Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on reactions to U.S. Supreme Court Justices who heard oral arguments on a pivotal abortion-rights case:

Everyone knows that Sen. Charles Schumer went off the rails by threatening two sitting Supreme Court Justices because he believes they will vote against an upcoming abortion-rights case. But little attention has been given to the hysterical reaction of two members of “The Squad”:   Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Rep. Rashida Tlaib.

Pressley said that “reproductive justice is racial justice.”

This is the kind of statement we would expect from the Klan. We would not expect this from a black woman. Blacks, who are 13% of the population, account for 36% of all abortions. Pressley needs to explain why this is an expression of racial justice, and she needs to tell this to a black audience.

Tlaib aimed her remarks at pro-life Americans by repeating one of her standard lines. “Y’all, y’all, you know what? You’re so freakin obsessed with what I decide to do with my body, maybe you shouldn’t even want to have sex with me.”

Believe me, lady, no one does. I know of no defender of life who wants to sleep with you. And if you don’t know the difference between a woman who wants to remove a wart from her toe and a pregnant woman who wants to remove a human being from her body, you need to enroll in Bio 101.

The other “Squad” members are just as far gone. Here is what they said about abortion last year.

Rep. Ilhan Omar objected to pro-life legislation in the states, saying the bills were “only the latest in a long history of efforts to criminalize women for simply existing.”

That would mean that pro-life Americans want their mothers imprisoned. Even those in the asylum don’t speak such gibberish.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez objected to a pro-life bill in Alabama that the governor pledged to sign. She labeled the bill as an example of “patriarchy.” The governor is a woman. In the fall, she said that “nonbinary people” need access to abortion. Problem solved: they don’t exist.

This is the mentality of the those who love abortion. There isn’t much upstairs to play with, making it impossible to engage them in rational discourse.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Catholic haters who can’t let it go:

There are ongoing scandals in virtually every institution in the world, secular as well as religious, so when a prominent American newspaper runs an editorial about an organization where one of its past leaders once funneled money to a controversial affiliate overseas, it makes one wonder why it chose to focus on that institution and not an organization that is currently involved in a scandal in this country. We don’t lack for any.

When a late-night comedian chooses to hurl insults at a demographic group for no apparent reason other than to be malicious, it makes one wonder what’s going on.

The first example was provided by the Washington Post in its March 4th editorial criticizing money legally sent by Theodore McCarrick, when he was a cardinal, to a religious community in Latin America founded by a rogue; the money was spent on the indigent. The second example is provided by Seth Meyers in his March 4th monologue deriding Catholics for drinking consecrated wine from the same chalice as others.

It was so nice to read the editorial’s professed concern for the Church’s “reputation and mission,” which, it said, has been “besmirched” by its leaders. It’s time the newspaper factored in its own contribution to besmirching the Catholic Church.

As for Meyers, we could provide him with plenty of examples of the beliefs and practices of other religions that would make for lots of laughs, but we know he would throw it in the trash where it belongs. That he doesn’t trash the anti-Catholic material he is given tells us everything we need to know about him.

Both the Washington Post and Seth Meyers are Church haters (we’ve dealt with both of them many times before). It’s in their claw—they can’t give it up.

Contact the editorial page editor: Fred.Hiatt@washpost.com

Contact NBC senior press manager for entertainment publicity: lauren.manasevit@nbcuni.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an editorial of March 2nd in the Kansas City Star:

The Kansas City Star is well known for its religious animus, especially against Catholic institutions (see our website for multiple examples). Its hostility was on display again on March 2nd.

In a badly conceived editorial, it railed against allowing private and religious schools to be exempt from Missouri’s minimum wage increase. It is the exemption for religious schools [read: Catholic ones] that exercises the editors the most. How do we know? Because it repeatedly singles out religious organizations for criticism.

Why is the editorial badly conceived? Because it is palpably hypocritical. It admits that public employers, including the public schools, are exempt from the minimum wage law, yet it is only mildly critical of this exception. In other words, if exemptions from this law are a problem, why has the Star consistently refused to take the public schools to task?

Moreover, why hasn’t the Kansas City Star listed all the organizations that are exempt from the minimum wage? Missouri employers are required to pay $9.45 an hour unless the worker or occupation is exempt under state or federal law.

Here is a list of exemptions under Missouri law:

• Tipped employees
• Retail or service businesses whose gross annual income is less than $500,000
• Most agricultural and farm workers

Here is a list of exemptions under federal law:

• Farm workers
• Seasonal workers (fishermen, amusement park workers, et al.)
• babysitters
• tipped employees
• minors and young workers
• full time and vocational students
• employees with disabilities
• public school teachers and administrators
• outside sales employees
• employees in certain computer-related operations
• companions to the elderly or infirm

On several occasions, the editorial raises the question why religious schools are afforded exemptions from some laws. But it is not religious schools that are routinely cut slack by state legislators—it’s the public schools.

For example, the statute of limitations for crimes involving the sexual abuse of minors in Catholic schools does not apply to the public schools: victims of sexual abuse in the public schools have 90 days to file a claim or it is too late. But victims in Catholic schools have a much longer time frame within which to do so, and this is especially true when statutes of limitation are being revised to allow old cases to be prosecuted.

The public schools are able to get away with this because of the antiquated doctrine of sovereign immunity: it allows the public sector a privileged position by discriminating against private and religious institutions. But don’t look for the Kansas City Star to protest this blatant injustice. It never will.

Contact Colleen McCain Nelson, editorial page editor: cnelson@kcstar.com

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an important court decision affecting the rights of priests:

On March 2, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that it will review a Superior Court decision that allowed Renee A. Rice the right to pursue claims against the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown even though the statute of limitations had long expired. The Catholic League filed an amicus brief in the case in support of the diocese; the Pittsburgh firm of Jones Day represented us.

The Superior Court held that a grand jury report issued by the state Attorney General in 2016 could trigger the running of statutes of limitation, though it is common practice for the clock to start at the time of an injury.

Rice said she was molested 40 years ago by Fr. Charles Bodziak at St. Leo’s Church in Altoona, a charge the priest denies. She further maintains that two bishops tried to cover up his behavior, even though the diocese sent her a letter 10 years before her lawsuit encouraging her to come forward about her alleged abuse. She did nothing until the grand jury report supposedly awakened her.

Attorneys for the Catholic League contend that the Superior Court ruling “effectively enacts window legislation [it allows a look-back provision] from the bench, contrary to decades of precedent.”

When our brief was filed in September 2019, I commented on its significance. “We have reached a new level of creative jurisprudence when a court can invoke a jury decision as the new clock determining when the limitations period starts to run. At issue here is the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary, not exactly a small issue.”

If jurors are allowed to widen the time limits for civil claims in clergy sexual abuse cases, it would create havoc. For instance, 15 “copycat” lawsuits were filed after the Superior Court ruling, beckoning other alleged victims to file suit. No wonder plaintiffs called the decision a “game-changer” that will “open the courthouse doors” to decades-old claims.

It is good news that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal by the diocese. It also granted leave for the Catholic League to file an amicus brief on behalf of the diocese, which we will do.

Were the Superior Court ruling to hold, the effects would be felt not only by the Catholic Church but by all religious organizations. Indeed, secular institutions such as schools, hospitals, colleges, and all other employers would be at risk for being sued decades after the alleged offense.

We look forward to a complete reversal of the lower court’s decision. That would ensure that the rule of law will be applied equally to priests, dioceses, and religious organizations.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new survey of democratic rights in countries throughout the world:

The Pew Research Center recently released a survey of democratic rights in 34 countries. Countries represented in the survey were drawn from Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Respondents were asked how important certain democratic values were to them, and how satisfied they were with the state of affairs on several variables. The following nine categories were chosen: Fair Judiciary; Gender Equality; Free Religion; Regular Elections; Free Speech; Free Media; Free Internet; Free Civil Society; and Free Opposition Parties.

The data reported the “% who say it is very important to have ____ in their country.”

The median score (the score where half the numbers are higher and half are lower) on Free Religion, as compared to the median score on the other eight categories, was relatively high for all parts of the world except for Europe. In other words, outside Europe, Free Religion garnered a relatively high percentage.

The median score for Europe was 57%. That was the lowest median score across the board. In other words, the other eight categories were seen as more important to Europeans.

“In over half the countries surveyed,” the report said, “those who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely to believe religious freedom is very important.” This makes sense, but it also means that those who are not themselves religious are not likely to support this foundational human right.

The survey confirms the de-Christianization of Europe. Regrettably, secular societies are, by and large, more inclined to value individual autonomy and devalue freedom of religion. Those who are religious are not only in a minority, they live in countries where their religious rights are comparatively tenuous.

Six nations stand out for their very high support for gender equality and their very low support for freedom of religion: Canada, Sweden, France, Netherlands, Spain, and Australia.

For those who value freedom of religion, matters were better in the United States. Of the nine categories, the top three were Fair Judiciary (93%), Gender Equality (91%) and Free Religion (86%).

The role that freedom of religion plays in the life of a free country is no longer understood by many in the West. It should be the focus of history textbooks and is deserving of a national conversation on how to preserve our freedoms. Instead, we are more interested in promoting the freedom of middle school kids to “transition” from one sex to the other.

Bill In The News (Breitbart):

Americans do not consider the leading contenders for the Democrat presidential nomination to be very religious, reveals a new survey from the Pew Research Center.

Pew found that nearly a third (31 percent) of all U.S. adults believe that the Democrat Party is actually unfriendly to religion, while only 13 percent said the same of the Republican Party.

In a similar vein, Catholic League president Bill Donohue noted last October that the Democrat debate has grown openly hostile toward people of faith, which reveals itself in the candidates’ severity in dealing with religious freedom issues. READ MORE HERE

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) Catholic? She was, but there is no evidence she still is. Yet she is conveniently labeled as a Catholic by some of her supporters and she occasionally implies she is still Catholic.

Why does this matter? If she were not a congresswoman, it wouldn’t. But when someone who is no longer a member of the faith community he was raised in passes himself off as a loyal member—for self-serving political purposes—that raises serious ethical problems.

Who is and who is not a Catholic is not purely a matter of self-identity. If someone born of Irish ancestry and raised as a Catholic calls himself a Jew, no one thinks he is Jewish. Truth matters, and the truth never turns on self-identity alone.

AOC spoke on February 27 at a congressional hearing on “The Administration’s Religious Liberty Assault on LGBTQ rights,” held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. She criticized the Trump administration for its policies on homosexuals and transgender persons, saying it was misusing religious liberty to undermine these people.

In her remarks, AOC never once identified herself as a Catholic, though she did play the religion card. She preferred to use such terms as, “From the perspective of a woman of faith” and “I know it is part of my faith.”

Not only did she not identify her faith, she said, “We are equal, in my faith, in the eyes of the world.” Catholics don’t speak that way. They would say something like, “As a Catholic, I believe we are all equal in the eyes of God.”

In a glowing article on AOC posted on Huffington Post, it says that she “identifies as Catholic” and “frequently refers to her religious beliefs on Twitter.” Not true. On Twitter, she never identifies herself as a Catholic: she calls herself a “raised Catholic” (see her tweet from 12-10-18). That is the way ex-Catholics speak, not those who are currently practicing their religion.

In a caustic exchange on Twitter with Kellyanne Conway, AOC spoke about her “Christianity + faith life” (tweet is from 4-28-19). Again, that is not the way Catholics speak. In fact, that is a really weird way for any Christian to talk. There is no need for the “+ faith life” if the person is truly a Christian.

We did a Nexis search of AOC to learn how often she identified herself as a Catholic. We looked for “As a Catholic” or “My Catholic.” The answer: Zero. The only reference to her Catholicity is from an article she wrote for America magazine on June 27, 2018, the Jesuit publication.

In her piece, she made a comment about the Catechism and forgiveness, and uses terms such as “For Catholics,” but never once does she say she is a Catholic. Yet that was the purpose of the article. It was titled, “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her Catholic Faith and the Urgency of Criminal Justice Reform.” Why the reticence given this opportunity to showcase her Catholic credentials? Indeed, she could have told us something about how much her Catholic faith means to her, but she didn’t come close.

In her statement before the House committee, AOC did address one Catholic issue. Not surprisingly, she condemned the Catholic position.

“My faith commands me to treat Mr. Minton as holy because he is sacred, because his life is sacred, because you are not to be denied anything I am entitled to, that we are equal in the eyes of the law.”

What was all that about? Evan Michael Minton, who also spoke before the committee, wanted to change from being a woman to a man (that is biologically impossible, but that is not the issue). In 2017, “he” sought a hysterectomy at a Catholic facility, Mercy San Juan Medical Center; it is part of the Dignity Health Care chain.

The Catholic hospital does not perform elective hysterectomies (such a procedure is only done to treat a serious medical problem and when there is no alternative treatment available). Mercy immediately referred “him” to another hospital within the Dignity chain that is not Catholic, and the procedure was performed within a few days. Even though there was no discrimination, “he” got the ACLU to sue Mercy.

In other words, AOC flexed her so-called Catholic muscles by taking the side of someone who deliberately sought an operation from a Catholic institution that it was prohibited by its religious tenets from performing. She obviously does not believe in the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Worse, she took the side of anti-Catholics.

The Catholic League does not tolerate fictions. Everyone knows that inside a pregnant woman’s body there is another human being, and everyone knows that no one can change his or her chromosomal makeup, even though many learned people believe otherwise. And everyone should know that AOC is a fraud.

Contact Ariel Eckblad, AOC’s chief of staff: ariel.eckblad@mail.house.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Michael Bloomberg’s treatment of female employees:

In the South Carolina presidential debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren commented that when she was a special-education teacher she was happy not to have a boss like Michael Bloomberg. She recounted how he allegedly said to one of his pregnant employees, “Kill It!” Bloomberg denied the accusation.

In 1997, Bloomberg was sued by Sekiko Sakai Garrison. He settled with the Japanese woman, but neither the amount nor any other information about the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) has been made public.

Bloomberg must not be allowed to get away with this. Succumbing to public pressure, he said last week that he will release Garrison from the NDA. But neither he nor his company has reached out to her. Bloomberg should contact her immediately.

In the Catholic Church, NDA’s are not tolerated (they once were). While there are legitimate reasons for having NDA’s, such as protecting the privacy rights of victims, those who are in public office, or are in pursuit of it, must be held to a higher standard. This is doubly true of presidential candidates.

There are other reasons why Bloomberg must come clean. Last year a Bloomberg L.P. spokesman told ABC News that the company rarely settles disputes, preferring to take their case to the courts. What was different about this case? Why didn’t Bloomberg take his chances in the courts? Why did he find it necessary to settle?

Garrison’s lawyer told ABC News that she may be willing to speak if the NDA were to be voided. Justice demands that this be done. Consider what we know already.

According to Garrison’s lawsuit, on April 11, 1995, at approximately 11:20 a.m., Bloomberg posed for a picture with two female workers and a group of students from New York University in the company snack area. He noticed Garrison standing nearby and struck up a conversation with her. “How’s married life? You still married?” She said everything was going along just great, and that she was pregnant. Bloomberg responded, “Kill it!” Stunned, she asked him to repeat what he said. “Kill it!” He then muttered, “Great! Number 16!” He was expressing his unhappiness with the sixteen women who were out on maternity leave.

Who is telling the truth? Bloomberg or Garrison? We can’t be certain but it sure looks like she is. There are several reasons for drawing this conclusion.

Garrison understood Bloomberg’s remark as suggesting she abort her baby in order to keep her job. She was visibly upset with him and told several managers in the company what happened.

In August 1995, four months after this incident, Garrison filed a complaint with the New York Division of Human Rights. According to ABC News, she spoke to “ten people within the firm, five of whom were managers.”

What did they do for her? According to her lawsuit, filed two years later, nothing. It’s actually worse than nothing. “The managers told her to ignore the comment, forget it ever happened and not to act on her complaint. These managers reiterated threats of termination if plaintiff pressed the complaint.”

The day after the “Kill It” episode, Garrison went to work but was so distraught and ill that she had to leave. She called in sick the next day. She was subsequently fired.

Some in the media are portraying this as a he said/she said type of dispute: Bloomberg says he never said “Kill It!” and she says he did. But this account is false. There is at least one witness.

David Zielenzinger, a former Bloomberg technology worker, told the Washington Post he heard the conversation. “I remember she had been telling some of her girlfriends that she was pregnant. And Mike came out and I remember he said, ‘Are you going to kill it?’ And that stopped everything. And I couldn’t believe it.” Zielenzinger said this was vintage Bloomberg. “He talked kind of crudely about women all the time.”

Bloomberg learned from some employees that Garrison was upset with him after their exchange. His remarks are telling. [She made handwritten notes of the call, which were obtained by the Post.]

Bloomberg called her at home and left a lengthy voice mail. He asked her to give him a call, saying he learned from another employee that “you were upset.” He said that “whatever you heard wasn’t what I said and whatever I said had nothing to do with pregnancies.”

Why, then, did Bloomberg apologize? Here is how he ended the call. “I apologize if there was something you heard but I didn’t say it, didn’t mean it, didn’t say it.” A spokesman for the company did not deny this account.

Why would anyone apologize for something he never said? More important, why, if he never said it, would he say he “didn’t mean it”? This indicates that he did say it, objecting only to her interpretation of what he meant when he advised her to “Kill It!” What should she have thought? That he was joking about his suggestion that she kill her baby? Did he think she would burst out laughing? What kind of man speaks this way?

Bloomberg had a thing about Garrison. Did he see her as an easy mark? She was the only Japanese woman working in sales in the New York headquarters at the time. Here are some things he allegedly said about her before his infamous “Kill It!” remark.

In front of male employees who knew her boyfriend, he asked her, “Are you still dating your boyfriend? You giving him good [he used a slang term for oral sex]?” On another occasion, after pointing to a newly-hired older female who was conversing with an overweight male salesperson, he asked Garrison, “If you had to, would you rather do THAT or THAT?”

When Bloomberg spotted Garrison wearing an engagement ring, he said, “What, is the guy dumb and blind? What the hell is he marrying you for?” A week later, he said to her, “Still engaged? What, is he THAT GOOD in bed, or did your father pay him off to get rid of you?”

Bloomberg once broke up a conversation between Garrison and a male employee at a business convention so he could make a crude comment about the male employee’s girlfriend (she was also an employee). As she entered the elevator, he said, “That is one great piece of ass. You must be a great f***.” On another occasion, when Bloomberg saw Garrison wearing a dress he didn’t like, he told her, “Don’t like the dress. Your ass looks huge in it.” He made this comment to her on several occasions whenever she wore a new outfit.

One day Bloomberg saw Garrison return from lunch with a Tiffany shopping bag. “You ARE a real Jap” he said. He was either referring to her Japanese heritage, or, more likely, commenting on her acting like a “Jewish American Princess.” Either way he was denigrating her and making an ethnic slur.

Bloomberg looks even more guilty when we consider that his contempt for pregnant workers is not confined to Garrison.

Less than two years before his alleged “Kill it!” comment, Bloomberg learned that one of his employees, who had just given birth, was having a hard time finding a nanny. He yelled at her in front of a large group of employees. “It’s a f*****g baby! All it does is eat and s***. It doesn’t know the difference between you and anyone else!”

Bloomberg then made a racist comment. “All you need is some black who doesn’t even have to speak English to rescue it from a burning building!” The woman burst into tears in front of her co-workers.

If the CEO speaks this way in front of his employees about pregnant women, it should come as no surprise that he tolerates—indeed promotes—an environment where sexual comments and behavior are not uncommon. This explains why Garrison’s lawyer, Bonnie Josephs, said, “The atmosphere was toxic and harassing.”

It wasn’t just Garrison whom he spoke to this way. In court filings, women employees of Bloomberg allege he said such things as, “I’d like to do that piece of meat”; “I would DO you in a second”; “I’d like to f*** that in a second”; “That’s a great piece of ass.”

He did not hide his sexism. In September 1996, in front of employees and news reporters at a conference in Toronto, he allegedly said, “I would like nothing more in my life than to have Sharon Stone sit on my face.”

Bloomberg set the tone for his entire company. Garrison’s immediate boss routinely displayed wind-up toys in the shapes of a penis and a vagina on his desk. He also placed them on her desk, and when she complained, he did it over and over again. This same man bragged to her about a male employee who performed oral sex on his secretary while she sat on his shoulders in their office.

It is hardly a surprise to learn that when Bloomberg was mayor of New York City, his company continued to foster a morally corrupt workplace.

In 2007, a lawsuit of discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers was filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It was conveniently dismissed in 2011, but not before 67 women said they were prepared to join the case. Bloomberg, they said, took aim at women after they became pregnant and after they took maternity leave.

Bloomberg’s disdain for pregnant women is of a piece with his politics. His passion for abortion is so strong that as soon as he became mayor of New York City, he issued an executive order that forced medical students training to become an obstetrician or a gynecologist in a city hospital to learn how to abort a baby. “Kill it!” is something this man can’t seem to get enough of.

We need to see the NDA. If Bloomberg gets away with this, it will be a huge setback for the rights of all women, especially pregnant women and their babies. He should initiate the contact and she needs to go public with her account.

Contact Jason Schechter, communications director for the Bloomberg campaign: jschechter12@bloomberg.net

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a new survey of Catholics:

The recently released survey of Catholic registered voters conducted by Real Clear Politics for EWTN has some fascinating data, but it also raises serious questions about its design.

When asked which party the respondent belongs to, 45% said they were Democrats and 34% said they were Republicans. This accounts for the fact that 48% voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, versus 46% for Trump. This is not in accordance with the 2016 results. According to Pew Research Center, Trump won 52% of the Catholic vote and Clinton won 45%. So to begin with, this survey is skewed toward the Democrats.

Just this week, Rasmussen found that 45% of likely U.S. voters said the country is heading in the right direction. In the poll for EWTN, only 41% of Catholics agreed with this assessment. Democrats tend to be more negative about the future of the country, so this outcome makes sense given how the poll is weighted.

How Catholic are these voters? Are they practicing? Do they even know what the Church teaches about public policy issues?

As it turns out, only 46% either fully accept or mostly accept the Church’s teachings, while 44% do not. This reflects the fact that almost a quarter (23%) either go to Mass less than yearly or never. These people are Catholic in name only, making them about as representative of Catholics as carnivorous-eating self-identified vegetarians are of vegetarians.

Almost two-thirds (63%) know virtually nothing about the Church’s teaching on the death penalty. Three in ten (31%) said they were unaware that the Church had a specific teaching on this subject, and another 32% said they were unaware of the specifics.

Some Catholic commentators are making hay over the fact that a majority of Catholics think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. This is deceiving.

Fully 80% are opposed to the standard provided by Roe v. Wade: it allows abortion to be legal in all cases. A third (33%) say it should be illegal in all cases save for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother, and 11% say it should always be illegal. Three in ten (31%) say it should be legal except for late-term abortions.

How do Catholic registered voters feel about President Trump? Many are so ambivalent as to make their responses incoherent. When matched up against Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Mike Bloomberg, Trump loses to all of them. Yet 54% say they are leaning towards voting for him: 34% said they are sure to vote for him; 12% say there is a good chance they will; and 8% say it is possible they will.

On cultural issues, Catholics are mostly conservative. Half (49%) say that current programming from the entertainment industry is mostly unhealthy; 57% want more faith-based programming; and a plurality (42%) say there is an anti-Christian bias in the media.

This survey, contrary to some news reports, did not break down these sentiments by religiosity (or if it did it did not make the results public), so we have no way of knowing how devout Catholics stacked up against non-practicing Catholics. It would have been helpful to include such data.

If this survey tells us anything, it reveals that it is still early in this electoral year, thus explaining the lack of clarity in the Catholic response. Look for their positions to become more decisive as the year progresses.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an important case that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear:

We may not know the outcome until the spring of 2021, but it looms as one of the most important cases pitting gay rights against religious liberty that the U.S. Supreme Court has ever agreed to hear.

Two years ago, a federal district court turned down Catholic Social Services of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in its bid not to be forced to place children for foster care with parents of the same sex. The city of Philadelphia brooked no religious exemption. Last year, it lost again in the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Those on the side of the Catholic Church include the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty. Those on the other side include the Hindu American Foundation, Muslim Advocates, Sikh Coalition, Unitarian Universalist Association, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and the Union for Reform Judaism.

Catholic social service agencies do not recognize homosexual parents as suitable to be foster parents. They believe that children are entitled to a mother and a father, the only two people who can naturally create a family.

Love is not dispositive: Children need to be loved by those who provide role models for them based on the two sexes. Gender is not the issue. That term refers to socially learned roles that are appropriate for boys and girls, the cues of which are taken from nature.

Religious liberty cannot exist without extending to religious individuals and institutions the kinds of exemptions they have traditionally been afforded.