The following letter is being emailed today to over 200 beer distributors across the nation:

Dear Beer Distributors:

You may be aware that a national boycott of Guinness is under way. Let me explain why.

Guinness pulled its sponsorship of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade this year, citing its support for gay rights. Its reasoning is deeply flawed: gays have never been barred from marching in the parade; they simply cannot march under their own banner. Neither can pro-life Catholics, nor can any group that seeks to promote its own cause. The parade is a tribute to St. Patrick: it is not about anything else.

Bar owners in New York are particularly angry at Guinness for its 11th hour gambit: it did not announce that it was pulling its sponsorship until the night before the parade. This was a real slap in the face: the owners had already stocked up on Guinness.

If you have any questions regarding the boycott, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Please see our website, www.catholicleague.org, and click on the section, “Guinness Boycott Central,” for more information. If you feel, as we do, that what Guinness did was unconscionable, you may want to send them a message as well.

William Donohue
President
Catholic League

Bill Donohue sent the following letter today to three top officials at Diageo-Guinness in Norwalk, Connecticut, and three others in London:

“The decision to withdraw sponsorship of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade is not being welcomed by Catholics, especially Irish Catholics; we are also impressed by the number of non-Catholics who have expressed their support for our boycott. No gays have ever been barred from marching, and there were no new rules applied this year that made the 2014 parade any different from previous ones; claims of discrimination are therefore bogus. Please see the enclosed petition for further information on why I called for a boycott; the petition is available on our website and will be printed in the May edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal.

“In 2007, the Miller Brewing Company offended Catholics by sponsoring a vile, obscene, anti-Catholic gay event. When they refused to issue a complete apology, and balked on pledging not to sponsor the event the following year, I called for a boycott. Five-and-a-half weeks later, Miller changed its mind and the boycott ended. For more information see pp. 1, 5-7 of the November issue of Catalyst, and pp. 1 and 4 of the December edition. We reach a wide audience, including all the nation’s bishops.

“It is my hope that you will do what you can to reverse this situation. Thank you for your consideration.”

To sign our online petition, click here.

On March 22, NPR flagged this comment by Jimmy Carter:

“The fact that the Catholic Church, for instance, prohibits women from serving as priests or even deacons gives a kind of a permission to male people all over the world, that well, if God thinks that women are inferior, I’ll treat them as inferiors. If she is my wife, I can abuse her with impunity, or if I’m an employer, I can pay female employees less salary.”

Carter said practically the same thing on Charlie Rose on March 24 (it was reaired last night), and on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on March 24.

Bill Donohue commented today on Carter’s accusation:

So many women have been beaten, gang raped, tortured, and murdered in Islamic nations—it is a daily occurrence in the Sudan—that it would take the most advanced computers to run a tally. Moreover, there is no penalty for doing so. The barbaric practice of female genital mutilation—nowhere sanctioned by Catholicism—has been visited on hundreds of millions of Muslim women. Why is this so? Because the Catholic Church doesn’t ordain women.

Carter’s scorecard on women appointees, it turns out, stinks to high heaven. When he became president, he appointed 13 cabinet officers; three were women. He appointed 18 women to cabinet and cabinet level positions; his predecessor, Gerald Ford, who was in office for only two-and-a-half years, appointed 22 women. Of the 5 members of Carter’s White House staff, one was a woman. He appointed 259 judges to the federal bench, and 15.8 percent were women.

So according to Carter’s logic, if the Catholic Church is responsible for women being abused across the globe because it doesn’t ordain women, then he is a co-conspirator in these crimes. Which raises the question: Why is Jimmy Carter walking around a free man?

Bill Donohue’s article “Gay Parade Organizers Thinly Hypocritical” was just published by Newsmax. Click here to read it.

We also highly recommend an article in The American Spectator, “Bill Donohue and the Gay Thought Police” by Jeffrey Lord. To read it click here.

Bill Donohue comments on media reaction to the Guinness boycott:

In just one week, we succeeded in getting 82 media hits on our boycott of Guinness (click here to see the list). From Australia and England, to Canada and the United States, the boycott story has been picked up by TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet. And this is just the beginning.

We have no hard data on the success of the boycott, but anecdotal evidence is very encouraging. The decision by Guinness officials to pull sponsorship of New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade has led many pub patrons to choose another brew. There is anger over what has been done, and it is not going away. We will make sure of that.

We have heard from bishops in Peru, cardinals in Rome, pub owners in cities across the nation, chapters of the Knights of Columbus, men and women from many ethnic and religious groups—they’ve had it with the corporate bullies at Guinness.

There will be more on this issue, much more. Please go to our website and check our “Guinness Boycott Central” feature for the latest developments.

Contact Alix Dunn at Diageo, parent company of Guinness: Alix.Dunn@diageo.com

Bill Donohue has a question for Rep. Nancy Pelosi:

The Drudge Report is featuring a story about British hospitals that are throwing aborted babies into an incinerator; the “chemical waste” is being used to heat the hospitals.  Dr. Dan Poulter, the health minister at the Department of Health, said, “This practice is totally unacceptable.” He did not say why.

On Thursday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi will proudly receive The Margaret Sanger Award, Planned Parenthood’s top honor. Because “choice” is her most treasured value, it would be instructive to know her thoughts on how best to dispose of aborted babies: Should they be buried or incinerated?

If Pelosi chooses the first option—some states provide this choice—would she think it logical to first issue a birth certificate (a death certificate is only given in cases where a human being was born)? If she prefers the second option, would she have any ethical problem using aborted babies to heat her Washington office? Just curious.

Bill Donohue comments on his exchange with officials from New York’s Heritage of Pride parade:

For the past few days I have been engaged in an e-mail conversation with officials from the Heritage of Pride parade, New York’s annual gay event; the dialogue has been cordial. I asked to join the parade under a banner that would read, “Straight is Great.” The purpose of my request was to see just how far they would go without forcing me to abide by their rules. It didn’t take long before they did.

Today, I informed Heritage of Pride officials that I objected to their rule requiring me to attend gay training sessions, or what they call “information” sessions. “I don’t agree with your rule,” I said. They responded by saying that attendance was “mandatory.”

The St. Patrick’s Day parade has mandatory rules, too. It bars groups representing their own cause from marching, which is why pro-life Catholics—not just gays—are barred from participating under their own banner. But only gays complain: they refuse to abide by the rules. Indeed, they went into federal court seeking to force a rule change. They lost. In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that private parades have a First Amendment right to determine their own rules.

It is hypocritical for gay activists to complain about having to abide by the mandatory rules of the St. Patrick’s Day parade, and then inform me that I cannot march in their parade unless I respect their mandatory rules, rules that I reject.

Good luck to the Heritage of Pride participants. I may be watching it from afar, but I sure won’t be downing a Guinness afterwards.

Bill Donohue comments on a five-judge Manhattan Appellate Division panel that overturned a termination ruling against two lesbians who were caught having sex in a classroom:

In 2009, two tenured women teachers at James Madison High School in Brooklyn went drinking after school, and then returned to attend a student singing contest. Apparently bored, they walked out and went to Room 337. A janitor found them naked from the waist up (one was on her knees) having sex. They were subsequently fired, and after years of appeals, they were reinstated yesterday by a panel of appellate judges.

The judges decided that termination was too stiff a penalty. Indeed, they condemned it for being “shockingly disproportionate.” They also commended the teachers for attending the musical competition after school hours, noting that they “were not required to do so.” The ruling emphasized that this was “consensual sexual conduct,” and that it was not “in and of itself criminal or otherwise improper.” (My italics.)

Lesbians. Public school teachers. Tenured. That’s a trifecta—hard to beat. Now if two priests were caught having sex in a classroom, and were given the green light by church authorities, it would be the lead story on the national evening news. But because of the trifecta conditions cited, this is nothing more than a passing local story.

Bill Donohue comments on the latest developments in the Catholic League’s boycott of Guinness:

We are asking those who support our boycott of Guinness to sign our petition (click here). It will be part of our new homepage feature: Guinness Boycott Central. This section will contain valuable information on the boycott, and who to contact. It will be frequently updated.

At a later date we will send Guinness the petition results. While the online petition is available immediately, a paper copy will be available in the May edition of our monthly journal, Catalyst. That’s okay: This boycott campaign will be relentless, and it will not be constrained by a deadline. Please pass the petition around to your family and friends to sign.

Bill Donohue comments on reaction to the Catholic League’s call for a boycott of Guinness:

The response to our boycott is overwhelming. From a bishop who belongs to the Eastern Catholic Church (Aramaic Rite) in Lima, Peru, to a former community organizer in New Jersey, we have seen an outpouring of angry Catholics who are fully supportive of our efforts. If the Guinness corporate bullies think that this is a flash in the pan, then they don’t understand the Catholic League. But they will—we are not going away.

There is a price to be paid for anti-Catholic bigotry, and that is exactly what is driving Guinness to act. Gays have never been barred from marching in any St. Patrick’s Day parade, and everyone knows it. Guinness wants to punish Catholics for holding to traditional moral values, and now they must suffer the consequences.

This is the start of an on-going protest that will send an unmistakable message to Guinness: declaring war on Catholics is risky business. The rollout of this campaign is visible here at our headquarters: the staff is busy assembling a list of Catholic organizations, Irish groups, pub owners, and all those persons and associations that have worked with us in the past, to boycott Guinness. There will be public statements, paid advertisements, and more. Of course, we will continue to blanket the media.

While we will not refrain from addressing other issues, the Guinness boycott is our top priority. We have the time, the money, and the determination to conduct a full-court press. Stay tuned.

Contact Alix Dunn, Director of External Communications, Diageo North America: Alix.Dunn@diageo.com