Bill Donohue

The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC Europe) annually collects data on the state of religious liberty. Its latest report garnered media coverage on both sides of the Atlantic, but most of it was simply a tally of offenses committed against Christians; the motives of the perpetrators were given scant coverage. Had they probed more deeply, they would have reported on the oversized role played by militant secularists.

Given that most of the major media outlets in North America and Europe are left-of-center, this outcome is not surprising. It seems clear that this was less an oversight than a calculated decision.

In the nearly 15 years that OIDAC Europe has been documenting anti-Christian hate crimes, there has been a steady increase in the number of incidents; they range from vandalism to murder. The researchers found  there were 2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes in 35 European countries last year, including 232 personal attacks on Christians. France, the United Kingdom and Germany posted the worst records.

Who’s mostly responsible? The 2024 Report says most of the attacks were done by (a) radical Islamists (b) those who were anti-religious and (c) those who identify with the radical left. The latter two categories combine for the large share of the offenses, and although the Report does not say so explicitly, those two demographic groups are representative of militant secularists.

A review of the types of offenses detailed by the Report validates this conclusion. Radical Muslims are not the biggest threat to religious liberty in Europe; it is left-wing radicals who harbor an animus against Christianity. It should be mentioned that much the same kind of persecution is taking place in Canada and in the United States.

For example, those who follow traditional Christian teachings were discriminated against by losing their jobs, being subjected to unfounded investigations, the closing of bank accounts, humiliation and bullying.

“Expressing religious convictions such as ‘marriage is a union between one man and one woman,’ or ‘human life begins at conception,’” were among the reasons Christians lost their jobs. Those are the kinds of beliefs that trigger militant secularists on the left to act, not radical Islamists (they are more prone to strike out against converts to Christianity).

The Report also found that “In the context of employment, Christians who expressed traditional views, were often reported by activists, subjected to disciplinary hearings—which some described as interrogations about their personal beliefs—and subsequently dismissed.” Left-wing activists fit the bill completely.

Here’s how discrimination on the basis of traditional moral beliefs works. “Any mention of faith in a CV precludes one from an interview. My yearly assessment was lowered because I spoke of Christ.” That is precisely the type of bullying that secular activists are very good at.

Besides the workplace, traditional Christians are being targeted in the universities. “This perception seems to stem mainly from a hostile attitude towards Christianity among students from the political left and from negative preconceptions about Christians that are attributed to anyone who professes the Christian faith.” That says it all.

Some Christian haters in Europe have gone so far as to punish praying in public. They even attack those who pray silently. Christians are being interrogated by the police, fined and prosecuted if they pray outside an abortion clinic.

Adam Smith-Connor is an army veteran and father. He was found guilty in October 2024 by a British court after “praying silently in his own mind in a public area in a so-called ‘buffer zone,’ because at one point his head was seen slightly bowed and his hands were clasped.” That was it. In Northern Ireland a woman who was caught peacefully praying by the roadside now faces up to six months in prison if found guilty.

In May, another person who was simply standing on a public street corner in a “buffer zone” in Birmingham was asked by the police, “Are you here to pray for the lives of unborn children?” By the way, these “buffer zones” include private homes: it is against the law in Scotland for private home owners to display pro-life signs if they can be seen within 200 meters of the premises.

This is the kind of thing we would expect from the dictators in North Korea, not democratically elected officials in Europe.

Transgenderism is all the rage in Europe. They are now banning teachers in the U.K. for “misgendering” a transgender pupil, meaning they are punishing teachers for calling a boy a boy and a girl a girl even when the boys and girls falsely claim that they are of the opposite sex.

In Switzerland, the government took a couple’s 16-year-old daughter from her parents and placed her in a state home because the parents objected to her “gender transition.”

This is the mark of totalitarians, and it is not radical Islamists who are doing it. It is the work of militant left-wing secularists who hate Christianity.

They are locking up the wrong people in Europe.

Bill Donohue

Today, the Catholic League erected a life-size nativity scene in Central Park. It is located on 59th St. and 5th Avenue, at the Grand Army Plaza, not far from the Plaza Hotel. We received a permit from the New York City Parks Department, as we have for decades.

We display our manger scene to let New Yorkers, and tourists, know that the Christmas season begins with Jesus—all the other celebrations that accompany Christmas are important, but they mean nothing without acknowledging the historical truth of the birth of the Prince of Peace.

We hope that New Yorkers, and those visiting New York City this Christmas season, will stop by and see the Catholic League’s nativity scene in Central Park. It will be up until January 6, 2025.

Bill Donohue

The National Basketball Association touts its commitment to social justice, emphasizing its opposition to racial discrimination. It’s also opposed to anything that might upset the LGBTQ crowd. But when it comes to religious minorities being persecuted, tortured, and subjected to cultural genocide in China, it takes the side of the barbarians.

After the Charlotte Hornets recently defeated the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-114, Hornets star LaMelo Ball was asked how his team managed to contain Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo. “We loaded up—no homo.” The NBA front office went ballistic and fined him $100,000. But their interest in social justice clearly does not extend to truly serious cases of injustice.

In fact, the NBA has an incestuous relationship with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It will never do anything to cross these totalitarian thugs. That’s because China’s share of the NBA’s revenue is in the double digits, and may reach 20 percent by the end of this decade. Money talks, morality walks.

It has been well reported that the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, are used as slave laborers in China, most prominently by Nike, the giant athletic company. What has received far less attention is the degree to which the CCP persecutes Christians, and not just laborers.

Dr. Bob Fu is president of ChinaAid. Last December he gave his assessment of conditions in China. “Without exaggeration, the persecution against the Christians and other religious minorities has really reached the worst level we have not seen in 40 years since the Cultural Revolution…. For the first time, we have seen the Communist Party is cracking down on the Church across the board; literally declared a war against Christianity.”

Aid to Church in Need agrees. “Churches are monitored and sometimes forcibly closed. Plus, it is illegal for anyone under 18 to attend Church services. Many Christians have been arrested and sentenced for unclear reasons.”

International Christian Concern specializes in tracking Christian persecution globally. One of the most despicable tactics used by the CCP is sinicization [Sino means China-related] which means that cultural institutions must put aside their norms and values and adopt the thinking of the Party. This is nothing less than cultural genocide, an attempt to wipe out allegiances to every person and institution unaffiliated with the CCP.

Applied to Christians, this means that all must bow to the CCP, not God. Thus, Christians are told to take down crosses and pictures of Jesus in their homes and replace them with communist symbols and pictures of Xi Jinping, the head of the CCP. If they don’t cooperate, they risk losing state benefits, if not more.

The NBA knows this to be true but doesn’t care. It’s all about the cash.

One brave soul who spoke out against this persecution is Daryl Morey. In 2019, when he was the general manager of the Houston Rockets, he issued a tweet that said, “Fight For Freedom. Stand With Hong Kong.” The freedom-loving people in Hong Kong, who are terrified of the CCP taking over altogether, loved it. Who was angry? The CCP, the Houston Rockets and the NBA.

Morey got the message—shut up and fall in line. He promptly apologized to Chinese basketball fans and sponsors, saying, “I would hope that those who are upset will know that offending or misunderstanding them was not my intention.”

He had no choice. The owner of the Rockets threw Morey overboard, and Rockets player James Harden said, “We apologize. We love China.” NBA superstar LeBron James was positively condescending, saying Morey “wasn’t educated on the situation.” But at least they didn’t play both sides of the street.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver did. He said that while Morey had a right to say what he did, he emphasized that the NBA was “apologetic” over what happened. Responding to the CCP backlash, he dutifully obliged his masters by saying that although the Party cancelled an event with the Brooklyn Nets, the NBA would still donate computers, as planned, to an education center in Shanghai.

The NBA under Silver is so corrupt that last year America First Legal petitioned the Department of Justice to require the NBA and Silver to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as agents of the CCP.

Today there is no bigger fan of the CCP in the NBA than Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai. Even though he was born in Taiwan—which the CCP plans to take over—he is determined to forge better relations with the tyrants in exchange for their goodwill, which is measured in dollars. He is chairman of Alibaba, a CCP-affiliated company.

Not surprisingly, Tsai wanted Morey fired. Worse, he defends the wholesale abuse of human rights in China, saying, “80%-90% of the population” are “very, very happy.” He doesn’t have the guts to talk to Catholics living under this nightmare regime.

The elites who run the NBA are in it for the money, and the money alone. They are infinitely more concerned about a gay slur than they are in wholesale violations of elementary human rights. Their venality is stunning.

Contact Adam Silver: adam@nba.com

Bill Donohue

In this post-election season, when half the country is celebrating and the other half is crying, we all need to chill out a bit. So enjoy reading this post. It’s our Thanksgiving treat.

In this postmodern world, where subjectivism rules, the line between art and junk has become increasingly blurred. The latest iteration was the conceptual artwork by Maurice Cattelan, “Comedian,” that sold for $6.2 million at an auction held at Sotheby’s in New York City on November 20. It consists of a banana, duct-taped to a wall.

Bidding started at $800,000 and quickly ballooned to $5.2 million; the buyer had to pay another $1 million in fees to Sotheby’s. The buyer, Chinese-born Justin Sun, said, “I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.” The banana was bought at a fruit stand earlier in the day for 35 cents.

Got to give it to Cattelan—he knows how to attract attention.

In 2001, at a Christie’s auction, Cattelan’s “The Ninth Hour” was sold. The installation depicted Pope John Paul II being crushed by a meteorite while clutching his crozier. At the time, I said, it “strikes us as being bizarre, but not necessarily anti-Catholic.” Cattelan was disappointed with the lack of reaction to his work, which he confessed was a “little” anti-Catholic.

Pope Francis likes Cattelan’s work. Last March Cattelan was invited to create a large outdoor installation for the Vatican’s Venice Biennale Pavilion; it was displayed at the Giudecca Women’s Prison. The pope attended the exhibition. There were no bananas in sight.

It’s a good thing Cattelan taped the banana to the wall; otherwise, it might have been thrown in the garbage.

Last month two beer cans were displayed in a Dutch museum. This masterpiece, which was created in 1988 by Alexandre Lavet, was titled, “All the Good Times We Spent Together.” What made it so special, the museum’s director said, is that the beer cans were displayed on top of a glass elevator. The elevator mechanic on duty mistakenly threw them in the garbage.

This is not unusual in the art world.

British artist Damien Hirst had his magnum opus—candy wrappers, newspapers, coffee cups, ashtrays and beer bottles—tossed in the garbage in a London gallery in 2001. Three years later at the Tate museum in Britain, the brilliant work of German artist Gustav Metzger, which consisted of a bag of rubbish, was given the heave-ho by janitors. In 2015, empty champagne bottles, confetti and cigarette butts—the work of two genius women artists—wound up in the trash after being displayed in an Italian museum.

None of these artists are in the same league with the banana man. But even if the pope is one of his fans, Cattelan still has his critics.

In 2011, the New York Times said, “It may be time for him to quit.” I courageously defended him, noting that “Last year he installed a solid-gold toilet in a Guggenheim restroom. If he has another one left over, maybe he’ll gift it the Catholic League.” But I felt obliged to note that “we have union labor in the building so unfortunately they won’t allow him to install it.”

“Yes, we have no bananas” at the Catholic League. However, reading about this junk clearly makes us go bananas.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bill Donohue

Little kids think in terms of good guys and bad guys, and that is quite normal. But when adults think this way about history, it is sophomoric, if not dangerous.

Hardly a Thanksgiving goes by, especially in recent years, without some left-wing sage informing us how rotten the history of Thanksgiving is. They divide the world the way the kids do—good guys and bad guys—and, of course, the good guys are the Indians and the bad guys are the Europeans. Drunk with ideology, they are impervious to reason, so deep is their hatred of the West, and of the United States, in particular.

Here’s a sample of the headlines taken from Thanksgiving bashers in the last few years:

“Thanksgiving: Why Some Push Back Against the Holiday”

“The Truth About Thanksgiving: The Indigenous Fight Against Erasure”

“The History of Thanksgiving from the Native American Perspective”

“Everything You Learned About Thanksgiving Is Wrong”

“Rethinking Thanksgiving Celebrations: Native Perspectives”

“Thanksgiving: Why Do Some Americans Not Celebrate It?”

“The Real History of Thanksgiving Can Be Painful For Many”

“What is the History of Thanksgiving? Why is it Controversial?”

“Why the Thanksgiving Myth Persists, According to Science”

“The History and Controversy of Thanksgiving”

“Should America Keep Celebrating Thanksgiving?”

“Why Is Thanksgiving Controversial?”

“The Horrible History of Thanksgiving”

“What is the Real History of Thanksgiving?”

“The Real History of Thanksgiving in America”

Most of these articles bash Thanksgiving, offering a parade of alleged horribles committed by the white man against the red man. The former are demonic; the latter are angelic.

The authors set themselves up as the ultimate fact checkers, dispelling what they contend are myths. In reality, they are frauds—boilerplate ideologues who delight in thinking they are smarter than the rest of us. They see us as “garbage” or “deplorables,” the terms used by Biden and Hillary to describe their foes.

The good news is that most of these articles were published in left-wing media outlets, which means few read them, and only the last one was released this year. That’s a sign that the woke crowd knows they are on the defensive these days. The bad news is that the last one on the list, which was published this year, appeared in the pages of Reader’s Digest.

While “The Real History of Thanksgiving in America” does not condemn America, it has a lordly tone to it. Readers are told by the author, Charlotte Hilton Andersen, that what they learned in school about Thanksgiving was wrong, contending that “this rosy picture of modern celebrations leaves out the most of the real history of Thanksgiving (bold in the original).”

She informs us that “Yes, you can still settle down with family to give thanks.” That was so sweet of her. She hastens to add—you just knew it was coming—“But it’s important to know what you are celebrating and unlearn some long-held myths.” Her arrogance is stunning.

So who is this sage? Is Andersen an historian? No. Is she a social scientist? No. She is a journalist who writes mostly about etiquette. Oh, yes, she is also a fitness instructor.

We don’t need to get a tutorial by some discontented, and badly educated, savant to enjoy Thanksgiving. Nor do we need their permission to do so.

So have a family toast this Thanksgiving, being thankful to God that we live in such a free and prosperous country.

Bill Donohue

As we have previously pointed out, the Biden-Harris administration is the most anti-Catholic in American history. Although their days are numbered, they are still trying to stick it to Catholics.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a proposed regulation last month that, if it is approved, would discriminate against Catholic entities across the nation. In order to receive a HHS contract, every entity would have to agree not to discriminate on the basis of gender identity, among other demographic categories. There are no religious exemptions afforded.

The Catholic Church stands firm on this issue: gender ideology, the idea that sex is not rooted in nature and is fluid, is anti-science, as well as against Church teachings on sexuality. Therefore, it is unconscionable to force Catholic agencies to violate their tenets as a condition of receiving a HHS contract. This would mean, among other things, that Catholic hospitals would be forced to perform sex-reassignment surgery.

The public has until December 2 to weigh in on this issue. The bishops already have. We need to do so now.

We realize that leaving a comment is cumbersome—we can do nothing about it—but we have done our best to make it as easy as possible. Please take the time to sound off. Thanks.

To Leave a Comment on the HHS Rule Change:
(For a PDF version of instructions, click here.)

1. To leave a public comment go to: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/10/03/2024-17095/hhs-acquisition-regulation-regulatory-review

2. This will take you to the page for the proposed rule “HHS Acquisition Regulation: Regulatory Review.”

3. On the top right, just under the rule name, click the green box with “SUBMIT A PUBLIC COMMENT” written in white.

4. This will open a small panel where you can type your comment.

5. In the large white box next to “Comment” with the gold asterisk, you may type your comment.
a. Click inside the white box and begin typing
b. This section is mandatory

6. Optionally, if you would prefer to upload a file, click the small green box with “+Add a file” written in white just below the large white box.

7. You may leave the email blank.

8. Next, you will have to complete the “Tell us about yourself! I am…” section.
a. You will have an option of selecting “An Individual,” “An Organization,” or “Anonymous”
          I. To select your category, just click the circle below your choice
b. If you chose to submit as “An Individual,” you will have to leave your first name and last name (the other fields are optional)
c. If you choose to submit as “Anonymous,” you can jump to the end

9. Finally, click the box next to “I read and understand the statement above,” and click submit comment.

Bill Donohue

This letter is in response to an anti-Christian incident that took place last month at the University of Virginia.

November 20, 2024

Ms. Nicole Thompson
Senior Compliance Director for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights
University of Virginia
Office for Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights
O’Neil Hall
P.O. Box 400219
445 Rugby Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903

Dear Compliance Director Thompson:

I recently learned that you were taken aback when you fielded a complaint from a student who reacted with disdain to a hat worn by UVA student Simon Goldstein. The hat was adorned with the inscription, “Make America Christian Again.” But your concern was not directed at the complaining student—it was directed at Goldstein. This is astonishing.

From reports I have read, you took the opportunity to ask Goldstein why he bought the hat and why he chose to wear it. More disturbing, you asked him if he could understand why some might “perceive that message negatively, and whether he had plans to make any changes.” While no disciplinary action was taken, you clearly created a chilling effect on this student’s freedom of expression and freedom of religion.

If a student objected to someone wearing a t-shirt with a picture of
Martin Luther King on it, would it not be obvious that the person in need of counseling is the complainant? And would not the appropriate response be to ask that the student exhibit more tolerance to messages that he finds disagreeable? After all, in neither instance are we talking about patently obscene messages.

In First Amendment law this is called the “heckler’s veto.” If those who heckle speakers succeed in silencing those they disagree with, they have effectively vetoed that person’s right to free speech.

Christian students on our nation’s campuses are increasingly reluctant to express their beliefs, so intolerant are those who find their convictions offensive. This has to end. They are not second-class citizens.

One final comment. Did you ever ask the complaining student to practice greater tolerance for speech he finds disagreeable?

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

cc: Emily Springston, Associate Vice President EOCR
Jenn Kabbany, College Fix

Contact Nicole Thompson: nm5j@virginia.edu 

Bill Donohue

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been chosen by president-elect Donald Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). From a Catholic perspective, there are serious problems with that choice.

First and foremost is Kennedy’s position on abortion. It might be more accurate to say his positions on abortion. For most of his career he has been a staunch supporter of abortion-on-demand, but now he says he favors some restrictions.

Kennedy didn’t evolve over the years on this issue. He did so recently when it became apparent that if Trump were to win the election he may land some post in the administration. Being pro-abortion, he obviously reasoned, could be a real problem, especially if he were up for the HHS job.

When Kennedy was asked by former ESPN commentator, Sage Steele, whether there should be any limits on abortion, he said no. “Even if it is full term…I don’t think it’s ever OK…I think we have to leave it with the woman rather than the state.” He didn’t say that ten years ago. He said it in May of this year.

It gets worse. Literally three days after the Steele interview, Kennedy said abortion should be permitted only before viability.

There are other issues that should give Catholics pause. In December  2023 he told political commentator Patrick Bet-David that he did not support a ban on “gender affirming” care for minors. Why? Because he did not “know enough about it to say that it should be completely illegal,” and he needed “to look at the data” before making a decision.

But guess what? In May he decided he supported a ban on minors receiving “gender affirming” care.

Kennedy not only wants to make marijuana legal nationwide, he wants to legalize some psychedelics. That would presumably include psilocybin (magic mushrooms), the most popular psychedelic in the nation. He believes that there are significant benefits to psychedelics that have not been uncovered because the medical establishment has gone out of its way to prevent that research.

Here’s what we know about magic mushrooms. They can cause frightening hallucinations, distorted thinking, impaired concentration, unusual body sensations, nausea and vomiting, paranoia, confusion and emotions ranging from bliss to terror.

The fundamental problem with Kennedy is that he lacks a coherent understanding of these issues. He has no overriding philosophical vision.

He spent his entire life defending abortion-without-limits, and had no problem justifying puberty blockers, chemical castration and mutilating the genitals of disturbed minors—until he experienced his grand epiphany in May. That must have been quite a month for him. And now he thinks we need to make it easier for Americans to hallucinate.

This is Robert F. Kennedy’s vision of health and human services. It’s not ours.

Bill Donohue

The Ford Foundation, located in New York City, is funding left-wing groups that are protesting attempts to clean up a non-white neighborhood in Queens that has been overrun by violent thugs, drug dealers, prostitutes and sex traffickers.

Which raises the question: Are those who run the Ford Foundation racists? They certainly appear to be. Without doubt, they have taken the side of those who are determined to punish hard-working minority men and women; they are also endangering children. Why would the members of the ruling class want to do that?

The community being ransacked is Jackson Heights, especially along Roosevelt Avenue, the main road.

A local writer put it this way. “For years, sex trafficking and solicitation, illegal vending, sanitation and other issues on Roosevelt—a road known for its cultural significance and diversity as well as its problems—has been top of mind for locals and selected officials.” Crime is exploding.

Hiram Monserrate, a former New York City Councilman, sums it up nicely. “There are more brothels than there are bodegas in this community. We have an active 24-hour brothel across the street from two elementary schools. Our kids are seeing this.”

An Hispanic woman, whose grandson and her teenaged kids go to school in the neighborhood, recently complained to the media that they have to walk by prostitutes soliciting outside of stores. “You literally have to shield their eyes because the open urination is just impossible. And to explain to my little grandson why there’s women here shaking and, you know, doing all that stuff.”

In response, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced “Operation Restore Roosevelt.” It is focused on quality-of-life concerns. The NYPD interim commissioner said the police “will be working to reduce retail theft and the sale of stolen goods. Additionally, removing illegal, unlicensed vendors and illegal vehicles in the surrounding area, which is important to all of you, and also eliminating prostitution.”

Over 90 percent of the people who live in Jackson Heights are non-white; it is disproportionately Hispanic. They are happy to note that finally there is an attempt to bring normalcy to their neighborhood. It was their protests that ignited officials to act. But now they are being opposed by counterdemonstrators who object to cleaning up the area!

The two major groups who want to continue trashing Jackson Heights are Gays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society (GLITS) and Make the Road New York. Both are funded by the Ford Foundation.

The founder and director of GLITS is Ceyenne Doroshow. “For decades,” he says, “sex workers have been surviving, demanding respect and good healthcare, and still yet we are still being criminalized. We urge investment in our communities, not more criminalization in our communities.”

In other words, the minorities who live there be damned—he wants prostitution to reign supreme, free from law enforcement. It’s all about what these sexually deranged activists want.

Doroshow is also an anti-Catholic bigot. Earlier this year, he arranged for his sick followers to show up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral during a funeral service to honor one of their ilk, Cecilia Gentili. Gentili was a man who falsely claimed to be a woman. He was an illegal alien, a drug addict, a prostitute, a trans activist and an atheist.

At the service, many of Doroshow’s fans dressed as hookers, danced in the aisles, and sang “Ave Cecilia” when “Ave Maria” was sung. They shouted, “St. Cecilia, Mother of All Whores.”

Maxima Rodas is an activist who works for Make the Road Again. She objects to Mayor Adams’ policies aimed at driving out the derelicts and criminals. “This so-called quality of life operation targets sex workers, street vendors and migrant communities who live in this neighborhood. This is a racist and anti-immigrant attack from our communities.”

Mayor Adams has said that “Roosevelt Avenue is one of the most diverse avenues in our city.” Ironically, the Ford Foundation—which is funding this bedlam—brags that “Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are core to our mission and to who we are as a foundation.” Perversely, their idea of diversity includes destroying the diversity that Adams noted.

The Ford Foundation has long been corrupt. It advertises on its website that Henry Ford II assumed the foundation’s leadership after his father and grandfather passed away. What it doesn’t say is that he quit in 1976 because it had been turned into a radical anti-capitalist, left-wing beast.

Darren Walker is the black homosexual president of the Ford Foundation. He has obviously turned on minorities in favor of greasing LGBTQ racists who want to destroy Jackson Heights. We will be contacting him, as well as all the other officials associated with the organization. The elites really do hate the masses.

Contact: d.walker@fordfoundation.org

Bill Donohue

They’ve started already. One week after the election and the Christian bashers are foaming at the mouth over president-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense and Mike Huckabee to be U.S. Ambassador to Israel.

Hegseth is a strong Christian who literally wears his religion on his body (he has more than a dozen tattoos emblazoned on his right arm and chest). To be sure, that is bizarre, but that is not what his critics are upset about. They don’t like what the tattoos represent—Christianity.

If he had metal spikes hanging from his nose, or had tattoos honoring Lucifer on his neck, that would be fine. But once Jesus is brought into the mix, that’s a call to arms. Indeed, the Christian bashers are explicitly calling him out for wanting a call to arms—they are saying he wants to bring back the Crusades.

The Jerusalem Cross on Hegseth’s chest is driving them mad. The left-wing folks at the Daily Beast informed their fans that it is “a 13th century Crusades symbol, over his right bicep.” They are twice wrong. They are off by 200 hundred years (it dates back to the 11th century, 1099 to be exact) and it is located on his chest, not his right arm.

After the overthrow of the Crusader state in 1291, the Jerusalem Cross remained a symbol of Jerusalem for Christians, and is still popular today among Catholic organizations, none of which are extremist.

Another reminder of the Crusades is the Latin phrase, “Deus Vult,” which means “God wills it”: it is on Hegseth’s right bicep. It is true that it was a rallying cry during the First Crusade. So what?

A human rights left-wing activist group from the U.K., Action on Armed Violence, is also exercised about all the Crusader symbols. It says “Deus Vult” was invoked to “justify acts of religious violence.” The Bulwark, a publication by the angry never-Trumper Bill Kristol, says these Crusader images are “disturbing.”

What is really disturbing is their ignorance. The Crusades were a defensive reaction to Muslim aggression. Princeton’s Bernard Lewis, one of the world’s most noted historians, says, “The Crusade was a delayed response to the jihad, the holy war for Islam, and its purpose was to recover by war what had been lost by war—to free the holy places of Christendom and open them once again, without impediment, to Christian pilgrimage.”

Also, the Crusaders were volunteers, not papal conscripts. Just as important, according to St. Louis University professor Thomas F. Madden, who has written extensively on this subject, “All the Crusades met the criteria for just wars.”

Action on Armed Violence and the Bulwark slam Hegseth for his ties to Christian nationalism. As I recently pointed out, this is one of the greatest anti-Christian smear jobs of our day. Digging deep, any researcher worth his salt knows how vacuous these charges are.

Examples of “Christian nationalism” include saying in public, “Blessed is the nation whose God is Lord.” That happens to be Psalm 33:12. Those who say that Trump “loves the United States of America. He loves God,” are cited as examples of this bogeyman. Singing “God Bless America” is another indicator of Christian fanaticism.

Mike Huckabee is an Evangelical Christian who is a rock-solid supporter of Israel. But according to John Hudson at the Washington Post that is a problem. He is worried that people like Huckabee, who believe that in the covenant that God made to Abraham about Israel, “have turned that belief into a right-wing brand of Zionism.”

Similarly, the militants at J Street have lashed out at Huckabee for his “extremist views.” Louis Moreno, a former U.S. Ambassador who knows Huckabee, calls him an “utter nut case.” Why? Because the former Arkansas governor believes in the biblical account of the end of times. If he believed the fiction that the sexes are interchangeable, that would be considered reasonable.

Vanity Fair wins the prize for the most irresponsible accusation against Huckabee. After it posts a short critical account of Trump’s nominee, it offers what it calls a Fun Fact. “Huckabee is a Christian Zionist; Christian Zionists believe ‘Muslims, Jews, and non-Christians are ultimately damned.’”

Where did that incendiary comment come from? Apparently from the website of Political Research Associates, a left-wing outlet. It has a post, “101 Christian Zionists,” with lots of statements and links to its sources. On p. 2 it lists five beliefs that it attributes to Christian Zionists, including the one mentioned by Vanity Fair. But unlike most of the other beliefs it cites, this one is not linked to any source, nor is it in quotes. In other words, it was made up by Political Research Associates and Vanity Fair cited it as if it were authoritative.

Radicals hate Pete Hegseth because he is a committed Christian and a patriotic American. They hate Mike Huckabee because he is a committed Christian who defends Israel. It’s really not all that complicated.