Bill Donohue

The difference between left-wing religious groups and left-wing secularist groups is miniscule. Both are more worried about bias against midgets than Christians, and that is not an exaggeration. In fact, when left-wing religious groups speak about anti-Christian bias, they can’t help but write about “so-called ‘anti-Christian bias.’”

That’s exactly the way the Interfaith Alliance characterizes President Trump’s directive to Pam Bondi, who heads the Department of Justice. She is in charge of a task force to root out anti-Christian bias in the federal government; the Catholic League is proud to assist her in that effort.

The Interfaith Alliance is a hodgepodge of left-wing activists, spread across a variety of religions. It needs to be asked: Why would a group of professed religious people be against efforts to combat anti-Christian bias? Indeed, this is the only bias they appear to be okay with. To be exact, they deny it even exists.

Earlier in the year, after Trump made his announcement about establishing a Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, and the task force on anti-Christian bias, the Interfaith Alliance issued a statement saying, “There is no evidence of widespread anti-Christian bias in the United States….”

If that were the case, the Catholic League would not exist. We don’t create bigotry, we respond to it. But in the minds of those affiliated with the Interfaith Alliance, the very fact we fight anti-Christian speech and behavior means we are a threat to liberty. Read what they say.

“While this effort may appear to address certain forms of stigma against Christians, particularly against Catholics, in reality it will weaponize a narrow understanding of religious freedom to legitimize discrimination against marginalized groups like the LGBTQ community, infringe on our reproductive freedom, and hurt our society’s most vulnerable.”

In other words, those who fight anti-Christian bigotry are actually advancing discrimination against gay and transgender activists. How so? By objecting to “Drag Queen Story Hours” for children? By opposing genital mutilation for minors? Moreover, by opposing those who infringe on the health of unborn babies, how are we the guilty ones?

The guy who runs the Interfaith Alliance, Paul Raushenbush, is a homosexual Baptist minister who insists he is married to a man; he and his partner are raising children (who are obviously not their own). He is so extreme that he says efforts to combat anti-Christian deeds are actually expressions of “Christian nationalism.” Got it? Christians who object to intolerance are agents of intolerance.

A statement of the Interfaith Alliance’s vision is available on its website. It says it believes in “freedom, not extremism.” It lists three examples: LGBTQ freedom, reproductive freedom and countering hate. Regarding the latter, it names “antisemitism and Islamophobia” as a problem. What about anti-Christian bigotry? Nope. But it does mention the scourge of “Christian Nationalism.”

The Interfaith Alliance was founded in 1994, and in 1996, when I was in this job for only a few years, the Catholic League was named to its “Enemies List.” I issued a statement at that time, boasting of our inclusion. I also noted that the Interfaith Alliance accepted $25,000 in start-up funds from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Some things never change.

In 2010, the Interfaith Alliance joined with GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) and Call to Action (a defunct group of mostly ex-Catholics) in demanding the media “ignore Bill Donohue.” Looks like they lost.

Ironically, the Interfaith Alliance’s opposition to fighting anti-Christian bigotry validates the very reason why President Trump formalized efforts to combat it. For that they are to be commended—their contribution will not go unnoticed.

Bill in the News (American Spectator): Today, four percent of Americans still wear masks when going to stores and other businesses. Who are they? A recent Pew Research survey revealed that they are mostly Democrats. This explains why the majority of Republicans (62 percent) said that during the pandemic, there should have been fewer restrictions, but only a few Democrats (15 percent) agree. The conclusion is inescapable: those on the left like masks. READ MORE HERE

Bill Donohue

Few Americans will publicly admit that they don’t believe in free speech, yet attacks on it are commonplace. How can this be? While some are simply lying, others entertain a notion of free speech that allows them to be censorious while professing allegiance to it. This is true of Republicans, conservatives, Democrats and liberals, though recent evidence shows that the latter two categories are the most guilty.

Two years ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released a survey of 45,000 college students from 201 colleges. It found that liberals were the most intolerant of free speech.

That same year Real Clear Opinion released a survey on this topic and found that Democrats were the least supportive of free speech and the most supportive of censoring speech they found disagreeable. In fact, a third said Americans have “too much freedom.” The figure for Republicans was 14.6 percent.

Two events occurred this month that shed light on this issue.

On April 8, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at Princeton University. At least he tried to.

About 150 people showed up outside the building where he was to speak, chanting anti-Semitic slogans. After he spoke for about 15 minutes, some 20 people, most of whom were students, shouted him down, accusing him of genocide. Shortly after they were escorted out, a pro-Hamas activist started screaming at him, stopping his address. Ten minutes later the fire alarm went off, shutting down all the microphones.

Princeton is an elite school, but it has little respect for free speech. In the 2025 survey by FIRE of 251 colleges, Princeton ranked 223, meriting a rating of “below average” on the free speech scale. The situation is so bad on campus, especially with regard to stifling the speech of Jewish students, that the Trump administration has halted dozens of research grants to the Ivy League school.

The other event was held on April 3 at Hamilton College.

Former President Barack Obama sat down for an interview, answering lots of questions. No one interrupted him. He questioned the nation’s allegiance to free speech, asking, “Do we stand up for freedom of speech when the other person talking is saying stuff that infuriates us and is wrong and hurtful?”

The right answer is, “No, we don’t.” And that is because it is almost always left-wing students, faculty, administrators and activists who censor speech on campus, and elsewhere. It is the elites who allow the muzzling of free speech, not rednecks.

Obama knows this to be true, yet in his discussion he never mentioned who the offenders are. Had they been the Proud Boys, it’s a sure bet he would have noted it. But he did complain about the denial of funding to colleges that show contempt for free speech, as if somehow they are entitled to it.

The former president should be very careful pointing the finger at anyone. When he was in office, he was known for disrespecting the conscience rights of Catholic healthcare workers and grant recipients who disagreed with his policies on abortion, marriage and the family. If they voiced their objections, they were candidates for sanctions.

Obama is hardly the only Democrat with a free speech problem.

Last fall, when former Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to the globalists at the World Economic Forum, he decried what he called “disinformation” efforts [the intentional distortion of information], saying, “our First Amendment stands as a major block to the ability to be able to hammer [it] out of existence.” In other words, the First Amendment is a problem because it stymies attempts to stop speech that John Kerry claims is disinformation.

Hillary Clinton, champ of Russian dossier propaganda, said last year that Americans should be “criminally charged” if they engage in speech that she deems “propaganda,” or what she calls “Russian talking points.” Also last year, Minnesota Governor (and failed vice president candidate) Tim Walz said, “There’s no guarantee of free speech on misinformation [mistaken information] or hate speech.” Got that? So if someone errs in reporting the news, his speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

The Biden administration went further and invoked a new category of unworthy speech, namely “malinformation.” This is information that is “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

To cite one example, when this linguistic weapon was invented in 2023, it was used against Jacob Sullum, a noted libertarian, after he said that the CDC had repeatedly exaggerated the scientific evidence upon which the mask mandate was formulated. Facebook attached a warning to his article, saying it was “missing context” and “could mislead people.”

In a poll of voters taken in November, it was found that a majority of those who voted for Donald Trump rated “the future of free speech in this country” as “the single most important factor” affecting their vote. Only a minority of those who voted for Kamala Harris felt this way.

In short, liberals have a big problem with free speech.

Michael P. McDonald

On March 27, 2023, Audrey Hale, a woman who falsely claimed to be a man, attacked the Covenant Presbyterian Church and School in Nashville killing six innocent people, three of whom were children. Over two years later, the Metro Nashville Police Department released its report into the deadly assault.

Given that the report acknowledges that “the amount of information Hale left behind was far more than is usually available in a criminal investigation,” one might expect that the nearly 50-page document would leave no stone unturned. But instead of providing a comprehensive overview of this tragedy, the report protects secular-liberal biases ignoring Hale’s violent commentaries on sex, race, and religion.

Indeed, the report gives little mind to any of these. For instance, it only mentions twice that Hale was a lesbian. Similarly, the report almost entirely ignores that Hale misidentified as a male. There are only two instances that this is brought up, and one of these times was to explain why the report would use pronouns that reflect biological reality and proper grammar. The other was to note that although Hale “made statements about wanting to transition genders” and used “the name ‘Aiden Williams’” and “male pronouns,” she was “not undergoing any transition at the time of her death.”

In addition to the subject of sex, the report downplays Hale’s views on race. The report reveals that in December of 2018, Hale began planning to attack a school. Initially, she wanted to target Creswell Middle School, a magnate school for arts which she attended. However, by March of 2020, Hale decided against the attack because Creswell had a large minority student body, and she did not want to be seen as racist. At this point, she turned her focus on Covenant because more white children attended the school.

In fact, Hale’s race consciousness played a significant role in her life. The report briefly discusses that Hale’s writings were full of what she dubbed “rage storms,” essentially unhinged and violent rants. At first, these “rage storms” focused on how she felt rejected by society. In time, the report notes that these would expand to other issues such as “being ostracized by black culture despite her longing for acceptance” and “white privilege.”

Another bias that the report glosses over was Hale’s attitudes about Christians. The report notes that when Hale first decided to attack a school she also began writing about how she resented living at home and the control her mother had over her. Of particular interest, the report notes that Hale “feared to open up to her mother about her being a lesbian, believing her mother’s ‘traditional Christian’ values would make her incapable of understanding, if not derisive towards her daughter’s orientation.” Indeed, “Hale considered this a wedge between them.”

Further, the report goes on to say that Hale “believed the Christian faith of those within [Covenant] would make them meek and afraid.”

Yet despite this evidence that the report clearly cites, its authors disregard these factors to make the final assessment. Chiefly among these concerns is an attempt to demonstrate that Hale did not specifically choose to target white Christian children.

While the primary evidence that the report relies on to make this claim is statements by Hale “that the race, religion, gender, or other demographic categories of her victims would not matter,” the evidence above clearly show that these factors featured significantly in her writings and planning of the assault. It would seem as though the report twists logic to avoid drawing a certain conclusion that runs contrary to the predominant secular-liberal narrative.

Even in the section of the report dedicated to debunking the claim that “Hale selected this location [Covenant] for racial, religious or economic reasons,” the report undermines this claim, and as a result, the report trips over its own arguments and undercuts its own conclusions.

But then again, the authors of this report love playing these games. There is an entire page dedicated to what is and is not a manifesto. Rather than obscuring the facts of this tragedy with mental gymnastics, it would be nice if the authors of the report would get their secular-liberal biases out of the way so they could provide an unvarnished version of the story.

Bill Donohue

It is hard to know what is sicker—a Colorado bill that would gut parental rights or the basis upon which it rests.

The bill would punish parents who do not align themselves with the wishes of their transgender children. Indeed, it grants the government the right to take them away from them. All they have to do to trigger this brazen denial of parental rights is to refer to their children in terms that reflect their nature-determined sex.

That’s right, the authorities can seize your son, Sam, if he wants to be called Sally and you call him Sam. The bill would make this illegal. It’s called “Deadnaming.” Your child can also be taken from you if you refer to Sam as “he” or “him,” instead of “she” or “her,” or “they” or “them.” This is called “misgendering.”

In other words, the rights of mentally challenged children—who are contemplating, or have completed, a regiment of puberty blockers and genital mutilation—trump the rights of parents who want to help them. Parents who violate these provisions are deemed guilty of “coercive control” under the law. The bill also says that the courts do not have to respect laws in other states that make it illegal for parents to allow their child to “transition” to the other sex.

In an unusual move, the bill passed the mostly Democratic Colorado House of Representatives on Sunday, April 6. In doing so, it clearly stuck it to Christians who opposed it. Indeed, they were told by the bill’s  sponsors that parental rights should not even be discussed!

It will now be heard by the mostly Democratic Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee. If it passes, it will go to the mostly Democratic Colorado Senate. The Democratic governor, Jared Polis, is a homosexual fan of radical gay and transgender rights. Perhaps he will wait until Good Friday to sign it.

No state has anything like this on the books. Even Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a similar bill.

The Colorado bill that passed, HB 1312, explicitly refers to the legislation as the “Kelly Loving Act.”

Kelly Loving was murdered in 2022 at a nightclub in Colorado Springs. Five were killed and 25 injured when a madman opened up on them with an AR-15 rifle. But it wasn’t an ordinary club—it was an LGBTQ hot spot. And Kelly was no ordinary person: he falsely claimed to be a woman. It appears Kelly was named Jonathan Ray Loving, and later adopted a female name after becoming confused about his sex.

After the massacre, President Joe Biden denounced it as an attack on LGBTQ people, saying, “We cannot and must not tolerate hate.” The mayor in Colorado Springs said the shooting “has all the appearances of being a hate crime.”

But is it a “hate crime” when transgender people kill transgender people? People of the same race kill people of the same race all the time, and no one calls such acts a “hate crime.” Yet as we have shown before, transgender-on-transgender crime is commonplace.

The person who killed Kelly Loving was Nicholas Franklin Brink. But he later changed his name to Anderson Lee Aldrich because he did not want to be associated with his father. When he went on his killing spree, he was a 22-year-old sexually confused person who falsely claimed to be neither a man nor a woman. He called himself “non-binary” (there is no such thing) and wanted others to falsely refer to him as “they” or “them.”

The killer’s father was a porn actor, and after his parents divorced—he was one-year-old—he grew up mentally disturbed and was arrested several times (a SWAT team had to be sent to his house when he threatened to blow it up). In 2021, he told his grand-aunt he wanted to kill Christians.

Colorado Democrat Rep. Yara Zokaie, who co-sponsored the bill in the House, credits the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with justifying excluding parental rights from discussion on the bill.

SPLC is a well-funded hate group that is cited by the media as a specialist in identifying hate groups. Following suit, Zokaie censored those who sought to speak against her bill, saying, “we don’t ask someone passing civil rights legislation to go ask the KKK for their opinion.”

A search of the website of SPLC found that the first eleven posts under the banner “parental rights” are all about race, poverty, neo-Nazis, migrants and LGBTQ rights. In short, they have absolutely nothing to do with parental rights. The twelfth post is on parental rights. However it does not mean what is traditionally understood: it defends the right of parents to keep obscene books in elementary school libraries, not the right of parents who object.

Recent elections and surveys prove that attacks on the rights of women and parents is a losing game. But for some reason many Democrats are not listening, and nowhere is this more evident than in Colorado.

Contact the Chairman of the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee: [email protected]

Bill Donohue

This is an abbreviated version of a longer article, “Why The Need To Bash Opus Dei?”, that appears in the April edition of “Catalyst,” our monthly journal that is available to members.

Opus Dei is loved by millions of Catholics all over the world for its yeoman efforts in getting Catholics to practice their religion more seriously. Founded in 1928 by a Spanish priest, Josemaria Escrivá, it is a spiritual home to lay Catholics and clerics who are com

mitted to living the faith on a daily basis; most are laypersons. Escrivá was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002.

Militant secularists, and many so-called progressive Catholics, hate Opus Dei. Why? It symbolizes everything they detest: it is unashamedly Catholic, orthodox, and wildly successful.

The latest effort to trash Opus Dei is a book by Gareth Gore, Opus. Like so many who hate the organization, he is caught up in the mystique of Opus Dei. He can’t understand why men and women are drawn to an entity that is so deeply religious, especially given the decidedly secular bent of western civilization. On top of that, he is a sloppy writer.

His book is strewn with hyperbole, innuendo and out-and-out falsehoods. Yet he had the audacity to say in an interview that his book is “100 percent correct.” Here are a few examples of his inattention to detail.

“During a trip to Nicaragua, the pope refused to let one cardinal kiss his ring because he had disobeyed a papal order.” But Ernesto Cardenal was not a cardinal—he was a priest. More important, he was Minister of Culture who worked for the communist dictator, Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista thug who has impoverished and enslaved the people of Nicaragua (he is still doing this today). With good reason did Saint John Paul II rebuke him.

Gore says that Mother Teresa of Calcutta attended the beatification of Saint Josemaria—she did not. Also, when he died the servants did not have to be awaken in the middle of the night to make preparations—he died in the middle of the day.

The well respected Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. has not been staffed by an Opus Dei priest for the past forty years; that didn’t happen until 1992. Gore also says that there are “hundreds of similar centers around the world.” In fact, there are only two.

Gore can’t get over how financially successful Opus Dei is. So what? Does anyone complain about Harvard’s outsized endowment? It has well over $50 billion. To show how truly sloppy he is—his editors are just as remiss—he writes that “millions of dollars were spent on a huge school-building program across Spain.” Yet his footnote refers exclusively to summer camps!

It is to be expected that Gore would not pass up the chance to trot out a case of the sexual abuse of minors. But when he cites the case of a married layman who was guilty of molestation, accusing Opus Dei of never reporting it, he is showcasing his sophomoric research. The abuse occurred in the man’s home and Opus Dei never knew about it.

Malice, not ignorance, is at work when Gore portrays the late Cardinal George Pell as a pedophile. As anyone who knows anything about this issue, the fabricated charges against Pell were thrown out of court. Indeed, he was unanimously acquitted. I have personally written a great deal about this subject, and I find mindboggling that Gore’s editors would allow him to promote this invidious falsehood.

It is so typical of left-wing writers to malign the Catholic Church for reaching out to young people, depicting such efforts as something nefarious. Gore does the same to Opus Dei.

We learn that young people are not attracted to Opus Dei because of what it stands for; they are “recruited” and “captured” by its adult members. Gore must be thinking of the way left-wing college professors manipulate and recruit unsuspecting students, indoctrinating them in the latest Marxist iteration.

It is important to note that even fair-minded liberal reviewers of Gore’s book see right through his agenda. That is why Matt Murray, the executive editor of the Washington Post, took issue with his “rather partisan” approach, saying it sometimes comes across as a “slog.” Indeed, Murray says that “Gore can’t hide his disdain for the founder.” This accounts for his “snarky” style and his “tone of snideness.” Gore’s disdain also extends to questioning “truths,” which is why he puts the word in quotes.

When this review was published, Gore went ballistic, invoking obscenities. Instead of defending his work, he chose to berate Murray for taking “time out of his busy schedule to basically say that my book doesn’t include enough positive stuff about Opus Dei.”

With good reason does Murray say that “some chapters read more like a prosecutor’s brief” than a fair assessment of Opus Dei. This leads him to conclude that the book lacks a “nuanced understanding of the organization.” Gore greets this criticism with indignance, but that doesn’t prove Murray wrong.

It is said that education can conquer ignorance. Not if it is willed. Ideologues are not persuaded by empirical evidence, data, and logic. They are informed by a set of tightly woven ideas that are impervious to reason.

Bill Donohue

Theodore McCarrick died April 3 at the age of 94. The defrocked cardinal was known for decades as one of the most influential prelates in America. He was also a masterful fundraiser and a notorious homosexual whose predatory behavior is legendary.

Contrary to what the Washington Post editorialized in 2019, it was not the media that revealed McCarrick’s offenses—it was New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan.

Dolan’s Independent  Reconciliation and Compensation Program was responsible for outing McCarrick. Dolan went public after one of McCarrick’s victims came forward. As I said in my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse, “How many rapists who work in the media—think of CBS and NBC—have had one of their senior officials turn them in? None.”

McCarrick was not content to be a good priest. The report on him, known as “The McCarrick Report,” found that when he was Archbishop of Newark, he told two bishops of his quest to succeed Cardinal John O’Connor as the Archbishop of New York (he had been an auxiliary bishop there in the late 1970s-early 1980s). He “pounded the table and blurted out ‘I deserve New York.’”

In the mid-1990s, McCarrick called to congratulate me for fighting anti-Catholicism. I had been in the job for only a few years. I was struck when he told me of his desire to come across the Hudson and become the successor to Cardinal O’Connor. Why, I wondered, would he tell me? It was obvious that he was consumed with this issue.

None of this would have come as a surprise to those who knew him when he was a monsignor in the late 1960s. He was assessed by his superiors as being overly “ambitious.”

In the 1980s, McCarrick first served as the Bishop of Metuchen, and then as Archbishop of Newark. This is when he began his predatory behavior. It was at his beach house on the Jersey Shore where he would invite seminarians to stay with him. He would intentionally invite more men than he had beds for. This set the stage: he would invite one of them to sleep with him. He often succeeded. He also had sex with seminarians in the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan.

McCarrick justified his behavior by telling the seminarians that “priests engaging in sexual activity with each other was normal and accepted in the United States, especially in that diocese.” While this was an obvious rationalization, it was not altogether incorrect. The homosexual network at that time was extensive.

His sexual romps were known to many of the New Jersey bishops, but they did nothing about it. Nor did they say a word when McCarrick grabbed the crotch of a priest at the dinner table—they simply looked away.

Were there any good guys? Yes. Cardinal O’Connor was not afraid to act. After fielding several complaints, he reported McCarrick to Vatican officials. But McCarrick had friends everywhere, and those who surrounded Pope John Paul II took his side when he contested O’Connor’s account. It took Pope Benedict XVI to get beyond this. In 2006, he accepted McCarrick’s resignation, something he had to offer when he turned seventy-five.

Travel restrictions were placed on McCarrick but he ignored them. He ignored them under Benedict and even more so under Pope Francis. He  did exactly what he wanted to and no one stopped him.

Unfortunately, McCarrick’s death does not put to rest all concerns.

The person who is currently in charge of the Vatican’s administrative duties is also the person who lived with McCarrick in Washington, D.C. for six years (McCarrick consecrated him in 2001), yet he claims that he never heard of any wrongdoing. Indeed, he “never suspected or ever had reason to suspect, any inappropriate conduct in Washington.” As I said in my book, “That would make him unique.”

His name is Cardinal Kevin Farrell. He is now the Camerlengo, or Chamberlain, responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the Vatican. He is very close to Pope Francis, who has elevated him to several high posts. Pope Francis also says he never heard about McCarrick’s predatory conduct, though others say they told him.

Farrell admitted in 2019 that he received a $29,000 gift from Bishop Michael Bransfield to refurbish his Rome apartment. A probe found that he had been using diocesan funds for these gifts and his own personal spending. He then returned the money; Bransfield was removed from office.

A priest was recently quoted saying that Farrell is holding “the fort down until the conclave elects a new pope.” Now that McCarrick is dead, it would be helpful if he told us more about his interactions with him. It would also be instructive to know why he thinks he was held in the dark when so many others at least heard of McCarrick’s offenses.

January 22, 2025

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde
Episcopal Church House
Mount St. Alban
Washington, D.C. 20016

Dear Bishop Budde:

At the January 21 prayer service at Washington National Cathedral that featured President Trump, you mentioned that “people in our country are scared now.” You singled out people who “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” as well as LGBTQ persons. These people “fear for their lives.” You then made a plea to “find compassion.”

Your commitment to compassion is noble, but it is misplaced.

I work in New York City, and I witness daily how many New Yorkers are “scared” and “fear for their lives.” They are afraid of being mugged, beaten, raped and killed, often by people who have crashed our borders, people you refer to as lacking “proper documentation.” They, and in some cases their surviving families, are deserving of compassion. More than that, they are deserving of justice, and that means that illegal alien criminals must be apprehended and deported.

You are right to call attention to violence against LGBTQ persons. They have every right to be “scared” and “fear for their lives.” What you don’t mention is that the people who are most likely to victimize them are people just like them. In other words, it is not heterosexual guys who are beating up on gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons—it is people in their own ranks. It is called “intimate partner violence,” and the studies show how prevalent it is among LGBTQ persons.

In 2022, Psycom Pro, a psychiatry resource for clinicians, concluded that “More than half of transgender individuals experience partner violence or gender identity abuse.”

In 2020, seven experts published a study in the American Journal of Public Health on this subject and concluded that “Transgender individuals experience a dramatically higher prevalence of IPV [intimate partner violence] victimization compared with cisgender individuals [those who accept their sex identity], regardless of sex assigned at birth.”

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reviewed the literature on this subject and found that “43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to 35% of cisgender women.” It also found that transgender individuals experienced the highest rate of intimate partner violence.

The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, reviewed a number of studies on this subject. One of them found that “31.1% of transgender people and 20.4% of cisgender people had ever experienced IPV or dating violence.” It also said that three studies concluded that the lifetime intimate partner sexual violence prevalence among transgender people ranged from “25.0% to 47.0%.”

Even in sympathetic pop culture magazines, such as Portland Monthly, it is acknowledged that “statistically speaking, the most common perpetrators of violence against trans women are domestic partners.”

In short, misdirected compassion is not virtuous. You need to make a public statement addressing the fallacies of your remarks.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

On January 4, President Biden gave the Medal of Freedom to George Soros. It is the nation’s highest civilian award, given to “individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.” The White House said those who received the award are “great leaders because they are good people who have made extraordinary contributions to their country and the world.”

The truth is that George Soros has done more to destroy western civilization and the United States, in particular, than any single person in the world. An inveterate anti-Catholic bigot, his anti-law enforcement policies have impoverished and punished legions of innocent black Americans. A self-hating Jew, he has been condemned by Jewish leaders in the United States and Israel.

Soros has sought to destabilize America by supporting open borders, welcoming those who have illegally entered the country. His embrace of Black Lives Matter, which has openly said it wants to destroy the nuclear family, is of a piece with his attacks on the criminal justice system. He funded the most radical district attorneys in the nation, the result of which has been a dramatic increase in crime by repeat offenders.

Soros’ Open Society Institute has waged war on Catholics for decades. It funds many dissident organizations, activist groups that falsely claim to be Catholic. They include Catholics for Choice, a pro-abortion, anti-Catholic letterhead funded by the likes of Soros. He was also the money behind Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United, two front-groups set up by

Clinton aide John Podesta to create a “Catholic Spring” revolution in the Church.

Though Soros is Jewish, he has been accused by the ADL of blaming anti-Semitism in Israel on the Israeli government, and the Jerusalem Post has accused him of weakening support for Israel in the Democratic Party. The editor of the New Republic, Martin Peretz, called him “a cog in the Hitlerite wheel.”

As a young man in Hungary, Soros became a Nazi collaborator. In a “60 Minutes” interview he admitted that he helped confiscate property from Jews. He told Steve Kroft that he never regretted doing so. When asked if this was difficult, Soros said, “Not, not at all.” Stunned, Kroft said, “No feeling of guilt?” “No” came the reply.

Biden has been telling us for four years how much he supports DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). His decision to honor George Soros, the world’s most influential anti-Catholic bigot, shows what a liar this “devout Catholic” really is.

Bill Donohue

Pew Research Center recently released its third Religious Landscape Study; previously ones were conducted in 2007 and 2014. Its latest study, which reports on findings from 2023-2024, covers a wide range of subjects, broken down by religious affiliation.

Seven-in-ten Americans belong to a religion, and all but seven percent are not Christians; three-in-ten are unaffiliated. One of the key aspects of this survey was the finding that the apparent decline in Christianity has stabilized.

More than eight-in-ten Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, and this includes the majority of the unaffiliated. This category consists of three groupings: atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe in “nothing in particular.” Seven-in-ten of the latter believe in God, as do 43 percent of agnostics and seven percent of atheists. Interestingly, only a thin majority of atheists (54 percent) are “absolutely certain” there is no God.

Eight-in-ten Americans believe “there is something spiritual beyond the natural world, even if we can’t see it”; this is also true of nearly 60 percent of the religiously unaffiliated. This includes a majority of agnostics, two-in-three of those who believe in “nothing in particular,” and two-in-ten atheists.

This suggests that there are very few materialists in America (those who believe that nothing exists outside of matter).

Politically speaking, we have known for a long time that Republicans are much more likely to score high on religiosity (beliefs and practices) than Democrats. This survey shows once again that the Democratic Party is home to secularists, the only exception being black Democrats.

Most religiously affiliated Americans have come to terms with homosexuality, saying it should be accepted, not discouraged. The exceptions are Evangelicals, Mormons and Muslims. The same breakdown is evident on the subject of same-sex marriage.

When it comes to accepting transgender people, however, there is a big divide between those who are religiously affiliated and the unaffiliated (twice as many of the former say acceptance is a “change for the worse” compared to the unaffiliated.)

The issues of women in the workforce and family responsibilities depend largely on context. While most (73 percent) cheer women’s increased workforce participation, a majority (55 percent) say it is better for a child with two parents to have one stay at home. Context—marriage and the family—explains the apparent disparity. The religiously affiliated are more likely to say it is better to have one parent stay at home (59 percent) than the religiously unaffiliated (47 percent).

Context also matters in making judgments about right and wrong. A majority (55 percent) say it “often depends” on the situation, while 44 percent say there are “clear and absolute standards for what is right and wrong.” The problem with this line of questioning is that those who believe in the latter may also believe that there are times when no “clear and absolute standards” exist, hence the caveat that it “often depends.” Thus, such persons may not be holding contradictory positions.

More Americans believe religion does more good than harm. As expected, this varies widely when comparing the religiously affiliated to the unaffiliated. Unfortunately, there has been a dramatic decline in those who express mostly positive opinions about religious institutions—a drop of 12 percent from a decade ago (from 63 percent to 51 percent). Given the generally negative portrayals of religion in the media and in the entertainment industry, this is not surprising.

Social capital refers to the general wellbeing, or health, of society. We know from many studies that those who score high on religiosity possess more of the resources that service the public weal. It is not in the best interests of society, then, to discourage the responsible exercise of religious beliefs and practices. On that score, America can stand to improve.