Bill Donohue highly recommends this article by Paul Kengor, a member of the Catholic League’s Board of Advisors. To read this article, which originally appeared on The American Spectator, click here.

Bill Donohue

Tomorrow is the March for Life, so we turn our attention to abortion.

ABC News ran a story on January 21 about a woman candidate running for a House seat in South Carolina. The former navy officer, Nancy Lacore, has been endorsed by EMILYs list. The news story described it as “a liberal group that works to elect women to higher office.” It is not. This is factually wrong.

On the front page of the website of EMILYs List, it says, “We’ve been recruiting, training, and supporting Democratic pro-choice women up and down the ballot for 40 years and counting.” It says the same thing on the “About” us page.

No woman running for office who is Republican and pro-choice gets a dime, never mind any women (of either party) who defends the right of the unborn.

We checked to see if ABC was an anomaly in misreporting the mission of EMILYs List, and found it was not. We checked the last ten stories on this organization that appeared in major media outlets. To read our report, click here.

Here is a summary of what we found.

New York Times: in 3 of them, EMILYs List was incorrectly described
Washington Post: in 2 of them it was incorrectly described
Associated Press: in 4 of them it was incorrectly described
ABC: in 4 of them it was incorrectly described
CBS: in 5 of them it was incorrectly described
NBC: in 2 of them it was incorrectly described

There should not be any errors. EMILYs List makes it plain that it is not a pro-women’s group: it is only interested in advancing the cause of women who are Democrats and who are pro-abortion. But when it comes to identifying pro-life groups, the media never seem to err: they make sure the reader does not see them as being “pro-women.”

None of this is a mistake. Not to be misunderstood, there is no conspiracy at work. No, it is much simpler, yet more nefarious, than that. It reflects the ideological makeup of major media outlets. Conspiracies can be busted. This is much harder to root out.

Bill Donohue

A Catholic League staffer was recently having dinner with friends at a New York steakhouse when she witnessed a table of several mature women talking loudly, some of whom were throwing around the “f-word” with abandon.

It used to be that such language would be heard in pubs, but not in pricey restaurants, much less by women in their senior years. But times have changed. The dumbing down of language, just like the dumbing down of virtually every other standard of decency, has become the norm. President Trump, and Biden before him, have certainly made their contributions to this end.

We can blame the entertainment industry and the media for normalizing obscenities. Movies have long featured expletives, but now TV shows and the mainstream media are following suit.

Last Friday I was reading a news story in the New York Times on the anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis. It quoted the Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, saying the government’s position was “bull – – -,” I have been reading this newspaper for decades, and I honestly don’t recall reading this word spelled out in a news article before. Then I read the next sentence. It quoted Frey telling ICE to “get the f—out” of Minneapolis”; the obscene word was printed in full.

Last night, I heard Fox News host Greg Gutfeld complaining how insincere the anti-ICE protesters are about the welfare of illegal aliens. He said, “they don’t give two s—s about these people.” He was not censored. The show airs at a time when children watch TV.

Today, in the New York Times, there is an op-ed by John McWhorter, a linguist who teaches at Columbia University. He is celebrating the increased use in public of the “f-word.” He says, “I actually think it’s a positive development.” He opined, “The normalization of the word…is a sign of maturity in American English.” Ironically, he chose not to spell it, instead referring to it as the “F-word.” He concluded saying he was “happy” that we are “getting to the point where we can all speak the way we think and live.”

What about the “n-word”? Would McWhorter, who is black (I happen to admire his work on race), celebrate its invocation on TV and in newspapers? If not, why not? Why wouldn’t it be a sign of maturity?

A number of years ago on CNN I was objecting to the display of some obscene artistic display when the host smugly chided me for not respecting free speech, the way the cable channel does. I immediately challenged him, saying they would not allow me to say the “n-word” on TV, only I actually said the word.” I smiled, but he didn’t, when they – rightfully – censored me. “See,” I said.

We decided to find out how some of the big media have been handling this issue. We looked at AP (Associated Press), the New York Times and the Washington Post. We found that in more recent times, all three are more likely to spell out the “f-word” than the “n-word.” Nice to know what offends, and does not offend, liberal elites.

Why should this matter? Every survey in this century on the subject of civility and the moral order shows that Americans – across all demographics – are genuinely concerned about what has been happening. Things are going south. When people treat linguistic offenses like pedestrian commentary, they are letting their guard down. By itself such a phenomenon will not change our cultural landscape, when it is coupled with other attempts to normalize deviancy, it certainly does.

In the 1990s, Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned that “we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is not abnormal by any earlier standard.” Agreeing with him in his American Educator article, “Defining Deviancy Down,” was John Cole. As an example of what Moynihan noted, he said were increased incidents of “profane and abusive language” targeted at teachers by their students.

Normalizing obscenities is not worth celebrating. It only increases the coarseness that has engulfed our society.

Bill Donohue

It is legal for ICE agents to make arrests in houses of worship, but none of them do. It is illegal for anti-ICE agitators to disrupt church services, but some do. Those who would scream bloody murder if ICE agents entered a church, but are silent when protesters entered Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota are not only hypocrites, they are aiding and abetting the church-busters.

The three dozen protesters who invaded Cities Church on January 18 violated a 1994 federal law, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE).

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is only partly right when he says the FACE Act “is designed to protect the rights of people seeking reproductive rights.” What he left out is that the law also protects the right of people to worship. Yet he confesses that it is “beyond me” that some are “stretching” the FACE Act “to apply to people who protested in a church.”

It is beyond comprehension that the chief law enforcement officer in Minnesota has not been fired for gross incompetence.

The FACE Act “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services or to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” (My italics.)

This explains why Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), cited the FACE Act as her reason for sending prosecutors from the DOJ to Minnesota.

Those aiding and abetting the church-busters include Don Lemon, the failed CNN commentator who was fired for his lousy ratings. He has now anointed himself a “journalist,” and in that capacity he managed to show up at the Cities Church to observe the invasion. He justified the protest in the church on First Amendment grounds, even though it is not protected speech. The “free exercise of religion” is protected by the First Amendment, not church invasions. But he wouldn’t know any better.

Lemon inserted a racial element into this discussion when he attacked those who objected to what happened. “I think they’re entitled, and that entitlement comes from white supremacy.” Lemon has previously argued that white men “are the biggest terror threat in this country.” To be fair, he does not believe Whitey is always bad: the man he claims to be married to is a white dude, and they live in a Long Island town that is almost 100 percent white.

It is more serious when a sitting member of Congress justifies church-busting. Arizona Rep. Adelita Grijalva believes that “Churches have always been an open door,” and when asked point blank, “Do you believe it was a step too far for protesters to go into a church,” she replied, “I don’t. I don’t.”

Her colleagues need to censure her before she gets really Nazi-like.

The protest organizer in St. Paul is a far-left black lawyer, Nekima Levy Armstrong. She founded the Racial Justice Network, one of three black organizations supporting the church invasion; the other two are Black Lives Matter (BLM) groups. Her activist resume includes support for cop killers.

It makes sense that BLM—which is a shell of an organization that has ripped off blacks and its donors by the millions—would be involved. Its presence make sense because its goal transcends anything to do with the immediate cause of the unrest in Minnesota. To be exact, by justifying church invasions, it advances its goal of disabling American society.

BLM has condemned “the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,” explicitly stating that for its agenda to be fulfilled, it is “important to disrupt the Western nuclear family.” To that end, it supports an attack on every tenet of our Judeo-Christian heritage. That is its primary objective. Ergo, by justifying the invasion of Cities Church, it is serving its mission.

What happened in St. Paul will continue unless these cultural Marxists are stopped. At stake is the very foundation of American society.

Bill Donohue

On January 19, the nation will celebrate Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, his legacy is being dishonored this year by the public policy arm of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

To be exact, the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness, the advocacy group for the mainline Protestant denomination, recently compared the Minnesota woman who ran her car into an ICE agent to King. They said Renee Good was a martyr, just like the black minister.

The comparison is obscene.

In 1958, in King’s first book, Stride Toward Freedom, he described his own “pilgrimage to nonviolence.” He laid out six principles that would guide the nonviolent movement for civil rights. While all are apropos to this discussion, there is one that is strikingly relevant. He said that nonviolence seeks to win “friendship and understanding” of the adversary, not to humiliate him. He counseled love, not hatred.

Renee Good was the complete antithesis of what King stood for, which is why trying to hijack his contributions is patently offensive.

Good was a professional left-wing zealot who rejected every tenet of civil disobedience. She did not seek “friendship and understanding” with ICE agents—she taunted, harassed and stalked them. Moreover, she trained others to do the same, leading convoys to impede law enforcement.

Prior to the shooting, Good followed ICE agents to two locations, deliberately blocking the roadway. She did the same thing at the site of the incident, illegally parking her huge Honda Pilot in the middle of the road. Her female lover, Rebecca, was with her, and both carried whistles, the purpose of which was to alert illegal aliens that ICE agents were in the vicinity, thus obstructing the pursuit of justice.

When one of the ICE agent’s vehicles got stuck in the snow, his colleagues sought to push it free. That is when the anti-ICE agitators moved in: they harassed them, impeding them from doing their job. Rebecca, who exited the car driven by Renee, taunted the agents, “You wanna come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.”

When Rebecca tried to get back into the car, Good was asked to get out, but she wouldn’t budge. Rebecca, outside the car, shouted to Good, “drive, baby, drive, drive.” Good hit the gas, hitting an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross. That’s when he shot her. She was killed and he was taken to the hospital for treatment. Rebecca later reflected, “It’s my fault.”

The agent involved had previously been dragged 50 yards by a vehicle operated by “a serial criminal illegal alien.” He could have been killed. No one can blame him for not wanting to endure the same experience again, which explains why he acted so quickly to defend himself. Anyone in his shoes would have done the same. He has since received multiple death threats for defending himself.

What Good did constitutes assault and battery.

According to UCLA law professor Paul Bergman, assault is typically defined as “any intentional act that causes another person to fear an attack or imminent physical harm. This definition recognizes that placing another person in fear of bodily harm is itself an act deserving of punishment, even if the victim of the assault is not physically harmed.” Battery is a “completed” assault.

Ross suffered internal bleeding as a result of being hit by Good. Ergo, despite chatter to the contrary, this is a clear case of assault and battery.

Renee Good’s blood is on the hands of the anti-ICE agitators. They are itching for a confrontation, and they have no interest in following the nonviolent model of Martin Luther King. Indeed, they have more in common with violent street gangs than they do practitioners of King’s philosophy and activism.

Shame on the Presbyterian Church (USA) for ripping off King’s work in service to their perverse agenda. He would want nothing to do with them.

Contact the director of communications for the denomination: rick.jones@pcusa.org

Bill Donohue

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani likes to hire anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic bigots. This is incontestable: click here for the proof.

Everyone on the list was either on his transition team or served in an advisory capacity. Some are now working in his administration.

Many hate Israel and are trying to weaken its economy through their BDS efforts (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions). Some have defended Al Queda terrorists while others have organized pro-Hamas demonstrations. Anti-Semitic comments abound. Anti-Catholic remarks have also been voiced, and one hire organized an obscene demonstration during Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

None of this is surprising. Mamdani hates Israel and blames it—not Hamas—for the Hamas massacre of Jews in Israel on October 7, 2023. Anyone who harbors that much hostility to Jews obviously wants to surround himself with people just like himself. Moreover, his decision to reward a vile anti-Catholic organizer tells us that he wants people like that working for him, not practicing Catholics.

Spellcheck does not recognize the word Mamdani, offering as a substitute the word “Madman.” Looks like it is a lot smarter than the people who voted for him.

Bill Donohue

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today on whether boys can compete in girls’ sports. The very idea that this has to occupy the time of the high court is testimony to the sexual confusion that is widespread not only in America, but in western civilization; the rest of the world is a lot smarter. Adding to the confusion is the Supreme Court itself.

In 2020, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County. He held that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employees from being fired on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, even though the law only addressed sex. “An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions,” he said.

As I said at the time, “This sweeping statement, which will be cited in every lawsuit on this subject, is manifestly false.” I gave the following example. “If a man volunteers to be a Big Brother, working with fatherless boys, and desires to ‘transition’ to a woman, he cannot reasonably be expected to do the job he was hired to do. He deliberately changed the required profile. This should clearly be grounds for termination.”

The problem with Gorsuch’s position is that it is based on a flawed anthropology. As such, it makes for bad law and bad public policy. “Had it been a more narrow ruling,” I said, “tailored to the specific instances of workplace discrimination, there would be no tidal wave of lawsuits. But now that the moral order has been further diced and spliced by the courts—thanks to this classic case of judicial overreach—it is a sure bet there will be.”

What is before the court today is a clear demonstration of the validity of my concerns.

If guys can compete against gals in sports, there is no reason why they can’t share the same locker rooms, bathroom facilities and showers. This is exactly what happened. Gorsuch was not unaware that this was a real possibility when he rendered his decision, he simply said that was an issue for another day. He wrote, “we do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of this kind.” He explicitly said such matters are “questions for future cases,” and left it at that. Now that day is upon him.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissent in Bostock, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. He did not take kindly to Gorsuch’s dismissive comments. “The Court’s brusque refusal to consider the consequences of its reasoning is irresponsible.” Indeed, he said, “Before issuing today’s radical decision, the Court should have given some thought to where its decision would lead.” He got specific.

“The Court may wish to avoid this subject, but it is a matter of concern to many people who are reticent about disrobing or using toilet facilities in the presence of individuals whom they regard as members of the opposite sex. For some, this may simply be a question of modesty, but for others, there is more at stake. For women who have been victimized by sexual assault or abuse, the experience of seeing an unclothed person with the anatomy of a male in a confined and sensitive location such as a bathroom or locker room can cause serious psychological harm.”

Again, the fact that such a commonsensical understanding of human nature has to be articulated before the United States Supreme Court shows how ideologically corrupt we have been become. It is not the ordinary American who is the problem—it is elite decision makers.

The high court needs to speak with clarity. They can begin by simply stating that there is no objective human category as a transgender person. This means (a) all human beings are either male or female and, (b) we cannot change our sex. It’s time for a dramatic reset: we need to respect women’s rights—not the rights of men who falsely claim to be a woman.

Bill Donohue

Orwell warned us about elites who manipulate the masses by manipulating the language, and subsequent events have proven him to be more accurate than previously believed. It is our secular elites, in particular, who seek to control language so as to abet thought control. Before examining some recent examples, it is important to recognize that changes in our lexicon are not always the result of some sinister scheme.

For many years, those with low mental attributes were mostly called “imbeciles,” “morons,” and “idiots,” but in 1895 a new term was introduced that was considered less stigmatizing, “mental retardation.” But the shorthand, calling someone a “retard,” was later seen as patently offensive, so by the 1960s terms like “intellectual disability” became more acceptable. There was nothing nefarious about these linguistic transitions.

The same is true for describing the races.

“Colored people” was such a customary term in the early twentieth century that black Americans of African ancestry decided to call a newly established civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Founded in 1909, it goes by the same name today. The United Negro College Fund, founded in 1944, also goes by the same name today, even though “negro,” like “colored people,” has fallen out of favor.

In the 1960s, “black” became the popular racial descriptive, and in the early 1990s it was replaced by “African American,” even though polls showed that the preferred term was still “black.” Again, this transition was not done to serve some political agenda.

The politicization of language today is most evident in the way we think about immigrants who have come to the United States illegally. Virtually everyone called such people “illegal aliens,” and that is because they were foreigners who entered the country by breaking the law. But in 2010, a “Drop the I-Word” campaign was launched to get rid of “illegal aliens” and replace it with “undocumented immigrant.” In 2013, the Associated Press dropped “illegal immigrant” from its stylebook after liberal scholars protested.

In 2014, under Obama, the government adopted more “inclusive” language. But it wasn’t until the Biden administration that “illegal aliens” was summarily rejected; this was in keeping with its “open borders” approach to immigration. Now that Trump is back in the White House, “illegal aliens” is also back. Unfazed, the New York Times likes to talk about “noncitizens.”

The best examples of twisting the language to accommodate the politics of elites are found by studying matters sexual.

Anyone doing research on violence committed by people who falsely claim to belong to the opposite sex will notice that what we call today “transgender” people were either called “transsexuals” or “transvestites” in the late 1990s. This can get really confusing. Before this century, reporters accurately referred to Jim, who chose Jane as his “transition” name, as Jim. Today he is called Jane and is falsely referred to as “she/her.”

Megyn Kelly created a firestorm in November when she said it was inaccurate to call Jeffrey Epstein a “pedophile.” She was not dismissing his monstrous acts, only pointing out that most of his victims were not prepubescent. I defended her, pointing out that when homosexual priests were being outed for abusing minors, they were falsely called “pedophiles,” so as to avoid calling them homosexuals. Yet only 3.8 percent of the victims of clergy sexual abuse met the clinical definition of pedophilia. The reaction against me was voluminous and vicious.

Another lexicon game is being played by those who refer to men who have sex with adolescents as “ephebophiles.” It’s a game because heterosexuals who abuse minors are never called “ephebophiles”—it’s selectively invoked to avoid referring to homosexuals when adult men molest teenage males.

Homosexuals began referring to themselves as “gay” in the 1920s, a decade of decadence in the West, and it became routine in the 1960s, another morally debased decade. The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press ended their usage of “homosexual” in the 2010s and started using “LGBT,” which by now has taken on a never-ending alphabet of “persons.”

It was left to a New Zealand psychologist, Dr. John Money, to scrap our vocabulary of the term “sexual preference,” substituting “sexual orientation” instead. The Johns Hopkins professor was active in the mid-twentieth century manipulating the language to serve his sexual agenda. “Sexual preference” indicated that our attraction was a matter of choice, and that was taboo; “sexual orientation” accomplished his goal.

Money was not some disinterested “scientist.” He was a pedophile who sought to normalize man-boy sex, lobbied to eliminate the age of consent, and wanted to legalize father-daughter and mother-son sex.

When language is used to obfuscate, to confuse, and to manipulate, it is done to serve a cause, and should be condemned as such. When innocent people are hurt as a result, we are dealing with evil. Such persons—always the elites—do not want to elucidate, they want to dominate.

Language evolves, sometimes for noble purposes. Beware of instances when the motive is corrupt. When the end result is thought control, we are dealing with totalitarians.

Bill Donohue

In 1998, a Gallup poll asked respondents if they thought the state of moral values would be better or worse in 2025. It found that 62 percent predicted it would be worse. Were they right? The data show they were.

In 2022, a Gallup poll found that “a record-high 50 percent of Americans rated the overall state of moral values as ‘poor,’ and another 37 percent said it was ‘only fair.’ The public was pessimistic about the future: 78 percent say morals are getting worse.” But why? Consider the results of a 2024 survey by Pew Research Center.

It found that 80 percent of Americans say that religion’s role in American life is shrinking, and most concluded that it was not a good thing. This is significant given that this was the highest percentage ever recorded in a Pew survey on this issue. It was also found that 57 percent of Americans expressed a positive view of religion’s influence in American life.

To summarize, the public predicted more than a quarter century ago that the moral state of affairs would trend south, and subsequently they have been proven right. Moreover, they identified the decreasing role of religion as an important source of that decline. So where does that leave us?

We learned a few months ago from a Gallup poll that Americans are divided on what is considered moral. It cuts primarily along religious-secular lines. For example, Democrats and young people tend to be secularists, and they prize animal rights over the rights of unborn human babies. Those who are religious—they tend to be Republicans and older people—sharply disagree with them.

A Pew survey taken around the same time last year, found that the more religious a person is, the more likely he is to say there are “clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong.” On the other hand, secularists are moral relativists, sizing up moral issues on the basis of their own moral compass.

Now it makes sense that if one rejects the idea that there are absolute standards for what is right and wrong, e.g. as found in the Ten Commandments, then the natural guide to moral issues is one’s own conscience. The problem with that view is that every genocidal maniac and serial rapist who ever lived also had a conscience, so on what basis can moral relativists say they are wrong? Religious folks have no such dilemma.

To be sure, there are religious people who hold to clear moral standards who are extremists, and many are hypocrites. But to judge the efficacy of any ethical standard as exercised by extremists is obviously a non-starter—it makes as much sense as judging those on a diet by those who are starving themselves to death.  And to point to hypocrites is also a non-starter—it has no bearing on whether the moral standard itself is sound or not.

We need to have a national conversation about this issue. If our collective  moral house is in trouble, and the public also believes it is not a good thing that religion is losing influence, then ways to enhance religious beliefs and practices must be found. The alternative is more radical autonomy, the very condition that is driving our moral crisis.

Bill Donohue

Media coverage of the person who is accused of vandalizing the home of Vice President J.D. Vance failed to report that the suspect, William D. DeFoor, may have been transgender and requested the police call him “Julia.”

A search of TV news coverage found that none of the major networks (ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS) mentioned that DeFoor wanted to be called “Julia,” and instead simply chose to refer to him as a man. In addition, CNN and MSNOW (formerly MSNBC) failed to mention these facts.

A search of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and USA Today found that all of them referred to the suspect as a man, without any mention of him being called “Julia.” Similarly, the major news services (Associated Press and Reuters) also failed to mention this.

The only major mainstream media outlet that mentioned the suspect’s name was Newsweek. They hastened to say that it is “unclear whether DeFoor is transgender, non-binary or just using a different name.”

While the mainstream media failed to cover the suspect’s name change, several conservative news outlets made mention of it. Stories in the New York Post, Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, the Daily Mail and The Telegraph all mentioned the name change to “Julia.”

One media source, gbnews.com, reports that the suspect “appears to have transitioned and now identifies on social media as a transgender woman named Julia.” Also, “A Facebook profile reflecting this new identity was established in December, with the first profile picture uploaded on 15 December.”

If reporters in Great Britian can figure this out, what is wrong with the American media?

This is hardly the first time the media have decided to downplay or ignore the role that transgender persons play in violent crimes. Yet if the suspect is a former altar boy, everyone learns of it. This is politics, plain and simple—the politics that is sympathetic to the LGBT crowd.