No one has done a better job addressing modern-day child abuse than Sen. Josh Hawley. Bill Donohue explains why more needs to be done.

 February 24, 2025

Hon. Josh Hawley
115 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Hawley:

The bill you introduced last month, “The Jamie Reed Protecting Our Kids from Child Abuse Act,” would allow minors who were harmed by sex-transition procedures to bring lawsuits against those who participated in this abuse. This is commendable but more needs to be done.

To be specific, the role played by the medical schools, the American Medical Association and other professional associations needs to be addressed. They provide legitimacy for these acts of child abuse.

The medical watchdog, Do No Harm, reports that in a five-year period, 2019-2023, approximately 14,000 children underwent sex-change operations. There is big money in this scam—the hospitals charged nearly $120 million. They have the support of elite medical schools, the AMA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association.

Mass General is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. It has a specialized gender-affirming care unit. Surgeries include the creation of a vagina and a penis. Boston Children’s Hospital is also a teaching hospital at Harvard Medical School; it operates “the first pediatric and adolescent transgender health program in the United States.”

Other medical schools that do the same work include Johns Hopkins, Stanford Medicine, the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, the Columbia University’s Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Yale Medicine and the Duke University School of Medicine.

While all of these institutions matter, the AMA is the most influential. What it professes is alarming: “Designating sex on birth certificates as male or female, and making that information available on the public portion, perpetuates a view that sex designation is permanent and fails to recognize the medical spectrum of gender identity.”

Self-identification is no substitute for biological truisms. There are but two sexes—male and female—and no amount of chatter about “the medical spectrum of gender identity” can change this verity. Quite simply, what the AMA professes is anti-science.

Given its commitment to subjectivism, it is not surprising to learn that the AMA supports transgender persons joining the military. Regarding children, it has a policy that says “Exclusionary Bathroom Policies Harm Transgender Students.” This means that boys who claim to be girls should be free to shower with girls. It also believes that male prisoners who falsely claim to be female should be housed in women’s prisons, no matter how violent the men are.

You have done yeoman work. Please consider expanding your reach to address the damage that the AMA is doing.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

Bill Donohue

On his first day in office, President Trump issued an executive order declaring there are only “two sexes, male and female.” It says a lot about our society that this even has to be said. This same phenomenon—denying the existence of human nature and Biology 101—exists throughout western civilization. At bottom, this is a war against God. It is a war the deniers cannot win.

Those promoting the fiction that there are an endless number of sexes, which they incorrectly call genders, are overwhelmingly rich, white, liberal, secularists with postgraduate degrees. No wonder it is their children who are the most likely to call themselves something other than male or female. (For more on this, see my book, Cultural Meltdown: The Secular Roots of Our Moral Crisis.)

The latest Gallup poll shows that 9.3 percent of Americans now identify as “LGBTQ+” persons. This is in stark contrast to what the Trump administration is doing. The National Park Service recently changed the Stonewall National Museum website to only refer to lesbian, gay and bisexual, hence the designation LGB.

This upset Kathy Hochul, the Catholic governor of New York; she said it was “cruel.” No matter, transgender people have been eliminated. To be frank, they never existed (sex is binary). Also, the “Q” is redundant and the “+” is plain dumb.

Gallup tells us that 1.4 percent of Americans say they are lesbians; 2.0 claim to be gay; 5.2 percent identify as bisexual; 1.3 percent believe they are transgender; there are a few other odd categories. Among the so-called LGBTQ+ population, Gallup found that 56.3 percent identify as bisexual and 13.9 percent believe they are transgender.

Who are the most likely to claim they belong to this population? Young people, girls, Democrats, liberals, and those who live in cities or the suburbs. Why is this not surprising?

In the 12 years that Gallup has been tracking this issue, those who identify as “LGBTQ+” has tripled. This suggests that this phenomenon has everything to do with culture, not biology. To put it simply, we are witnessing the queering of America.

If anyone doubts that this is a culturally induced condition, consider that young people in California are 40 percent more likely to identify as transgender than the national average. It is not a coincidence that California is one of the most liberal states in the nation.

Transgenderism is flowering in colleges for the same reason. Liberal professors, most of whom are militant secularists, are indoctrinating their students with this mind-altering poison.

At Brown University, four in ten students (38 percent) say they are “LGBTQI+.” The “I” stands for intersex, which is another fiction. While it is true that there is a rare disorder that allows for both male and female genitalia, all of those people are intrinsically male or female—there is no third form.

Between 2010 and 2023, the gay and lesbian population increased by 26 percent, and the percentage identifying as bisexual increased by 232 percent. Those identifying as “other sexual orientations” within the so-called LGBTQ population increased by almost 800 percent.

These people are in serious need of professional help, making the parents of prospective college students wonder whether they should consider enrollment in a community college or a trade school. Why send your kid to an Ivy League school where he may come home at Thanksgiving giving thanks to his discovery that he is a girl?

Fortunately, the Trump administration is not putting up with this madness.

On February 19, The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued an official statement defining sex as an immutable biological classification of male or female. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained, “This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government. The prior administration’s policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.”

HHS defines a female to be “A person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing eggs (ova).” Accordingly, it defines woman to be “An adult human female.” (Are you listening Ketanji Brown Jackson?) A male is defined as “A person of the sex characterized by a reproductive system with the biological function of producing sperm.” Accordingly, it defines man as “An adult human male.”

This may come as a shocker to the Washington Post—it published an incredibly irresponsible piece on the same day of the HHS ruling denying that sex is binary—but to most Americans not drugged with ideology it makes perfect sense. The newspaper continues with the fiction that “Sex is widely understood to refer to a label assigned at birth,” when, in fact, it is simply recorded at birth. No one “assigns” our sex—it is determined exclusively by our father and can be detected in utero.

The queering of America serves no legitimate interest. It only serves to encourage the agenda of severely addlepated men and women, as well as those who are profiting from them either ideologically or financially.

The following letter explains the Catholic League’s interest in getting to the bottom of anti-Christian bias in the federal government.

February 19, 2025

Hon. Pamela Bondi
U.S. Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Bondi:

I am delighted that President Trump has established a Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, and that you have been appointed to head a task force on anti-Christian bias. We will do everything we can to assist you in this effort.

The Catholic League has more documentation on this issue than any organization in the nation. We are currently collecting documents for you to make it easier to access our work; we will be sharing this with you when the process is complete. Please see our website, catholicleague.org, for detailed news releases, essays and reports on anti-Christian bigotry.

It would be helpful if you could identify someone with whom we can work with in this endeavor. Please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

Bill Donohue

It is commonplace for LGBTQ activists, as well as many in the media, education and government, to complain about the high rates of violence that transgender persons experience. But with the exception of the Catholic League, virtually no one is telling the truth about this condition: the majority of the violence committed against transgender persons is committed by other transgender persons.

A recent tragic incident puts this in perspective. A 24-year-old woman who falsely considered herself to be a man, Sam Norquist, was tortured to death in upstate New York. The police decided it was not a hate crime because all five people charged with the crime are themselves transgender persons.

This is reason enough to do away with the concept of “hate crimes.” It is purely subjective. More important, we need to address the crisis in transgender violence. It is not frat boys who are beating up transgender individuals—they are doing it to themselves.

Research on this subject that we have previously cited is consistent with more recent research.

In May 2023, the Journal of Family Violence published an article co-authored by nine researchers, “Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Health Among Transgender and Gender Diverse Young Adults.” They found that the rates of psychological, physical and sexual abuse among transgender persons committed by those just like themselves is startling. They studied young adults in New York City and concluded that those who consider themselves “gender diverse,” meaning they do not consider themselves to be either male or female, experience the highest rates of violence.

A study of 3,560 transgender and gender diverse California adults was published in June 2024 by the Journal of the American Medical Association. It found that they were “significantly more likely to face physical, sexual, and intimate partner violence in the past year relative to cisgender respondents [those who accept their sexual status].” This was especially true of transgender men, meaning women who falsely identify as male.

It was reported in July 2024 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 44 percent of lesbians and 61 percent of bisexual women experienced rape, physical violence, or stalking committed by those in their same community. Also in July 2024, The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law reported that “between 30% and 50% of transgender people” are victims of violence committed by other transgender persons.

In December 2024, the Radiological Society of America published a study of 263 men who consider themselves to be female (transgender women) and compared them to women who accept their nature-given sex. It found that transgender women had eight times as many head injuries, 36 times as many facial injuries and five times as many chest injuries. Forty-two percent of the men who think they are female were violently attacked by other transgender women.

In 2025, the Human Rights Campaign, the large LGBTQ organization, updated data from 2017 and found that “More than half, or 54 percent of transgender and non-binary individuals have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetimes.” The American Journal of Public Health also published data showing how violence marks this community.

There needs to be a national discussion of this issue. We need to get to the bottom of it and find out why transgender persons, and those who think they are neither male nor female, are so violent, and why they take it out on those in their own community. We also need to stop blaming normal men and women for their violence.

Bill Donohue

Unlike most sociologists, I am not a man of the Left. Moreover, I have little respect for most of what passes as sociology today. But Durkheim was still right—it is the queen of the social sciences (properly executed).

We just lost one of the titans of American sociology, Christopher Jencks. The Harvard sociologist was not a conservative; indeed, he was a socialist and an egalitarian. But what made him special is that he was an honest scholar, one who drew his conclusions based on the data. Sadly, that makes him unique.

Jencks died on February 8 of complications traced to Alzheimer’s disease. His 1972 book, Inequality: A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America, broke new ground: he challenged the conventional wisdom on the effects that nature and nurture have on generating inequality.

Jencks, found, as did sociologist James S. Coleman before him, that what happens in the home is more important in affecting academic achievement than what happens in the school. This is not what an egalitarian wants to hear: it showed that public policy could only do so much to decrease inequality. But he did not allow his ideological predilections to conquer.

He studied people with identical IQs who were raised in similar families with nearly identical educational and social backgrounds. He found that some did well economically and others did not. Taking into consideration both hereditary and social factors, he could explain roughly one-quarter of the reasons why some were “winners” and others were “losers.” So what mattered most? Luck. This residual category—it accounts for 75 percent of all the variables—was a matter of timing, chance, and other anomalies. He called it luck.

It is important to note that Jencks never suggested that luck was more important than virtue and a strong work ethic. His point was that there is as much inequality within families as there is in society.

This should make sense to everyone. The typical family is one where some siblings do well and others do not. Yet they come from the same parents and are raised in the same household. In other words, nature and nurture are similar yet the outcomes are quite different. Being at the right place at the right time, making important connections, maturing at a late age—there are all kinds of reasons why some family members excel and others do not.

If luck accounts for the lion’s share of what makes for success, there is little that public policy can do to ameliorate inequality. This is not a plea to do nothing: it is simply a frank admission of the limits of education and social engineering.

What Jencks found needs to be heeded by today’s social scientists, educators, administrators and government officials. Too often they think they can treat human beings as if they were silly putty—shaping and reshaping our milieu to yield equality. Not only does this have little effect, it typically tramples on our dignity and freedom.

Christians understand that humans are not toys to be played with by the ruling class. Jencks found good social science reasons not to even try.

Bill Donohue

Economists often note that the stock market occasionally goes into spasms, or sudden downturns that gets everyone nervous. But, they caution, such changes are often necessary: they amount to a market correction. Cultures change as well: wild swings of the pendulum typically abet a strong reaction.

We are now witnessing a cultural correction. But it is folly to think that all of those responsible for our cultural rot have gotten the memo. In other words, the Trump effect is real, but it would be foolish to overestimate the cultural correction.

It is gratifying to learn that those responsible for woke cultural ideas are on the defensive. DEI is now being panned in places few would have thought possible a year or two ago. Critical race theory is losing support, and elites are no longer lapping up to Black Lives Matter, a thoroughly discredited flash-in-the-pan entity. Compassion for those who entered the country illegally is now shifting to compassion for the victims of migrant criminal behavior. Those who succumbed to pressure from the Biden administration and engaged in censorship now regret doing so.

A New York Times/Ipsos poll released in February found that when Americans are asked what the Democrats stand for, most of them listed abortion, LGBTQ issues and climate change. The survey also found that most people are concerned about bread and butter issues and migrants crashing our border, not the ones Democrats are excited about. In other words, the Dems are seriously out of touch with most Americans. Look for some to change their ways.

Are these changes genuine? Some are, but many are not. No matter, even unprincipled shifts that move the right way are worthy of some applause.

While it is true that many members of the ruling class—the senior decision-makers in government, corporations, the media, education, the entertainment industry, and the like—are rethinking their political preferences, many others are not. They are lying in wait. It would be more accurate to say that some elites are in retreat than it would be to conclude that they have turned over a new leaf.

The New York Times recently slung arrows at Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for saying he is putting an end to censorial Facebook policies. The esteemed “newspaper of record” said his company suffers from “a fundamental hollowness at its core,” and went on to berate him for caving into Trump’s influence. The Times was not altogether wrong. It does suggest a less than principled stance, so there is an element of hollowness to Zuckerberg’s moral compass. But at least he is not tone deaf.

Can Trump change the culture? To some extent he already has. He played a major role in putting the final nails in the DEI coffin (diversity, equity and inclusion). He has also turned the entire transgender industry upside down, putting an end to the federal role in what is surely the greatest child abuse scandal in American history. Mutilating genitals, chemical castration, puberty blockers—this is a shameful chapter in the history of the medical profession.

Trump has even scored overseas, beckoning Hamas to release the hostages. No sooner had he slapped Mexico with tariffs when our southern neighbor pledged to send 10,000 troops to seal our border. This is great news, but expectations of a glacial shift in the culture are wrongheaded.

It is true that culture affects every aspect of society, but it is also true that other sectors, such as the political and economic, affect the cultural landscape. Trump was elected in large part because the American people were fed up with excess: excessive inflation; excessive numbers of migrants crashing our border; excessive rights given to the accused and the convicted; excessive deference to the medical profession (e.g., Covid policies and transgenderism).

Trump can reverse some of these conditions, but the forces of resistance must not be discounted.

Most of those who work in higher education will do all they can to subvert Trump’s agenda. The teachers unions who govern elementary and secondary education are not going to change their stripes. Neither will those who work in Hollywood. Many in Wall Street are not on his side—they gave lavishly to Harris. The mainstream media is almost as corrupt today as it was yesterday. Left-wing activist organizations will double down. A new survey found that 42 percent of federal government managers in Washington, D.C. intend to work against the Trump administration. And disdain for our Judeo-Christian heritage is deeply embedded in elite and radical quarters.

To be sure, there will be progress, and that is because of the pressure being exerted from the bottom up. It was the average Joe who voted for Trump, not the ruling class.

It behooves those of us who want to push the pendulum back to a state of normalcy to be vigilant, keeping a close eye on those who say they are turning over a new leaf. As for those who won’t budge an inch, they need to be outed and defeated. We plan to do our part.

Bill Donohue

The state of Washington is considering a House and Senate bill that would bust the seal of the confessional, without doing anything to check the sexual abuse of minors.

To read my letter, click here.

Bill Donohue

President Donald Trump announced today that he is forming a new Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty. To accomplish this goal, he appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi to chair a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias.”

“The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government,” Trump said. He specifically cited the Department of Justice, the FBI and the IRS, but he also said the probe will extend to other agencies.

More than any other organization in the nation, the Catholic League has documented anti-Christian prejudice and discrimination. To cite one example, we have a very detailed list of abuses that took place under the Biden administration. We will be happy to share our work with Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The scourge of Christian bashing, which Catholics, in particular, have had to endure is astounding. While some Republicans have contributed to this plague, the overwhelming attacks on Christians have come from members of the Democratic Party. We have the evidence and we will make sure the Trump administration has it as well.

Bill Donohue

Pete Buttigieg, the former Secretary of Transportation, is known in LGBTQ circles as the self-described “Pronoun Warrior.” But now the homosexual politician has removed the “He/Him” pronouns from his social media account. This has gravely upset those who still live in the world of “They/Them/Theirs.” They have every right to be angry. What he has done is traitorous.

What broke? Buttigieg wants to be either the next governor or senator of Michigan. He is a native of Indiana but there is no future for the failed mayor of South Bend there, so he laid anchor in Traverse City, Michigan in 2022. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is term limited, and cannot run again in 2026. Senator Gary Peters has said he will not run again in 2026. So Buttigieg sees a few openings.

He could, of course, run for office by not abandoning his “Pronoun Warrior” reputation. But he is well aware that millions of Americans are turned off by this stunt. He also knows that Trump has tapped into this angst with great effect, constantly reminding voters that the Democrats are the “They/Them/Theirs” Party.

A recent New York Times/Ipsos poll provides further evidence that transgender politics is running out of steam. When respondents were asked what issues matter most to them, they said immigration, the economy and healthcare. When asked what matters most to Democrats, they answered abortion, LGBTQ issues and climate change. In other words, the Democrats are wildly out of touch with the average American.

Buttigieg knows this which is why he is downplaying his radical LGBTQ stance. But he can’t run from the past. For example, he still insists he is married to a man. That, however, is a legal fiction: his “marriage” may be recognized by the positive law, but it is not recognized by the natural law. To wit: a man can have a wife but he is denied by nature, and nature’s God, from having a husband. Similarly, two men cannot have a baby, though they may acquire a baby born as a result of a normal heterosexual union.

Just three years ago, CNN host Fareed Zakaria was blasted by left-wing pundits and activists for saying the Democratic Party is too obsessed with “pronouns.” The year before, Chasten Buttigieg, who still insists he is married to the former “Pronoun Warrior,” got ripping mad at those who refuse to respect the fabricated pronouns favored by the LGBTQ crowd. He went so far as to say that for these people, using the “wrong” pronouns can do great damage.

LGBTQ activists concur. The website gaythrive says “Misgendering someone (using incorrect pronouns) can cause distress and perpetuate feelings of exclusion.” It also says that “disrespecting someone’s pronouns can have profound emotional impacts.”

This raises the question: Now that Pete Buttigieg is running away from his “Pronoun Warrior” legacy, will he be so insensitive as to disrespect those who prefer to be identified as “They/Them/Theirs”? What about those who go by “Ze/Zir/Zirs,” or “Xe/Xem/Xir”? Both sets of pronouns are liked by those who don’t identify as either male or female. We also need to hear from his partner Chasten about this.

There is a sizable Muslim population in Michigan, and they are not exactly big fans of this insanity. Good luck trying to win their vote. Unlike many Christians, Muslims are not inclined to normalize abnormalities.

Bill Donohue

In violation of a court order, someone leaked some 300 email exchanges between the New Orleans Saints and the Archdiocese of New Orleans that show how the football team provided public relations advice to the archdiocese on cases of priestly sexual abuse. The emails were given to the Associated Press, the New York Times and the Guardian; other media outlets now have them as well.

This is a story that is largely contrived. No charges of illegal behavior have been made by anyone against any party to this story. Moreover, it is hardly breaking news that elites in one sector of society offer advice to elites in another sector of society. So what gives?

Mark Florio of NBC Sports aptly notes that “it appears that the violation [of the court order] was conducted to create maximum embarrassment for the Saints. Strategically, it’s smart. The Saints are hosting the Super Bowl on Sunday. The Monday morning of Super Bowl week traditionally becomes a perfect spot to drop a nugget that will get attention, since it’s usually slow. Until, of course, the [NFL] Commissioner commences his annual Super Bowl press conference.”

Commissioner Roger Goodell has already downplayed this “story.”

It is well known in New Orleans that its owner, Gayle Benson, is a devout Catholic who is on good terms with New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond. Indeed, it was Aymond who introduced Benson to her husband; he has since passed away. So it is to be expected that friends would do what friends do, and offer advice on how to handle a problem.

What prompted the email exchange was a news story in 2018 about a deacon and schoolteacher who had been accused of sexual abuse and was removed from ministry in 1988, yet was still involved at a New Orleans church. When Aymond found out he said he was “utterly surprised and embarrassed.” It was then that Greg Bensel offered to provide “crisis communications” to the archdiocese; he is the Saints senior vice president of communications. Subsequently, a 2020 lawsuit revealed that the football team offered public relations advice to the archdiocese.

Most of the accusations are about offenses that took place decades ago. We know from the most authoritative sources that the overwhelming number of cases took place between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s, and that the offenders are either dead or have been kicked out of the priesthood. There are almost no cases of abuse taking place today, whether it be in New Orleans or anywhere else.

It should also be noted that the Associated Press is wrong to report that the offending priests were pedophiles. They were not. Over 8-in-10 were homosexuals, men who had sex with postpubescent males. Only 3.8 percent were pedophiles. The data from researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice are conclusive.

The one outstanding question in this instance is whether some names of the accused that were released by the Archdiocese of New Orleans in 2018 were removed from the list. The New York Times says “it is not clear if names were actually removed from the list.” James Gulotta, a lawyer for the Saints, says no Saints employee was involved in creating the list.

The big media have no business feeling emboldened about this story. Their record of covering up sexual abuse crimes has been well detailed (see my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes). Take the New York Times.

In 2017, when four female journalists accused Times reporter Glenn Thrush of sexual misconduct, there was no independent investigation; the probe was done in-house. Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the paper, decided his behavior did not deserve termination. Instead, Thrush was allowed to undergo counseling. He still writes for the Times.

Yet when the Catholic Church does not act with dispatch, the editorial board slams them.

The same year that accusations were made against Thrush, three women accused Michael Oreskes of sexual harassment. Two of the alleged incidents occurred in the 1990s, when Oreskes was the Washington, D.C. bureau chief. At the time, Jill Abramson, who would later become the executive editor for the Times, was deputy to Oreskes. She admitted that she knew of his alleged offenses but did nothing to stop them.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the mainstream media did a story on how deeply involved local and state public officials are in working with public school officials in handling cases of sexual abuse in the schools? It is well known that the teachers unions generously grease the Democrats.

So if the “story” on the Saints and the New Orleans archdiocese merited the front page in the New York Times, below the fold, a story of this kind surely deserves an above the fold spot, if not a spread.

We don’t have to wait and see—it will never happen.