The People’s Forum. Though Goldman Sachs maintains it has no direct ties to this group, in a circuitous way it does.

Singham is a filthy rich socialist whose father was Sri Lankan and mother was Cuban. He is proud that The People’s Forum is “a movement incubator” of extremist causes.

The protesting students on our campuses have much in common with their well-heeled donors. The rich live a secure pristine lifestyle, unaffected by the consequences of their ideas. Meanwhile, their student stooges take over university buildings with impunity, having food delivered to them by Uber drivers.

All of them have much in common with Mao (Singham adores him). The Chinese monster may have identified with the oppressed, but in reality he managed to kill 77 million of them. He also lived large—he had 50 villas to live in.

The elites live a pampered existence. What they learned, and what they are teaching, in the colleges and universities is more often than not subversive of the very institutions they govern. They are as vindictive as they are irrational.

BIDEN AND TRUMP ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Bill Donohue

In 1952, Congress designated the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer; this year it fell on May 2. Predictably, every president since has said something positive about religion on this day. To judge their sincerity, however, we need to look at the policies they initiated that touch on religious liberty.

The National Day of Prayer was meant to be a day when Americans “may turn to God in prayer and meditation.” When Trump gave his Proclamation marking this day on May 4, 2017, he mentioned God four times. When Biden first addressed this day on May 6, 2021, he never mentioned God.

This may seem like small pickings, but in fact it is suggestive of the religious liberty policies that each man issued. For example, we compared Trump’s religious liberty initiatives to the ones promoted by Biden. To read the entire report on this issue, click here.

In his four years as president, Trump addressed religious liberty issues 117 times. From the beginning of his presidency in January 2021 to May 1, 2024, Biden addressed these matters 31 times.

Quantitative data are important, and on this score, Trump wins easily: 117-31. But qualitative analysis is also important: the content of the religious issues that they addressed matters greatly.

The Biden administration’s idea of religious liberty centers heavily on discrimination. Within this area of concern, much attention is given to instances of religious discrimination against minority religions. For example, Muslims, Sikhs, Tribal Nations, Buddhists, and Hindus are given more attention than offenses against pro-life Christians and attacks on Christian-run crisis pregnancy centers.

In many cases, religious liberty is not even a key element in the Biden administration’s outreach to religious groups: transportation, mental health, nutritious food, drug abuse, suicide prevention, greeting refugee newcomers, “climate smart agriculture,” internet service—these and related matters—occupy the centerpiece of their concern.

One of the more striking aspects of the religious liberty issues pursued by the Biden team is their promulgation of new regulations aimed at curtailing the religious liberty protections afforded by the Trump administration. For instance, with regards to federally funded social services, Trump sought to make it easier for faith-based providers to compete for federal grants. Biden is making it harder.

The welfare reform law of 1996 that President Bill Clinton signed was the first presidential attempt to include faith-based social service organizations in federally funded initiatives. But it was President George W. Bush who institutionalized this effort. He launched the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

President Barack Obama did not end these faith-based programs but he neutered them so badly—secularizing them—that in 2010 I issued a news release titled, “Time To Close Faith-Based Programs.” In 2011, my statement said, “Shut Down Faith-Based Programs.”

In 2021, the Biden team said that the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships would not “favor religious over secular organizations.” That was a polite way of saying that secular social service organizations would continue to be awarded preferential treatment, thus undercutting the raison d’etre of faith-based programs.

Since that time, Biden regulations have sought to ensure that faith-based programs will not be used for “explicitly religious purposes.” This beckons the state to police these initiatives, looking to see how “religious” they are, thus creating major First Amendment problems.

The Biden administration also allows a beneficiary to raise religious objections if he feels uncomfortable with the operations of the program. This allows people of one faith who are seeking assistance from a provider of another faith to checkmate the provider’s religious prerogatives. In other words, the mere presence of a religious symbol in a faith-based facility is sufficient grounds to nix it.

In essence, Biden’s idea of faith-based programs is to gut their religious component, in effect secularizing them the way Obama did.

Trump expanded religious liberty—he did not contract it. Here are examples selected from ten different issues (some overlapping is unavoidable).

Religious Liberty: In 2017, Trump signed an Executive Order promoting free speech and religious liberty. The order made religious liberty an administrative priority and required all federal agencies to take action to protect it.

Faith-Based Initiatives: On May 8, 2018, Trump signed an Executive Order establishing a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative. The order directed agencies that didn’t already have such an operation to start one.

In 2020, nine federal agencies proposed rules leveling the playing field for faith-based organizations wishing to participate in grant programs or become a contractor. The rules eliminated two requirements placed on faith-based organizations that were not placed on secular organizations. The rules were finalized on December 19, 2020.

In 2020, the Trump administration announced that Covid relief legislation (the CARES Act) must include churches and religious non-profits in the Paycheck Protection Program. Thus did Trump ensure that these religious entities would not be discriminated against in receiving financial assistance due to pandemic restrictions.

Conscience Rights: On January 18, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched a new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). This new unit was established to enforce federal laws that protect conscience rights and religious freedom.

The next day, conscience rights were expanded again when HHS proposed a regulation implementing 25 laws that protect pro-life healthcare entities against discrimination by federal agencies—or state or local governments receiving federal funds. The issue in question was occasioned by attempts to force healthcare workers to participate in abortion, sterilization, and other morally objectionable procedures. The proposal was finalized in 2019.

Abortion: The HHS OCR issued a notice of violation to the University of Vermont Medical Center for forcing a nurse to participate in an abortion despite a conscience objection.

On January 24, 2020, Trump became the first sitting president to give remarks in person at the annual March for Life in Washington, D.C.

In 2020, Trump signed an Executive Order that reinforced existing protections for children born prematurely, with disabilities, or in medical distress, including infants who survive an abortion.

Education: In 2020, guidelines were issued ensuring that prayer in schools is properly protected and not unconstitutionally prohibited or curtailed.

HHS Mandate: In 2017, HHS issued two regulations to deal with Obama’s “HHS Contraceptive Mandate” that violated conscience and religious liberty. The new norms exempted organizations with moral or religious objections to purchasing insurance that includes coverage of contraceptives and abortion-causing drugs and devices.

In 2020, the Trump team celebrated the win in the Supreme Court upholding the right of the Little Sisters of the Poor not to buy contraceptive and abortion services.

Foster Care: In 2019, HHS issued a rule removing burdensome requirements that all grantees, including faith-based ones, must accept same-sex marriages and profess gender identity as valid in order to be eligible to participate in grant programs. This included adoption and foster care facilities; some were previously shut down because of these draconian measures. The rules were finalized in 2021.

Gays: In 2017, the Trump administration filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court defending the religious liberty of a baker who had been sued after he refused to inscribe a congratulatory message on a wedding cake for two homosexuals.

Transgenderism: In 2017, Trump rescinded Obama’s dictum that required public schools to allow students who identify as transgender to use the bathrooms and showers of their choice, meaning boys could shower with girls.

International Issues: In 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a new global initiative, the International Religious Freedom Alliance. It was meant to provide a way for like-minded countries to work together to advance religious freedom.

On January 19, 2021, the last religious liberty issue addressed by Trump was to declare that China had committed genocide and crimes against humanity in its treatment of Uyghur Muslims.

The Republicans and Democrats used to be on opposite sides on these issues.

When it came to an issue like abortion, the Democrats in the 1960s were mostly opposed. It was the Republicans, led by the Rockefellers, who championed the abortion cause.

In the 1970s, Catholics were pushed out of senior posts in the Democratic Party. Some moved to the Republican Party, some chose to be independent, and many felt homeless. By the time Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the Democrats were the party of abortion and the Republicans took up the pro-life cause. In short, the 1970s was the decade when the parties flipped sides on religious liberty and abortion.

Since the 1980s, the leadership in the Democratic Party has become increasingly intolerant of religious liberty. Thoroughly secularized, their passion for abortion rights is off-the-charts.

No one seriously believes that Trump is a man of deep faith. But his policies on religious liberty are a model of excellence. Biden, on the other hand, tries hard to convince the public that he is a “devout Catholic” yet his religious liberty rulings are unimpressive, and in some cases are subversive of this First Amendment right.

Four months after Biden assumed office in January 2021, his executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships met with leaders of six secular organizations, most of which had expressed virulent anti-Catholic statements for many years. Freedom From Religion Foundation, the American Humanist Association, American Atheists, Center for Inquiry, Ex-Muslims of North America and the Secular Coalition for America.

All of them are militantly secular and most are quite open about their contempt for religious liberty.

It would be one thing if White House staffers in domestic policy invited these representatives to discuss their concerns. But when an office of the administration that is expressly charged with promoting religious liberty extends the invitation, it would be like the Department of Education inviting the Flat Earth Society to engage them in conversation.

As president of the Catholic League, I was invited to meet with representatives of the Clinton administration in the 1990s. This was after I got a call from a White House staffer who said he did not like what he was reading in Catalyst.

When George W. Bush was elected, I, along with a few other Catholics, was invited to meet with him in the White House. I even flew on Air Force One with Bush to Notre Dame when he gave the Commencement Address in 2001.

I never met with Obama, but I did interact with those under him, specifically with regards to an IRS inquiry that sought to intimidate the Catholic League. It failed miserably. Trump wrote a few nice things about me when he was campaigning, but I was not invited to meet with him. No one from the Biden administration has contacted me.

We are positioned right where we should be: we don’t endorse candidates but we do address issues of interest to Catholics. It’s going to be a rollicking summer and fall with the conventions and the election. Stay tuned.