Bill Donohue

Christopher Durang died on April 2nd. In its obituary on the homosexual anti-Catholic playwright, the New York Times predictably treated him with admiration, saying he had an “impish wit.”

Durang was an only child who grew up in a home with an alcoholic father and a mother who suffered from depression. He attended a Catholic elementary school and, like so many gay Catholics, he turned his anger at the Church, calling its teachings on sexuality “pathological” and “unhealthy.” He never explained why, if gay sex is not unhealthy, so many homosexuals die prematurely of sexually transmitted diseases.

The most anti-Catholic, and celebrated, play that Durang ever wrote was “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.” The Times obit branded it “an absurdist lacerating one-act” play. It said not a word about its vicious portrayal of Catholicism.

The obit mentions that when the play opened, Frank Rich, the longtime arts critic for the Times, said, “Only a writer of real talent can write an angry play that remains funny and controlled even in its most savage moments.” It omitted what Rich said two sentences later. In his 1981 review, he wrote that the play “goes after the Catholic Church with a vengeance.”

There were many other prominent non-Catholics who labeled the play anti-Catholic.

In 1983, the Anti-Defamation League called it “offensive, unfair and demeaning.” The American Jewish Committee agreed. In 1985, the National Conference of Christians and Jews said it was “a travesty of Catholic teaching.” In 1990, an editorial in the Los Angeles Times noted that the play “takes a brutal, satirical look at Catholic dogma.” A theater critic for the Dallas Morning News commented in 1998 that it was “the most virulently anti-Catholic play in American theater.” And in 2001, the  Phoenix New Times labeled it “unmistakably anti-Catholic.”

None of these organizations and media outlets overreacted. Here is what I previously wrote about Durang’s masterpiece.

“The play features a malicious nun who is confronted by four of her former students. All of them are obviously dysfunctional, a condition directly traceable to their Catholic upbringing. The play not only manages to mock virtually every Catholic teaching, it goes after Jesus with a vengeance—from the Nativity to the Crucifixion; the Virgin Mary is similarly disparaged. In the end, the nun shoots and kills two of her ex-students.”

The New York Times knows all about the anti-Catholicism that marks “Sister Mary Ignatius,” but it is not offended. This explains why it never mentioned anything about Durang’s bigotry in its obit. It is not the same  newspaper it once was—on many fronts—having become the voice of the most left-wing activists in the country.

Contact the paper’s obit editor, William McDonald: wmcdon@nytimes.com

Bill Donohue

The Biden administration is wrong. The media are wrong. Snopes is wrong. Politifact is wrong. They are all guilty of misinformation: Religious Easter Eggs were allowed under President George W. Bush.

To see the proof for yourself, click here.

This was the Easter Egg that was one of 51 that were on display in 2002. It represented the state of New Mexico; no one complained.

This Easter Egg is an image of El Santuario de Chimayo, a small shrine located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Chimayo, New Mexico. It has been a place of worship since 1813, and is one of the most important Catholic pilgrimage centers in the United States.

The New Mexico artist responsible for this submission is Stan Franklin, a resident of Bosque Farms, New Mexico. According to one news story, he “chose a church theme to portray the Land of Enchantment. In pen, ink and acrylic paint, the drawing depicted the destination of the Good Friday Pilgrimage to Chimayo.”

When I learned of reports that prohibitions against displays of religious themes and symbols on Easter Eggs were commonplace before the Biden administration, I was skeptical. It took little time to investigate and prove them wrong.

Biden is the least religious-friendly president in American history, and attempts to rescue him from being tagged as such are pathetic. Mr. “Devout Catholic” is an embarrassment to practicing Catholics everywhere.

Contact the White House Press Secretary: Karine.Jean-Pierre@eop.gov

Bill Donohue

Leave it to shrinks and therapists to find new victims to treat. One of their latest discoveries are those who allegedly suffer from religious trauma. The goal is to have this declared a mental illness.

Religious trauma is defined as “The physical, emotional, or psychological response to religious beliefs, practices, or structures that is experienced by an individual as overwhelming or disruptive and has lasting adverse effects on a person’s physical, mental, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

That’s a mouthful. According to psychologist Marlene Winell, who coined the term “religious trauma syndrome,” at its worst religious trauma “is basically mind rape.” She called it a syndrome in 2012 because “the condition needed a name.” Smart move: It’s always good to put a name to something no one knows what you are talking about.

It basically refers to people who have had a bad experience with overbearing religious parents, members of the clergy, and the like. There’s nothing new about that. But it is quite a leap to claim that the overly zealous suffer from a mental illness. If anything, those who make such claims might be the ones who need professional help.

Winell was raised by missionary parents in Taiwan. She says they were too strict. Having experienced what she calls religious trauma syndrome first-hand, she contends that this condition applies to “people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination.”

If there is one place in American society today where dogmatic insistence on a core set of beliefs is commonplace, it is not in your local church—it’s in your local college or university. They are the masters of indoctrination.

But to people like Winell, who holds a Ph.D. from Penn State University, to maintain that higher education is the real bastion of  “mind rape” is heretical. Like so many shrinks, she lives in a bubble. Consider that she practices her magic with patients in Berkeley, California, home to some of the most militant secularists in the nation. No matter, she is convinced that  “There are so many places in the U.S. that are just saturated with religion.” Not where she lives.

Predictably, Winell says that liberal churches are not guilty of promoting religious trauma syndrome. She knows who the bad guys are and who their victims are. “There’s so much  condemnation in conservative kinds of churches about being LGBTQ, that the trauma is felt as a direct attack on them.”

So where’s the evidence? In all my years of going to church I have yet to hear a single condemnation of LGBTQ people. In fact I have never heard a priest even mention anything about these people, and many wouldn’t even know what the acronym means.

Looking to find evidence to support Winell’s belief is not easy, though there was a journal piece in 2023 titled, “Percentage of U.S. Adults Suffering from Religious Trauma: A Sociological Study.” The researchers found that those who are the most likely to say they have experienced religious trauma, as determined by anxiety, stress, fear, depression, shame or nightmares, are mostly young people (18-34) and those with a college degree or graduate degree.

Many people suffer from anxiety and stress—for all kinds of reasons—so it is difficult to say what role religion played in these people; perhaps these conditions were due to something else and they conveniently attributed their malady to religion. It must also be said that bouts of stress are not necessarily a bad sign—they could be seen as functional to the task (e.g., the typical heart surgeon).

Also, if a person commits a shameful act, it is normal to experience shame. Indeed, it could be argued that in this situation, the most abnormal response would be shamelessness. But to those who look at the world through a secular lens, it is easy to conclude that religion is the problem.

It is not hard to figure out why young people are more likely to find religion disagreeable: their narcissism rebels against “Thou Shalt Not” commands. Similarly, the well educated are the most secular segment of the population, so their adversity to religion makes sense. What is more difficult to explain is why 21 percent of these “religious trauma” victims have been convicted of a crime. Maybe there really is something twisted about them.

Many studies have found that secular-minded people are much more likely to suffer from depression than their religious counterparts. We also know that psychologists are the least religious of all professors. So when the typical psychologist studies those who are disproportionately secularists, finding negative traits associated with religion is to be expected.

Dr. Darren M. Slade runs the Global Center for Religious Research, and his work on the subject of religious trauma led him to a rather harsh conclusion. “Using ‘mental illness’ as an insult or as a means to attack a belief system is not only inappropriate, but it also displays a lack of understanding and empathy.”

That’s being kind.

Bill Donohue

DEI training (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) cost American business $8 billion a year, and while there are some signs that it is peaking, it is not for lack of trying. For example, since 2019, “Belonging” has been added to this scam, hence DEIB. This is a classic case of empire building.

Democratic pundit James Carville recently said that his party was sending messages that are “too feminine.” He’s right. What he said is also true of business—we are witnessing the feminization of the workforce.

We can thank a professor—who else?—for adding the “B” to DEI. Eric Carter at Vanderbilt says that diversity, equity and inclusion are not enough. “People want to be more than merely integrated or included. They want to experience true belonging.”

Traditionally, a sense of belonging has been fulfilled by the family, or by tribes and clans. Many turn to religion to satisfy this primordial need. It took until now before anyone thought we should find it on the job.

Brene Brown is an expert in assessing “belonging.” She cautions that it is not the same as “fitting in,” which she despises. “‘Belonging’ is being your authentic self and knowing that no matter what happens, you belong to you….Belonging doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to BE who we are.”

Sounds nice. But in the real world there are employees who come to work with a pierced tongue and metal hanging from their nostrils. They don’t want to belong—they want to be different. Now their quest to be different may be an expression of their “authentic self,” but if choosing not to belong matters more to them, then why should co-workers who find their appearance, and their hygiene, disgusting be treated as if they are the problem?

Daniel Buford and his colleagues at the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond are also regarded as experts on “belonging.” They hate striving for perfection—that’s a white man’s hang-up. “Striving for perfection leaves us all feeling short, left out, and lacking belonging.”

Tell that to teams who compete in the Olympics. Striving for perfection—in unison—creates strong bonds. Indeed, the same is true of all team sports, starting in elementary school. It is the slackers who find it difficult to belong. That’s why athletes have clubs, and slackers have none.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation is a left-wing organization that boasts of its opposition to “othering.” Never heard of it? Neither did we. So let us introduce you to it.

“Othering” is the opposite of “belonging.” According to an Oxford Reference, “A Dictionary of Gender Studies” says the phenomenon of “othering” is “a process whereby individuals and groups are treated and marked as different and inferior from the dominant social group.”

This sounds suspect. Among the most “othered” people in Silicon Valley  and Hollywood are Trump supporters and people of faith. They are loathed. But this would never occur to the gurus of “belonging,” which is why they list homosexuals and migrants as victims of “othering,” not MAGA fans and practicing Catholics.

“Othering” is such a bonanza that there is even a guy at the University of Berkeley who runs the Othering and Belonging Institute on campus. This creative empire builder apparently has little need to belong, which is why he likes to separate himself from the rest of us by using the lower case to identify himself. He goes by john a. powell.

How can we recognize “othering”? One website that addresses this issue gives us an example. “Attributing positive qualities to people who are like you and negative qualities to people who are different from you.”

Apparently this is bad. But if it is, why are the same people who are pushing DEIB also pushing Critical Race Theory (CRT), the pernicious ideology that demonizes white people? Are not the practitioners of CRT—those who celebrate racial divisions—blowing up the DEIB agenda? They can’t have it both ways. But it’s a sure bet this never occurred to them.

There are other contradictions baked into this hoax.

PowerToFly is a website with chock-a-block info on “belonging.” Its idea of “belonging” means that “Direct communication is preferred over back-channeling.” But if this is true—and it is—then why would they give a shout-out to working at home? “The benefits of remote work for diverse talent are recognized.”

How can this be? How can there be “direct communication” with those  on Zoom? And what does remote work have to do with facilitating “diverse talent”?

The geniuses behind the “belonging” craze need to grow up. They can’t  be celebrating diversity—how different we are—at the same time they are celebrating “belonging.” Nor can they be celebrating “inclusion”—inviting everyone in—when it is well known that the most tightly knit groups in the world are in-groups, those that exhibit a strong sense of belonging precisely because they exclude most people.

To say that the DEIB agenda is a racket is an understatement. It’s also built on contradictory principles.

Bill Donohue

A group of protesters invaded St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City Saturday night during the Easter Mass. Standing front and center, they unfurled a banner with a depiction of an olive tree and the inscription, SILENCE = DEATH. They were screaming “Free Palestine”; their allies were heard shouting similar chants from the street. Security quickly escorted them out of the Cathedral.

The big media acted according to script. It was not covered by the New York Times, Washington Post or the Associated Press, though the latter two found time to cover Trans Visibility Day on Sunday. CBS and NBC ran a story on the protesters, but ABC and PBS said nothing. MSNBC ran one story on St. Patrick’s Cathedral and five on Trans Visibility Day. The winner was CNN: it had no coverage of the church-busters but aired ten stories on Trans Visibility Day.

At least some of the protesters claim to be affiliated with Extinction Rebellion. Founded as a climate change organization in the U.K. in 2018, they have now taken up the anti-Israel cause, championing Palestinian rights. They demand that leaders in the western world stop genocide and ecocide.

Extinction Rebellion falsely claims to practice civil disobedience, and they are portrayed that way by their friends in the media. The truth is that they are not unaccustomed to violence; they are also known for taking over bridges and damaging property.

Extinction Rebellion is funded by rich individuals and organizations, among them being the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. Left-wing professors, such as America’s Noam Chomsky, and eco-extremists such as Greta Thunberg, applaud their goals and tactics.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral was recently invaded by LGBT radicals, and now it’s the pro-Palestinian protesters who have crashed the Cathedral.

These are not activists. They are domestic terrorists. They could have taken over a Broadway play or a concert at Madison Square Garden. But that wouldn’t excite them. Disrupting an Easter Mass excites them.

At bottom, they are angry at God, which is why they chose St. Patrick’s Cathedral to vent their anger. In doing so they are committing the greatest sin of all—the sin of pride. Their rejection of God and their exalted sense of who they think they are explains their sorry condition.

They also hate Jews and Catholics. Jews were the object of their protest—they want Israel to disarm so Hamas can win—and their venue was the nation’s most iconic Catholic church.

Until these domestic terrorists are prosecuted, convicted and sent to prison, these kinds of Satanic acts will continue. They can be stopped, but the authorities in New York City and New York State have no interest in doing so.

Bill Donohue

Since 1878, American presidents have celebrated Easter by having an “egg roll” party on Easter Monday; it is held on the South Lawn of the White House. At today’s event, Biden administration officials have made it plain that they will not tolerate any reference to the Christian roots of the holiday.

Starting months ago, National Guard families were told that their children could submit artwork that honored this annual event; they had until January 22 to do so. Submissions were expected to adhere to seven guidelines, most of which are unobjectionable. There was one, however, that was clearly out of place.

“The Submission must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes, or partisan political statements (italics added).”

Why was it necessary to censor Christianity? Easter is the quintessential Christian holiday. Who would be offended if a child portrayed a crucifix on an Easter egg? Aren’t those who say they would be offended the real problem? Why is the Biden administration giving into bigots? Whatever happened to respect for diversity? Why the need to secularize an event grounded in religion? Taking Christianity out of Easter is like taking motherhood out of Mother’s Day. Why bother?

Until now, no president has ever censored Easter. It took our “devout Catholic” president to do so. Looks like he’s the one being rolled.

Contact the White House Secretary: Karine.Jean-Pierre@who.eop.gov

Bill Donohue

“Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery.” The Sixth Commandment has been encoded in civil law throughout the world, and though it has proven to be unenforceable in most instances, it has nonetheless functioned as an example of the law as a teacher: what it taught is the importance of the marriage contract.

Charles Lavine is an Assemblyman from New York, and he wants to rid the law of prohibitions against adultery. Adultery has been a misdemeanor in the state for nearly 120 years, but he thinks it’s time to move on. “It’s a celebration of someone’s concept of their own morality.”

That’s a poorly constructed sentence. It is also sociologically illiterate.

Laws against adultery are a recognition of our Christian heritage, and that’s not exactly the same as “someone’s own concept of their own morality.” It’s a cultural statement writ large. But with characteristic arrogance, Lavine thinks we are mature enough now to free ourselves of this ancient taboo.

It would be instructive to learn from Lavine why he thinks laws against adultery have been ubiquitous throughout history.

The late Harry Jaffa, a brilliant Jewish scholar, understood the natural law as well as anyone. He maintained that the institution of marriage was so vital to social wellbeing that acts such as homosexuality, rape, incest and adultery must be rejected. They are wrong because “they are inconsistent with the harmony and good order of the family, which is the foundation of all social harmony and social order, and thereby of all human happiness.”

Feminists such as Boston University law professor Katherine B. Silbaugh are fond of saying that adultery laws were punitive measures aimed at discouraging married women from having extramarital affairs. “Let’s just say this: patriarchy.”

She is partially right, but her sweeping statement is historically inaccurate.

To be sure, in many parts of the world what she said is true. Among primitive peoples, women were regarded as the property of males, hence the focus of adultery laws on women. In Babylonia civilizations, women who engaged in adultery were put to death, but adulterous men simply paid a fine.

In ancient Greece and Rome, the notion that the wife was the property of the husband was still operative. In Mosaic Law, adultery meant a wife who had sex with a man who was not her husband, but if a married man had sex with a single woman, that was considered fornication, not adultery.

Matters changed under Christianity. Jesus taught that adultery was wrong, independent of the sex of the offender. Therefore, adultery laws that discriminated against the wife were nixed—the immunity enjoyed by the husband came to a screeching halt (Matthew 19: 3-13).

According to one student of this subject, “The church’s courts saw no difference in gender and equalized the punishment for a commission of illicit sexual relations outside of a marriage.”

Also, it was Christianity that put an end to the loose sexual norms that were countenanced by the Romans. Those strictures privileged men, leaving women in a precarious state. Christian norms placed a premium on monogamy and heterosexual relations, a strong departure from past practices.

Much has changed since as laws against adultery have almost vanished in the western world. It must be conceded that if adultery laws are stricken in New York, no one thinks there will be an increase in marital cheating. But there is more at stake than this.

Sociologically, it is the vector of change that should concern us. What does the relaxation of laws against adultery portend? And why should we go there?

For example, laws were written against prostitution to protect the institution of marriage: the wife was, and still is, the primary victim; the welfare of children is also jeopardized. But to those like Assemblyman Lavine, laws against prostitution are merely “a celebration of someone’s concept of their own morality.”

There is a reason why an ethic of sexual reticence best serves society—it guards against the promiscuous abuse of the faculty of sex. Sometimes it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.

We are sending this to New York lawmakers and New York bishops.

Contact Assemblyman Charlie Lavine: LavineC@nyassembly.gov

Bill Donohue

Transgender Day of Visibility is an international event that is held every year on March 31. This year it falls on Easter Sunday.

Left-wing government officials, led by President Biden and his administration, along with left-wing LGBT activists, led by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), will call attention to the heroics of transgender persons. They should instead call attention to their lifestyle, which too often is marked by drugs and violence.

At the end of 2023, HRC listed 32 incidents of transgender persons who died a violent death. It took the occasion to say that “These victims, like all of us, are loving partners, parents, family members, friends and community members. They worked, went to school and attended houses of worship.”

Well, not so fast. We examined each of the 32 cases and found that, while all are tragic, many of the incidents are still open to investigation; there was a lot of random violence. Importantly, there was not one incident that clearly merited the tag “hate crime” (in one instance, the police said it was a possible hate crime).

The fact is that a large portion of the violence was the result of an altercation between the transgender victim and the assailant. Too often the victim was not the kind of model citizen that HRC portrays.

Why was it necessary to get into a confrontation with someone who was innocently “misgendered”? Asking a stranger for sex is not a smart thing to do—it often results in violence. Assaulting a security guard can end in death, as happened in one instance. When an ex-con robs a store and is killed by a security guard, we shouldn’t be shocked. When an ex-con shoots at state troopers, that is really stupid. And so on.

Even HRC admits that in more than a third of these cases (36 percent), the killer was a “romantic/sexual partner, friend or family member.” We found that in five of these cases, the killer was another transgender person. Which raises the question: Why are these people so violent?

Just looking at the pictures of these transgender persons who were killed is enough to conclude that they are not just like the guy next door. That obviously doesn’t justify violence. Still, the idyllic portrayal that HRC presents is nonsense.

No innocent person deserves to die a violent death. Unfortunately, in too many cases the transgender persons that HRC mourns were not innocent victims. Their lifestyle is badly in need of a corrective.

Bill Donohue

Part I of this two-part series on the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) focused on six conservative organizations that SPLC falsely labels as “hate groups”; to read it click here. Part II assesses its claim that two genuine hate groups, Antifa and Black Lives Matter, should not be treated as such.

“Designating Antifa as Domestic Terrorist Organization Is Dangerous, Threatens Civil Liberties.”

That is how SPLC views Antifa. The evidence shows that its characterization is seriously inaccurate.

Antifa is a loosely-knit group that espouses, and engages in, violence. In July 2019, police shot and killed Willem van Spronsen after he tried to ignite a 500-gallon propane tank attached to a government building in Tacoma, Washington. He was armed with a rifle and incendiary devices. Shortly before the attack he sent a manifesto to friends, saying, “I am antifa.” After his death, Antifa colleagues called him “a martyr.” Memorials were organized in Washington and Oregon.

A month later, Connor Betts killed nine and injured dozens in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio. Though he was not a member of Antifa, he openly supported them on social media.

Mike Isaacson is the founder of an Antifa group in Washington, D.C. He proudly justifies violence. According to Mark Bray, a Dartmouth historian, people like Isaacson justify their use of violence as self-defense against fascists. Their idea of self-defense includes hurling glass bottles and bricks at the police. This has led liberals such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi to condemn Antifa’s violence.

Attorney General William Barr, under President Donald Trump, referred to Antifa as a “new form of urban guerrilla warfare,” similarly to what Mao Zedong promoted.

Antifa members have been arrested many times for carrying guns, knives, hatchets, gasoline, clubs, chemical irritants, pipes, hammers, fireworks,  and homemade explosives.

A Baltimore Antifa activist explained that when peaceful protests don’t succeed, you “fight them with fists,” and if that doesn’t work, you “fight them with knives,” and if that fails, you “fight them with guns,” and if that doesn’t get the job done, you “fight them with tanks.”

In 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI warned state and local officials that Antifa was engaging in “domestic terrorist violence.”

Yet SPLC says it is dangerous to label Antifa a domestic terrorist group.

“Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group.”

After George Floyd was killed by a police officer in 2020, Black Lives Matter (BLM) labeled it a hate crime committed by a white cop, Derek Chauvin. That led to over 600 attacks on 220 American cities.

Yet when the left-wing African-American Minnesota attorney general, Keith Ellison, examined this case, he said it was not a hate crime. “I wouldn’t call it that because hate crimes are crimes where there’s an explicit motive and bias.” He added, “We don’t have any evidence that Derek Chauvin factored in George Floyd’s race as he did what he did.”

This led author David Horowitz to comment, “All the outrage against police racism and all the mayhem fueled by that outrage, was based on no evidence whatsoever.”

The fact is that during the 103 days of unrest following the death of Floyd, there were 633 violent protests all across the nation, and BLM was involved in 95 percent of those incidents. The riots were responsible for an estimated two billion dollars in insured property damage and untold more in uninsured  property damage. There were twenty-four deaths and countless others who were injured, including many cops.

Yet SPLC says “Black Lives Matter Is Not a Hate Group.”

But guess who is a hate group? White Lives Matter. SPLC calls it a white supremacist group, led by a middle-age homemaker, Rebecca Barnette. If she doesn’t sound like a violent Antifa or BLM analog on the right, that’s because she isn’t.

The only violence associated with White Lives Matters occurred years ago when they clashed with counter-protesters in Anaheim, California. White Lives Matter was responsible for stabbing three of them. As it turned out, the five who were arrested were released by the police after it was determined that they acted in self-defense.

Are there things that White Lives Matter has said that are hateful? Yes, and it stands to reason that they should be included in any list of hate groups. But in comparison to BLM, these racists are at least not a violent threat to the social order. They are more kooky than a menace.

SPLC not only unfairly labels respectable social conservative organizations as hate groups, it shamelessly exculpates left-wing violent organizations, defending them as if they were the Boy Scouts.

Worse, the mainstream media cites SPLC’s list of hate groups as if it were the Gospel truth. It is for these reasons that the Catholic League concludes that SPLC is a bona-fide hate group—it goes to the mat for true hate groups while smearing those that are not.

As with Part I, we are sending Part II to Washington lawmakers and many other interested parties. It’s time SPLC was outed as a dangerous fraud.

Contact LaShawn Warren, Chief Policy Officer, SPLC: lashawn.warren@splcenter.org

Bill Donohue

There are many radical organizations in the country, but none has achieved a more inflated status than the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Its undeserved status is due to its perceived expertise in assessing hate groups. While its tracking of hate groups includes some that are undeniably hateful, its list also includes many that are merely conservative organizations who are anything but hateful. By smearing these entities, SPLC is proving that it is the master of hate.

[This is Part I of a two-part series.]

The following organizations are listed by SPLC as hate groups, and the quotes are cited by it as proof that they are a Klan-like organization. Judge for yourself.

Alliance Defending Freedom

“Allowing males to compete in the female category isn’t fair and destroys athletic opportunities. Males will always have inherent physical advantages over comparably talented girls – that’s the reason we have girls’ sports in the first place. And a male’s belief about gender doesn’t eliminate those advantages.” ADF legal counsel Christiana Holcomb

“Men who self-identify as women are still biological men. Sure, they can take synthetic hormones to make themselves appear more feminine, style their hair, and wear makeup (or not). But being a woman is more than a physical appearance or a feeling – it is a biological reality.” Marissa Mayer, senior web writer, on the ADF website

“The only surprise is the rapidity with which this degradation of our human dignity has occurred. It has occurred, with raging effect, and within twelve months, on the heels of government mandated recognition of same-sex ‘marriage’ – an oxymoronic institution if ever there was one.” ADF-affiliated attorney Charles LiMandri

American College of Pediatricians

“Transgenderism is a belief system that increasingly looks like a cultish religion – a modern day Gnosticism denying physical reality for deceived perceptions – being forced on the public by the state in violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.” Andre Van Mol, co-chair of ACPeds’ Committee on Adolescent Sexuality

“Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.” Gender Ideology Harms Children, ACPeds article

“Sex is hard-wired from before birth, and it cannot change.” Michelle Cretella, former president of ACPeds

Family Research Council

“People with gender dysphoria or transgender identities are more likely than the general public to engage in high-risk behaviors, which may result from or contribute to psychological disorders (or both).” FRC senior fellow Peter Sprigg 

“I know they’ll mock at the idea, but look, if you are a male – genetically you are a male, biologically you’re a male – and you say, ‘Well, I’m not a male. I’m a female.’ I mean what’s to keep you from saying that you’re an animal?” Tony Perkins, president

“By ignoring underlying conditions, the demands of transgender supremacy ignore our unique kids, especially those with autism and mental health diagnoses. They deflect much-needed resources away from the pandemic of autism.” Sarah Perry, FRC director of partnerships and coalitions coordinator

Liberty Counsel

“Homosexual conduct can result in significant damage to those involved who engage in such conduct. There is no evidence that a person is born homosexual. And there is evidence that people can change.” Liberty Counsel website.

“One of the most significant threats to our freedom is in the area of sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement, the so-called LGBT movement. [It]   undermines family and the very first building block of our society [and] secondly…it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech.” Mat Staver, president

“Statistically, sexual promiscuity is increased among those who engage in homosexual conduct, the result of which is disease found predominantly, if not exclusively, among homosexuals.” Mat Staver

Pacific Justice Institute

“It is fundamentally unjust for the government to treat some crime victims more favorably than others, just because they are homosexual or transsexual.” PJI  president Brad Dacus

“Most parents do not want their first through fifth graders bombarded with pro-homosexual messages at school. If LGBT advocates really want to stop name-calling and bullying, they should start with themselves.” Brad Dacus

“Forcing boys and girls to share bathrooms, locker rooms and sleeping arrangements is not equality; it is insanity.” Brad Dacus

Ruth Institute

“Transgender is a political category. Invented for political purposes. It has nothing to do with either psychology or medicine. It is a political category.” Jennifer Roback Morse

“Compared to children raised by their own biological parents, married to each other, children whose parents had a same-sex relationship are at elevated risk for the following…emotional problems, pleading guilty to a non-minor offense, learning disabilities.…” Ruth Institute pamphlet

“It’s really important to be well informed about what the church actually says about homosexual practice…The church is very clear that same-sex sexual action are intrinsically disordered and can never be morally acceptable.” Jennifer Roback Morse

Note: Because of its outsized influence, we are sending our series to Washington lawmakers and many others.

Contact LaShawn Warren, Chief Policy Officer, SPLC: lashawn.warren@splcenter.org