Bill Donohue comments on how Macy’s is handling complaints about its bathroom and fitting room policy:

When Macy’s fired store detective Javier Chavez for his convictions, not his deeds—he believes men should use the men’s room—it displayed an intolerance that is characteristic of totalitarian rulers. Quite simply, thought control is un-American.

Our public relations campaign against the corporate giant has triggered an avalanche of complaints against Macy’s. The official response by the department store is dishonest: Macy’s has decided to stonewall its customers. Here is a selection from its form-letter reply.

“We do not condone or tolerate discrimination of any kind. Although our bathrooms may be located in an area of the store primarily trafficked by either men or women, our bathrooms are gender neutral. As such, we do our best to ensure that all customers have equal access to the bathrooms. In this situation, if a customer does not feel comfortable, an associate can be located to remedy the situation.”

Macy’s answer is disingenuous. It not only condones discrimination, it terminates Catholic employees who merely disagree with its bathroom policy.

Silly comments about putting bathrooms in places “primarily trafficked by either men or women”—does it have an area for giraffes?—only skirts the issue.

Moreover, most people understand “gender neutral” bathrooms to mean unisex ones. That is not what customers are complaining about: they don’t want men trying on dresses in the women’s dressing rooms, and they don’t want to use a stall with a man sitting, or standing, in the one next to them. That this needs to be explained speaks volumes about the geniuses who run Macy’s.

Macy’s is being dishonest when it says that if the customer is not comfortable with its bathroom policy, it will be remedied. Nonsense. Chavez responded to a complaint by a woman and her daughter that a man was in the women’s room, and his remedy—which was satisfactory to them—was to have the man use the men’s room. Macy’s “remedy” is to force women and young girls to get over it!

Wait until Tuesday. We have an “October Surprise” for Macy’s you won’t want to miss.

Contact Macy’s Group VP, Holly Thomas: holly.thomas@macys.com

Bill Donohue comments on a new initiative by the New York Archdiocese that addresses clergy sexual abuse:

Timothy Cardinal Dolan has shown great courage in establishing the Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, a new initiative designed to deal fairly with clergy sexual abuse. While he has won applause from many quarters, some are already distorting the program.

New York State Senator Brad Hoylman, who has sponsored a bill on this issue, calls the archdiocesan program a “canny legal strategy” to reduce the archdiocese’s liability. So what was his initial bill last year, namely the one that gave a pass to the public schools? Canny is too kind a word to describe it. After many pressed him to revise his bill, he did so, thanking the Catholic League for its input.

State Senator Hoylman distorts the new program when he says it is “initially limited to survivors who have previously notified the Archdiocese that they have been abused.” Apparently, he did not read what the archdiocese has posted on its website: “New applicants can also come forward during this time and register.” In other words, the program’s first phase deals with those who have already come forward, but it is not limited to them.

Hoylman also says that participants in the program “are required to agree to privacy and confidentiality requirements.” What he leaves out is the fact that all allegations must be reported to the District Attorney. Is that another “canny legal strategy”? That’s the way justice works. The District Attorney is required to do an investigation. How else can false claims be screened?

Moreover, following the provisions set forth by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the New York Archdiocese is prohibited from requesting a confidentiality clause unless the victim requests it in writing.

Once State Senator Hoylman looks at this initiative more closely, he may come to appreciate its merits. He is a sensible man.

As for the professional victims groups, and the unscrupulous lawyers who grease them, their anger at the new program only underscores their real agenda, which is to smear the Catholic Church.

Bill Donohue writes about an EEOC lawsuit that shines a light on efforts to establish cults in the workplace. To read his piece on CNSNews.com, click here.

Bill Donohue comments on why “The Real O’Neals” was renewed by ABC for its second season:

Anyone who thinks that money alone drives Hollywood doesn’t understand the role that ideology plays. For instance, we’ve known for years that “G” and “PG” movies fare better at the box office than “R” rated films, yet the sages in Tinseltown continue to offer the trash that often marks the latter. That’s because they can: they make enough cash from family-oriented films to subsidize their underperforming “R” rated flicks.

Similarly, when it comes to TV programs, the Hollywood crowd will go the extra mile for shows that advance its ideological agenda, even if it means taking a hit in revenue. Bringing back “The Real O’Neals” for a second season, which starts a week from today, is a case in point.

Nielson ratings for the 2015-2016 season reveal that ABC chose to cancel four shows that drew a larger audience than “The Real O’Neals.” Here is the proof (TV shows were ranked from 1-196):

“The Real O’Neals” ranked 106.

Of the four shows that had better ratings than “The Real O’Neals,” three of them were cancelled after one season; “Castle” lasted eight seasons. So why was “The Real O’Neals,” with its offensive anti-Catholic fare, renewed but the others were not?

It is hard to resist the conclusion that Disney/ABC made a calculated ideological decision not to give in to pressure from the Catholic League, the Media Research Center, and others. These organizations objected to the show largely because it was loosely based on the life of co-producer, Dan Savage: He is a raging anti-Catholic bigot.

It does not speak well for Disney/ABC to allow its politics—the politics of bigotry—to color its decision making. Let’s see how its predilections affect the upcoming scripts.

Contact Ben Sherwood at Disney-ABC: ben.sherwood@abc.com

Bill Donohue comments on how politics affects Yahoo News:

Yahoo News is seeking to manipulate public opinion by promoting the false notion that Pope Francis is at war with Donald Trump. In doing so, it is playing games with Catholics.

Today, on the homepage of Yahoo there is a news story titled, “Trump Goes to War with the Pope”; it features a picture of Donald Trump at a podium. The first sentence reads, “The pontiff suggests that Trump is not a Christian.”

There is no news here, save for Yahoo’s deceitfulness. The story is taken from a piece posted by Politico on February 18. Not only that, as I pointed out before, both the pope and Trump were misrepresented by the media last winter.

What makes this “news” story so outrageous is not simply the attempt to create a faux controversy between the pope and Trump, it represents a pattern of corruption on the part of Yahoo. This is at least the third time it has recently run the Politico story from February on its homepage. It did so again on October 1. Prior to that it, the story appeared in the same spot on August 27.

On August 29, after correcting the record about the pope and Trump, I said the following:

“The Politico piece that was posted on August 27 on the front page of Yahoo was marked August 25, but when I clicked on the entire story, I found it was the Politico article from February 18.

“Why did Yahoo mislead its readers? How could a mistake of this gravity be made? After all, many people only read the headlines, and in this case they were given the wrong message. If it wasn’t a mistake, then there is something seriously wrong going on. Either way, Yahoo owes us an explanation.”

Yesterday, after Yahoo ran the same story on October 1, we contacted two editors asking for an explanation. No reply was forthcoming. Now they have struck again.

As I said, many Internet users only read the headline news, so by recycling this story, which was seriously flawed to begin with, Yahoo News is acting irresponsibly.

Contact Daniel Klaidman, deputy editor, Yahoo News: dklaidman@yahoo-inc.com

Bill Donohue comments on the pope’s remarks on gender ideology:

Over the weekend, Pope Francis drew a familiar distinction between those individuals who were struggling with their sex identity and those who were pushing a radical agenda. He embraced the former while strongly denouncing the latter.

The pope’s words are subject to translation discrepancies, thus accounting for the following inconsistencies:

• “Today there is a global war out to destroy marriage. Not with weapons but with ideas…we have to defend ourselves from ideological colonization.”
• Gender theory represents a “global war against the family.”
• Gender theory has caused a “world war against marriage,” an example of “ideological colonization.”
• There is a “nasty” tendency in schools to “indoctrinate” children, teaching that gender can be chosen and changed.
• “It is one thing if a person has this tendency and also changes his sex. It’s another thing to teach this in school to change mentalities. This is what I call ‘ideological colonization.'”
• Teaching gender theory is “the great enemy of marriage.”
• Teaching gender theory “is against natural things.”

For teaching Catholic doctrine, Pope Francis was immediately condemned by New Ways Ministry, a renegade dissident group. It implored the pope to “abandon his reliance upon so-called ‘gender theory’ and ‘ideological colonization.'” It also accused the Holy Father of distorting reality. “Throwing about terms such as ‘gender theory’ and ‘ideological colonization’ is a red herring,” it said.

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 as a “gay Catholic” entity. By 1984, Archbishop James Hickey of Washington denied it official authorization or approval; the founders, Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent, were forbidden to carry out their agenda in the archdiocese.

In 1999, the Vatican took aim at New Ways Ministry. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, citing deliberate deviations from Catholic teachings on sexuality, permanently prohibited Gramick and Nugent from pastoral work with homosexuals.

In 2010, Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated that “New Ways Ministry has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.” He cited the group’s continued denial of Church teachings as the reason for his injunction.

Pope Francis is to be commended for his courage in deconstructing gender theory. In particular, he is to be applauded for challenging those who seek to indoctrinate children with its pernicious agenda.