Lena Müller sports pink hair. She is not in the circus. No, she is a Berlin Protestant minister. She recently presided over a “poly wedding.” To be specific, she “married” four men. In keeping with the spirit of diversity, two of the guys were Latvians, one was Thai and the other Spaniard.

The minister belongs to the Evangelical Church of Berlin Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia; it goes by EKBO. She promotes a “queer-inclusive” approach, and said the four men now constitute “one family.” Would God approve? Of course. “We saw that there was a lot of love between them. What could God possibly have against there being four of them instead of two?”

Did the EKBO approve this “marriage”? Formally it did not but that is because church weddings cannot be sanctioned unless they are a legally registered marriage, and polygamy is still prohibited by German law.

The EKBO had to bow to the civil law but that doesn’t mean they didn’t like what the renegade minister did. Instead of rebuking her, they stood by her, saying they were “appalled”—not by what she did, but by her critics. They even threatened legal action against her most vocal adversaries.

These EKBO Protestants have been actively subverting Christianity for years. That is their goal—to destroy Christianity from the inside. To wit: they seek the “decolonization of hierarchical and Eurocentric prayer language.” This is short for hating Christianity and Western civilization.

Their agenda is political, having nothing to do with religion. Indeed, they are in open rebellion against human nature and the very stuff that constitutes society. They are also phonies—they are not against all hierarchies—they love telling others what to do.

It boasts on its website that its texts “do not use binary language.” Translated, this means that the fictional world they live in does not recognize men and women. That’s too restrictive. Indeed, they take umbrage at the very word “women,” arguing that doing so validates the notion that such a biological group exists.

This is the culture that the pink-haired minister was nurtured in, so it was hardly a big leap for her to “marry” four men. It wasn’t all that risky, and the fact that the EKBO elites rushed to her defense proves it wasn’t.

What’s next? If all it takes is “love” to justify a marriage, then Sam and Sally, brother and sister, can tie the knot. Indeed, they can add their cousins to the mix, Saul and Susan, and have a happy foursome. This is what happens when our imagination governs our thought processes, substituting make-believe for reality. It’s also what happens when those who want to subvert Christianity are seen as heroes.

The German Bishops’ conference has issued a document to be implemented in Catholic schools that rejects the Church’s teachings on sexuality. Gone is the teaching that there are but two sexes, male and female. The bishops, with three exceptions, teach that there is a “diversity of sexual identities.” Not only that, they falsely claim it is a “fact,” rooted in science.

Should teachers address a boy named Sam, who now claims he is a girl named Sue, as Sam or Sue? The bishops say teachers should use language that reflects “the diversity of sexual identities,” allowing students to make their own judgments. So the right answer is “Sue.”

This division in the Catholic Church is taking place at a time when Pope Leo XIV embarked on his first international trip, the purpose of which was a call for unity in the Christian world. He has his hands full.

Leo has already affirmed Church teachings on sexuality, saying the family is founded on the “stable union between a man and a woman. When he was the bishop of Peru he spoke against the idea that there is a “diversity of sexual identities,” which is what gender ideology holds to be true.

“The idea of promoting gender ideology is confusing because it seeks to create genders that don’t exist. God created man and woman, and the attempts to confuse ideas about nature will only harm families and people.”

This is consistent with what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches. “God created man in his own image…male and female he created them.”

Leo’s predecessor, Pope Francis, was even more blunt. He once referred to gender ideology as “demonic.” In his 2016 exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, he wrote, “We cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation,” saying the “biological elements” are “impossible to ignore.”

In 2019, the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education issued an authoritative document, “Male and Female: He Created Them.” It said that gender ideology “denies the difference and reciprocity in nature of a man and a woman and envisages a society without sexual differences, thereby eliminating the anthropological basis of the family.”

In 2024, the Vatican Declaration on Human Dignity, Dignitas Infinita, underscored Church teachings on this subject. It said gender ideology “is extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.” Similarly, this ideology “intends to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”

Let’s pray that the German bishops find their way back.

Bill Donohue

Zohran Mamdani took over as mayor of New York City on January 1. In December, he chose someone just like himself—a unrepentant radical—to join his transition team, so it is likely we will be hearing more about him.

Alex Vitale and I have some things in common: we both have doctorates in sociology, have taught courses on criminology, and have written extensively on the subject. But that’s where the similarities end: I like cops and he hates them.

This wouldn’t mean much if he never left his Brooklyn College classroom. But once Mamdani put him in charge of public safety issues, we decided to give him a closer look.

Vitale is the author of The End of Policing, and a study guide that accompanies his book. The latter is the basis of my analysis of his work.

In Chapter 1, we learn that “racial profiling is still endemic.” He sees that as a problem. That’s funny—this was never an issue for Rev. Jesse Jackson. “There is nothing more painful for me at this stage of my life than to walk down a street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

What Jackson understood intuitively is borne out in the statistics. In 2021, black New Yorkers were 24 percent of the population, but they made up 65 percent of those murdered in 2020 and 74 percent of the shooting victims. Just as important, the typical victimizer was also black.

Chapter 2 informs the reader that “police do not prevent crime.” But if he were right, then NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch would not have been able to drive down the crime rate. She did it by deploying more police to high crime areas. Of course, he wants to defund the police, as does Mamdani. They even want to abolish the prisons.

The problem for them is that blacks want nothing to do with their anarchic ideas. In 2020, when the “defund the police” movement was surging, 79 percent of blacks nationwide who said they had had an interaction with the police in the past year said they wanted the police to spend the same amount of time—or more time—in their neighborhood.

Cops don’t belong in the schools. That’s what we learn in Chapter 3. He calls their presence “damaging.” Yet a study published two years ago by the University of Albany found that police in the schools reduced fights and threats by 30 percent and increased detection of firearms by 150 percent. He also says that the money saved by moving cops out of the schools “could be given to schools directly to build a better academic program.” If he were sincere, he would endorse charter schools and school choice initiatives, but he doesn’t.

In Chapter 4, Vitale argues that the reason why the police don’t work effectively with mentally ill offenders is because they are “trained to view every scenario as a potentially deadly one.” Thank God for that. Only someone hopelessly naïve would confront a suspected violent offender—mentally acute or disabled—with a relaxed attitude.

Chapter 5 tells instructors that the police don’t work well with the homeless because of “a lack of compassion.” Really? I see cops interact with the homeless every day in New York—my office is across the street from Penn Station—and I have never once seen a cop mishandle, or be rude to, the homeless.

Vitale shows his compassion by endorsing “drop-in centers and emergency shelters” for the homeless, but even here he fails the test. Showing his radically secular stripes, he insists the caregivers must be “nonreligious.” In other words, he wants to discriminate against the clergy.

The next two chapters are on prostitution and drugs, respectively. Naturally, he wants to decriminalize both. Vitale needs to visit Jackson Heights, a Queens neighborhood that has been overrun by street prostitution, drugs, robberies, and muggings, and tell the residents that their quality of life is peachy keen.

In Chapter 8, we learn that “gang suppression” is the problem, not gangs themselves. So how do we deal with gangs? Vitale promotes “restorative justice.” This is a “nonpunitive” measure that in practice means having social workers talk to the thugs.

Chapter 9 targets “border patrolling.” He wants it to end. His entire focus is on the “rights” of those who have crashed our borders and have committed unspeakable crimes. He needs to meet with the surviving crime victims of illegal aliens.

Chapter 10 contends that “The threat of potential violence or destruction of property is not a sufficient excuse” for police violating the First Amendment rights of “protesters.” He cites what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. What he did not say is that these “protesters” went on a violent rampage after a robbery suspect got into an altercation with the police—he assaulted a cop, reached for his gun, resisted arrest, and was then killed after charging the officer.

I challenged him to a debate, but he never responded. Typical.

It is not just Vitale who is a menace to New York. Mamdani has chosen several left-wing activists to work on safety issues, and every one of them share the same anti-cop attitude.

No matter, we are tracking everything that Mamdani, and his staff, do, and we will not hold back in confronting them. Look for a section on the front page of our website, “Mamdani Watch.” We are going to be very busy in 2026.

Bill Donohue

Chubb Insurance is the largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company in the world, valued at approximately $115 billion. “We stand behind the promises we make to conceive, craft and deliver exceptional insurance coverage and service, and to pay our claims fairly and quickly.” That’s how it describes its organizational culture.

Anyone who knows anything about the way it has handled clergy abuse claims against the New York Archdiocese knows this is patently false. Quite frankly, it is a master of delaying, denying and defending its services, and this is hardly confined to Catholics. More about Chubb in a moment. First, this issue must be looked at in context.

The clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church took place largely between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s. It occurred for reasons I detailed in my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes. Because of a law in New York State that allows the accused to file a lawsuit, regardless of how long ago the alleged abuse took place, claims against the archdiocese have mounted over the years.

This has now come to a head. On December 8, the New York Archdiocese announced it was raising at least $300 million to negotiate settlements that would benefit some 1,300 people who contend that they were abused as minors. To pay for this, the archdiocese reduced its operating budget by 10 percent, fired staff, and sold “significant real estate assets,” including its headquarters at 1011 First Avenue. The building was sold last year for more than $100 million.

The alleged cases date back to World War II. No other organization, secular or religious, has been subjected to anything like this, the most egregious example being the New York City public schools, where the sexual abuse of minors is ongoing. This is not a coincidence. There are ideological and financial motives for going after the Catholic Church.

One of the lawyers suing the archdiocese today is Jeffrey Anderson. He once admitted that his goal was “suing the [expletive]” out of the Catholic Church. In fact, he has made hundreds of millions of dollars doing exactly that.

Chubb is also compromised. It simply wants to cash its checks and move on. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, isn’t fooled. Here is what he said on October 1, 2024.

“It has always been our wish to expeditiously settle all meritorious claims. However, Chubb, for decades our primary insurance company, even though we have paid over $2 billion in premium by today’s standards, is now attempting to evade their legal and moral contractual obligation to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivors.”

Chubb is still reneging on its responsibilities. It says the archdiocese’s policy covers accidents, “but does not provide compensation for knowingly allowing a pattern of abuse to persist for many years.” This is a sanitized way of saying what it has previously said with greater bluntness.

Chubb has said that it is not obligated to settle claims against the archdiocese because the abuse of victims was “expected or intended.” This is an outrageous lie. Indeed, it intentionally maligns Cardinal Dolan’s predecessors, effectively saying that people like Cardinal John O’Connor deliberately intended to harm children. That would make them evil.

What is truly evil is what Chubb is alleging.

I worked with Cardinal O’Connor for many years. He was one of the greatest priests I ever met. Not only was he kind and responsible, he reached out to his staff, lay and clergy alike, who were going through a rough patch, offering the services they needed. He never willfully sought to hurt anyone, and this certainly included children. To imply otherwise is a vicious smear on his character.

Chubb’s position is morally indefensible and legally spurious. It is not only feeding anti-Catholicism, it is making mince meat out of its purported interest in standing by its promises. It is just as preposterous to argue that it is “delivering exceptional insurance coverage and service,” paying its claims “fairly and quickly.” Just the opposite is true.

It is one thing for an insurance company to balk on its financial commitments; it is quite another when it imputes vile motives to its carriers, and this is doubly true when it is aimed at the Catholic Church. Its credibility is shot.

The FBI still needs to answer more questions about the would-be Trump assassin. Here is the text of a letter written by Bill Donohue on Nov. 24 to Rep. Pat Fallon and Rep. Mike Kelly about this issue.

Thank you for speaking out about the less-than-candid information that has been disclosed regarding Thomas Crooks, the man who attempted to assassinate President Trump. You have both noted the shortcomings of the FBI disclosures on this subject, and have called for a new probe.

On November 20, FBI Director Kash Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino were interviewed by Fox News reporters and they said the evidence was clear that Crooks acted alone and that there was no foreign involvement of any kind. This is good news, but it does not answer all outstanding questions.

The Catholic League urges you to call for a new investigation. While there are many aspects to this case, what concerns us most are the details about Crooks’ sexual identity and like interests.

Patel says there is “no evidence” of his involvement with those who run in trans circles. That may be but it does not empty our concerns.

He was living with a man who was in the process of transitioning from male to female, and he himself identified as “they/them.” He had a “muscle mommy fetish” and was also attracted to the “furry” community, people who identify as animals and who are sexually attracted to them. None of this is normal.

We are well aware of the travails of those who are caught up in these sexual lifestyles, and of the violence that marks their behavior. We are also aware of calculated efforts to keep the public in the dark about this matter.

Without full knowledge of what motivated Crooks, we will not be in a position to check the behavior of those who share his profile.

Transgender Day of Remembrance was held on November 20. According to GLAAD, the gay rights organization, it is “an annual commemoration of those whose lives were lost in acts of anti-transgender violence.” What they don’t say is that most of the violence against these people is being committed by other trans people. They would have the public believe that they are being killed by hate-filled heterosexuals.

Transgender Day of Remembrance honors the memory of Rita Hester, a man who falsely claimed to be a woman; he was killed in 1998. Others who are memorialized antedated the Hester murder. They are Chanelle Pickett, Debbie Forte and Monique Thomas; they were also men who falsely claimed to be women.

The more we know about these murders, all of which occurred in Massachusetts, the less convincing the narrative is that heterosexuals are a threat to the trans community.

After all these years, Hester’s case remains unresolved, but there are clear indications that he was done in by his own. His real name was William Hester; he changed his name when he “transitioned.” The 6-foot, 2-inch man liked to hang out in trans bars in Boston, dressed as a woman. After he left the Silhouette Lounge one evening, he went home to his apartment. Neighbors heard a lot of banging sounds and a loud yell. He was stabbed 20 times.

The police said there were no signs of forced entry, and that “the killer might have known the victim.” This suggests he was murdered by another trans person (they tend to associate with those of the same identity), though everyone is reluctant to draw the obvious conclusion.

Chanelle Pickett’s real name was Roman Pickett. Dubbed a “transsexual” by the Boston Globe, he was strangled to death five hours after he met William C. Palmer Jr. in a Combat Zone bar, located in the redlight district, in 1995. They hooked up at the Playland Café, one of Boston’s well-known “transsexual pick-up bars.” They smoked crack cocaine before heading to Palmer’s bedroom, where they had sex.

A jury found Palmer guilty of assault and battery, but not murder. He told the court he did not know Pickett was trans. But this account was shot down by several others, including Pickett’s brother, who also falsely claimed to be a woman. They said he was a frequent customer at the trans bar. Moreover, six trans people came forward admitting they had sex with him, and two of them testified against him.

Debbie Forte’s real name was John J. Forte Jr. He was dressed as a woman the night he was murdered by Michael Thompson in 1995. The killer said they were “messing around” and after he discovered Forte had a penis, he killed him. There is no evidence to the contrary.

Monique Thomas’ real name was Rufus Thomas. He was killed by George Stallings two months before Hester was murdered by asphyxiation. His body was found next to his bed. That does not appear to be a coincidence. We know that after he was sexually abused by a family member growing up, he became confused about his sexuality.

In other words, in three of the four most heralded cases where a trans person was killed—they are the basis of Transgender Day of Remembrance—the killer was apparently a trans person himself. And since we know that most of the violence against trans people today is an inside job, the day of remembrance should focus on the violence within their own community.

The greatest child abuse scandal of our day is the exploitation of minors who want to “transition” to the opposite sex. Genital mutilation, chemical castration, hormonal manipulation—the very stuff of sex-reassignment surgery—are being promoted and carried out by adults who are in it for ideological or financial profit, or both. Seeking to normalize abnormal conditions is cruel and needs to end.

There are lots of parties to this problem, but no one is more responsible for seeking to normalize transgender abnormalities than the Biden administration. To pave the way for acceptance of abnormal sexual expressions, his minions decided to pan normal sexual expressions.

For example, the Department of Veterans Affairs initially banned the iconic photo of a World War II sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square; the couple were celebrating the end of the war with Japan in 1945. The Biden folks branded it “inappropriate behavior,” claiming it no longer fits the “values” of the VA.

The “values” that the Biden team embraced were not the values that most Americans wanted. To take one example, consider Biden’s choice for Assistant Secretary for Health.

Biden chose a man who falsely claimed to be a woman, Richard Levine. He went by the name Rachel, dressed like a woman, and looked like one too. But he could never change his XY chromosomes. So he lived a fictional existence, and the “Catholic” president was proud to promote it.

Policy wise, the Biden team reinterpreted “sex” discrimination in Title IX to include “gender identity.” This meant that it was okay for boys to compete against girls in sports and to use the same locker rooms and shower facilities. In a more sane time, this would be called misogynistic, but now it was being heralded by modern-day feminists.

Kamala Harris was so enthusiastic about this issue that she said illegal immigrants who were imprisoned, and wanted to “transition” to the opposite sex, should have their procedures funded by the American people. She said that in 2019. When asked in 2025 if she still held to that position, she said yes. In fact, she dedicated a whole chapter to this in her new book.

Everyone knows that only women can get pregnant, but to admit this is to ratify what nature has ordained. There’s the rub: the LGBTQ crowd is angry at nature, and at nature’s God, so they pretend that men can also get pregnant.

The 2024 Democratic Party Platform referred to pregnant women in prison as “pregnant inmates.” The legal and medical elite were already on board: the ACLU and the AMA both referred to “pregnant” people. The same logic led failed VP candidate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to put tampons in the boys’ bathrooms.

A Rasmussen survey found that 70 percent of Americans are concerned about school-age children being exposed to sexual material that is not age appropriate. But it is an uphill battle.

“LGBTQ+-inclusive” texts have been assigned to kindergarten students in some schools. Another storybook for the little ones that is being used is about a transgender child who is shown in a sex-neutral or sex-ambiguous bathroom. She boasts, “My friends defend my choices and place.” She makes it plain that she prefers to be referred to as “they/their/them.” Gay marriage is not just discussed in these books—it is celebrated.

Why do homosexual men dressed as women—so-called drag queens—demand that they perform before children?

They went to court over this “right.” Their performances include sexually explicit acts. They sued Tennessee after the state restricted drag performances when children were present (the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the law). The drag queens said they were defending free speech, but what they were really defending was the right to engage in lewd acts in front of children. Why is this so important to them? This is one step away from pedophilia. It is not speech.

Harvard used to be a university where serious learning took place. No more. In the spring semester, a class will be offered on drag queens, and next fall there will be one on “Queer Ethnology.” They will be taught by a visiting professor, LaWhore Vagistan, a drag queen star.

The Emmy Awards are given each year to the best TV programming. This year the show featured several drag queens who crashed the red carpet. It had nothing to do with the purpose of the event, but it did have much to do with the kind of moral destitution that Hollywood is known for. The goal was to normalize abnormal behavior.

Those promoting this sick agenda are among the most intolerant people in America. In a recent study of free speech on college campuses, it was revealed that discussions about transgender issues are not welcome; students are afraid to speak about them. That’s because defending normalcy is considered taboo by the guardians of higher education.

Normalizing transgender abnormalities is a dangerous and despicable enterprise. It leads to the sexual exploitation of children, ruining them physically and psychologically. Indeed, it is evil.

One day after the Catholic League asked its email subscribers to contact Sen. Dick Durbin to decline the “Lifetime Achievement Award” that he was scheduled to receive from the Archdiocese of Chicago, he did just that.

The first person to raise a red flag over this issue was Thomas Paprocki, Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield. He honed in on Durbin’s pro-abortion voting record. He quickly received the support of San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone; eight other bishops followed. We chose to direct our attention to Sen. Durbin, allowing the clergy to deal with the clergy.

The Catholic League was the only lay Catholic organization in the nation to press Sen. Durbin to decline the award.

On September 23, Bill Donohue sent a letter to Sen. Durbin in the overnight mail—it was received the next morning—asking him to decline the award. He explained that when the news broke that he was to receive the award, it “created a firestorm in the Catholic community, involving both the clergy and the laity.” He stressed that by declining the award “you will help ameliorate Catholic discord,” and that “by putting the interests of the Catholic community above your own interests, it will only redound to your benefit.”

When it appeared that Durbin was not giving in, we asked our supporters to petition him to do so. On September 29, we listed the email of his chief of staff in a news release, asking our subscribers to pound away. They did. One day later, Durbin yielded. We commended Sen. Durbin for doing the right thing.

In Donohue’s letter to Durbin, he said that “the proximate cause of the backlash is your voting record on abortion,” but he hastened to add, “Your support for same-sex marriage, and your probing of the religious convictions of Catholic nominees for the federal bench, have also elicited much criticism.”

Regarding the latter issue, on September 23, prior to posting Donohue’s open letter to Durbin, he detailed the senator’s longstanding assaults on Catholics seeking a seat on the federal bench.

His opposition to Circuit Court nominee William Pryor (2003), Supreme Court nominee John Roberts (2005), and Circuit Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett (2017), were all unseemly. He probed them on their Catholic convictions, effectively promoting a religious test. Unlike other lay Catholic groups, we protested what Durbin did in each of these cases when they occurred.

The media made it sound as if it was just Durbin’s pro-abortion stance that was a problem, which was not true.

We are delighted with this victory. Thanks to our base for contacting Durbin—they made it happen!

After many months of wrangling, the confessional seal remains intact in Washington state. State officials have given up their quest to force Catholic priests to divulge what they learn in the confessional. It took an array of organizations and specialists to exact this outcome.

The Catholic League was the first lay Catholic group in the nation to write to Washington legislators about this issue, and the first to draw media attention to it.

Back in February, Bill Donohue asked the state’s lawmakers to explain, “What broke?” He pointedly asked, “where is the evidence that child molesters—in any state—report their crimes to priests in the confessional?” He noted that there is not a single instance where this has happened. He closed by saying, “If any lawmaker has evidence to the contrary, you have an obligation to make it public.” No one did.

We brought this issue to the attention of the Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Attorney General’s office. Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, took it from there, suing Washington. Meanwhile, we continued to press public officials, and law firms filed suit in behalf of the Catholic clergy.

A District Court judge blocked the discriminatory state law that singled out priests in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, allowing other professionals, such as counselors and therapists, to be exempt from the reporting law.

The pressure was coming at public officials from all sides. They finally yielded in October.

William A. Donohue

When truth doesn’t matter, all things are possible, including some very unseemly things.

There was a front-page article in the September 25 edition of the New York Times that is as fascinating as it is disturbing. Well researched, it is the story of Amy Griffin, one of the richest women in the country. She is the 49-year-old author of The Tell, a best-selling memoir that recounts her recollections of being raped on several occasions by a middle-school teacher in Amarillo, Texas, starting when she was 12.

Her recollections were not of the ordinary kind—they were druginduced memories. To be specific, she claims that her memory was repressed until she took MDMA, a drug found in Ecstasy and Molly. The allegations she made against the teacher were disclosed during therapy sessions while under the influence of the illegal psychedelic drug.

The newspaper would not have posted a 5,000 word article about Griffin unless she was a VIP. And that she is. The glitterati who came rushing to her side, promoting the book, include Oprah Winfrey, Jenna Bush Hager, Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon. The latter spoke for many when she said, “By opening up her heart, she became a beacon for women everywhere.”

She spoke too soon.

What do we know about the alleged rapist? We know that he has worked in the school district for 30 years and his record is spotless: there has never been one complaint made about him.

Suspicions about Griffin’s account have mushroomed. “Some have questioned the reliability of decades old memories unearthed during drug assisted therapy.” Others are questioning why no one knew anything about what allegedly happened. Where are the bruises from her violent experiences? There are many other serious issues with Griffin’s story.

She claims that subsequent to her memory being jarred, she believes that one of her childhood friends, “Claudia,” was also abused by the same teacher. But when Griffin asked her about this she said no. Griffin also writes about an incident that took place at a church youth group gathering in her house. But her family says they never hosted such an event.

In her book proposal, Griffin said another man had raped her. But she made no mention of it in her memoir. When she reported her claims of abuse to a detective, she never told him her account was a recovered memory, induced by drugs. More important, he says that from his experience, sex crimes against children typically have many victims. Yet no one, other than her, has ever accused the teacher of anything.

When New York Times reporters asked Griffin for an interview, she stiffed them for more than three months. To top things off, her lawyer said that by asking her to answer 11- pages of questions, “the mere sending of this document has caused additional trauma and extreme physical and emotional harm to a survivor of sexual assault, which is inexcusable.”

Rick Doblin is the nation’s biggest advocate of the therapeutic drug MDMA; he also connected her to her therapists. When asked about the reliability of “repressed memories,” he said, “Whether it’s real or not—meaning whether the incident actually happened—from a therapeutic perspective, it doesn’t matter. A lot of times people will develop stories that help them make sense of their life. In the therapeutic setting, what Amy went through whether it’s true or not, it has value because the emotion is real.”

This is what happens when the quest for truth is abandoned: falsehoods can be treated as a positive good—even if they ruin someone’s life—as long as they bring solace to the complainant.

Why should Catholics care about this story?

Father Gordon MacRae is sitting in a New Hampshire prison today because an ex-con claimed that once his “repressed memory” was unleashed, it allowed him to recall that MacRae abused him many years earlier. And he is not the only priest to have suffered this fate.

Sociologist Richard Ofshe and journalist Ethan Watters studied the issue of “repressed memory” and they noted that “it has never been empirically demonstrated.” Dr. Paul McHugh, the renowned Johns Hopkins psychiatrist, has long dismissed this as a dangerous idea that literally manufactures victims. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that “repressed memory” is a “cultural creation having no basis in science.”

William O’Donohue, and other clinical psychologists at the University of Nevada, Reno, studied the literature on this subject and concluded that “there is a large amount of scientific evidence that clearly shows that repressed memories simply do not exist.” People do not forget their trauma, they said. “Indeed, traumatic events are actually quite memorable.”

The media should ask Oprah, Jenna, Gwyneth and Reese, along with Amy Schumer, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Anna Wintour, Savannah Guthrie, and Katie Couric, how they feel now about their heroine.

Assuming that accused men are definitely guilty of sex crimes against women has become so easy, especially for cultural elites. But as this story reveals, those who rushed to Griffin’s side are the ones with egg on their face. Throwing the first stone can be risky.