Catholic League president Bill Donohue sent the following letter to HHS Secretary Becerra asking him to stop the exploitation, and cover-up, of migrant children.

July 30, 2021

The Hon. Xavier Becerra
Secretary for Health and Human Services
200 Independence Avenue, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20201

Dear Secretary Becerra:

According to recent whistleblowers, children living in HHS migrant shelters are living in subhuman conditions. That this is happening on your watch makes you at least partially culpable. I urge you to address this outrageous situation with all the resources available to you.

After enduring a long, arduous journey, these children are sent to camps where Covid is running rampant. In the girls’ tents, lice is left untreated while the boys turn riotous because of the poor conditions they are forced to endure during their detainment at HHS facilities. Clean underwear for the children is practically unheard of in the shelters, and when contractors offered to show these children compassion by purchasing them new underwear, they were discouraged by a senior federal manager.

Further, we know that the probability these children were exposed to sexual abuse is very high because that is the nature of human trafficking. We cannot say for certain how many of these children had to endure such horrific acts because your department’s response was to send federal detainees with no background in child psychology to interview the minors to determine if they need special attention due to their history.

What is most upsetting is the cover-up that is underway. To be specific senior HHS officials have worked tirelessly to hide the neglect that these children have endured. This is something you have direct control over, yet there are no signs that you are taking this matter seriously. Those engaged in the cover-up need to be held accountable.

Reports indicate that HHS officials have couched federal detainees “to make everything sound positive… and down play anything negative” about the living conditions your department has provided for these children. A senior manager from the U.S. Public Health Service refused to share information about how many of these minors had Covid at an employee town hall for fear that information would appear in the media.

Not too long ago you lambasted several Catholic dioceses in California for a lack of transparency and failing to adequately report on the welfare of children, but now, your own department is actively engaging in deception with regards to the terrible treatment children are receiving while in HHS’ care. This is nothing more than rank hypocrisy.

As the Attorney General of California, you portrayed yourself as a champion of the welfare of children, especially when it came to holding the Catholic Church responsible for crimes allegedly committed against adolescents nearly fifty years ago. You seemed to show much more vigor in your response to allegations made against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles even though most of these were well beyond the statute of limitations than you are for the present crisis on our border.

It is imperative that you act immediately to improve the living conditions for these innocent children.

Should your response to this request be less diligent than your efforts to defame the Church, I will have no choice but to call for a thorough Congressional inquiry into the subhuman conditions HHS has subjected upon these minors. Time is of the essence, Mr. Secretary, after all we are talking about the welfare of innocent children.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on an editorial in the Kansas City Star:

In the 28 years that I have been president of the Catholic League, few newspapers have been more hypocritical in their coverage of the Catholic Church than the Kansas City Star. It added to its legacy on July 28 when it ran an editorial claiming that the Church is still not transparent in its handling of the sexual abuse of minors.

The newspaper says the Church can correct this alleged deficiency by publishing a list of priests who were “credibly accused.” It praises those dioceses which have done so. I don’t. If anything, they are deserving of our condemnation, not commendation. The accused have rights, and that includes Roman Catholic priests.

Why should the Catholic Church publish a list of accused priests when no institution in the United States publishes a list of its employees who have been accused of sexual misconduct (or any offense, for that matter)? If they did, the list of those who work in the media would be extensive.

Moreover, if the names of those who have been accused, but not convicted, were made public by their employer, the employee should sue for reputational damage. In fact, the Catholic League filed an amicus brief in a case involving 11 Pennsylvania priests whose reputational rights were damaged when a grand jury report was made public listing their accused status. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled 6-1 in our favor in December 2018.

The Star editorial says there needs to be an “easy-to-use national list of abusive clerics.” It does not mention that almost all the molesting priests, over 80 percent of whom were homosexuals, are either dead or out of ministry. Nor does it mention that the Church’s scandal is long over (most of the abuse took place between 1965 and 1985), quite unlike the public schools where this problem is still ongoing.

In a report on the public schools published in 2016 by USA Today, it found the following. “Congress passed a law in December 2015 requiring states to ban school districts from secretly passing problem teachers to other jurisdictions or face losing federal funds. But 45 states have not instituted the ban.”

The sentinels at the Kansas City Star should get on this one right away. But they won’t—it doesn’t involve the Catholic Church.

Finally, the Star quotes David Clohessy, the discredited former head of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), an outfit that was exposed several times as a total fraud by the Catholic League, and most definitively by former staff member, Gretchen Rachel Hammond. That is why no one quotes Clohessy any more, save for the Star.

In 2011, when the Kansas City Star was relentless in its news stories on clergy sexual abuse, I sought a corrective: I offered the newspaper $25,000 to pay for an advertisement that sought to set the record straight, especially about the work of SNAP. I was denied without an explanation. It was not as though the newspaper couldn’t have used the money—in the previous decade it had laid off a thousand employees. We all know why I was turned down.

For all of these reasons, the Kansas City Star is a joke.

Contact Melinda Henneberger, the editorial page editor: mhenneberger@kcstar.com

P.S. I have a new book coming out in September that addresses this subject in detail, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, published by Ignatius Press.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the results of a new Pew Research Center survey:

All over the world, the best educated white people are also the most likely to be stupid. There are exceptions, of course, but the generalization remains true nonetheless.

By educated, I mean the number of years spent in school, and nothing more. By stupidity, I mean a lack of common sense, as in a denial of human nature. By this measure, a large swath of the well-educated white people who live in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand are plainly stupid people.

The latest evidence to support this observation can be found in the results of a Pew Research Center survey, published July 27. I hasten to add that the researchers at Pew did not come to my conclusion, but that has no bearing on my interpretation of their data.

Pew found that 56% of adults surveyed believe that “gender is determined by sex assigned at birth,” and 41% believe it can be different. Who believes the latter? “Liberal Democrats are particularly likely to say gender can be different from sex assigned at birth.” In fact, 81% believe this to be true.

Also, “those with a bachelor’s degree or more education are more likely than those who do not have a college degree to say a person’s gender can be different from sex assigned at birth.” Regarding race, white people are the most likely to accept this position; blacks are the least likely.

Let’s begin with Sociology 101. Then we can proceed to Biology 101.

The term “gender” is constantly misused these days: it means socially learned roles that are deemed appropriate for men and women. Thus, asking someone on an employment or medical form what “gender” he is makes no sense: the proper question is what “sex” the person is.

It is also inaccurate to say that someone’s sex was “assigned at birth.” No one is ever “assigned” his sex—it is a given. To be exact, every person who ever walked the face of the earth had his sex determined by his father. Period. In other words, the only person “assigning” the sex of the baby is the one keeping hospital records. Similarly, “gender-reveal” parties, which are really “sex-reveal” parties, are actually celebrations of what has been learned in utero about what the father has bequeathed.

Contrary to what so many educated white people believe, there is no such thing as a “non-binary” person. A human being is either a male or a female. He or she may deny this, but that is of no consequence. A person could, conceivably, think of himself as a giraffe, but self-identity is not dispositive. Reality matters more than subjective interpretations of it.

Here are some more basic biological facts that are resisted by educated white people.

A male carries the XY chromosomes; a female carries XX. Sorry, folks, there is no third combination—no XYZ exists. It’s a binary fact of life.

Another fact of life is that only females produce eggs. Males are incapable of doing so, and this certainly includes those biological men who identify as a woman. Here’s another reality check: a man can think of himself as a woman until the cows come home, but he will never be able to menstruate.

I have more bad news for those who have stayed in school too long.

Males have a penis, scrotum, and testicles. Females have a vagina, uterus, and ovaries. Yes, one can pay a doctor to mutilate his genitals and construct a Lego-type replacement—though many trans persons refuse to finish the job—but this is still not a game changer.

For example, males are continuously fertile from puberty—their sperms never stop being produced. Females are fertile for 12 hours a month, until menopause. Men have more testosterone and less estrogen than women; the obverse is also true. Males have a larger brain, thinner face, and larger veins than females. And so on.

The biological differences are evident everywhere. To take one example, the Olympics are the greatest demonstration of nature-based differences in the world. Men are stronger and faster than women, and it is this fact of life that drives sex segregation in sports. Even the most ardent feminists know this to be true. Otherwise, they would scream about discrimination and demand that all events be “inclusive” of both sexes.

The fundamental question remains. Why are educated white people the most likely to swallow the moonshine that a man who thinks he is a woman is, therefore, a woman (and vice versa)? The only plausible answer is that they have been the most indoctrinated by radical egalitarian ideologies.

To rebel against one’s own nature is sick; for others to affirm it is even sicker.

Fortunately, the notion that human nature does not exist is rejected by most of those who have less schooling, and who are non-white. More good news: It has had even less effect on those who live in Latin America, Africa, Russia, or Asia.

Educated white people who deny what nature, and nature’s God, has ordained, need to be deprogrammed. Either that or they will continue to prove just how stupid they really are.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Antifa and Black Lives Matter:

Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) share one goal and two strategies in common. Their goal is to destroy America and their preferred means are both violent and non-violent. In this regard, they make the Jan. 6 rioters look like the Little League—the Trump supporters did not kill anyone (the only person killed was a female unarmed protester), and they are not bent on destroying the country.

Regarding this last point, the American people know this intuitively. A recent Rasmussen poll found that only 49% of voters support the Jan. 6 inquiry, while 66% want Congress to investigate last year’s protest violence. Yet Congress is doing just the opposite.

Whatever one thinks of the Jan. 6 rioters, they are not a threat to the average American; the same is not true of Antifa or BLM. To be specific, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, 570 of the left-wing protests last year resulted in a riot. Dozens were killed and many more were injured, including some 700 law enforcement officers.

Reporter Andy Ngo has chronicled Antifa better than anyone. He has also been beaten up more than any other reporter. He has the pictures, videos and testimony of Antifa protesters and their victims, capturing the kind of evidence that settles the debate: explosives, guns, knives and Molotov cocktails—this is what the Antifa cowards dressed in black (with their faces covered) are all about. Yet there are some who are still in denial.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a radical left-wing organization that is greased by American-hating plutocrats, not only contends that Antifa is not violent, it actually maintains that classifying it as such is “dangerous” and a “threat” to civil liberties. Nice to know which side they’re on.

The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project determined that 95% of all the 2020 summer riots were tied to BLM. We also know that BLM is said to be responsible for 25 deaths and thousands of injuries. Yet the Marxist millionaires who run it continue to get grants from establishment foundations, so riddled with white guilt are its patrons. Nice to know which side they’re on.

The non-violent means used by Antifa and BLM to destroy America focuses on annihilating the social and cultural bases of society, namely family and religion.

In 2019, a community college professor, Jeff Klinzman, declared, “I affirm that I am antifa.” On his Facebook page, he previously expressed the desire to “stop evangelical Christians,” even going so far as to say, “Kill them all and bury them deep in the ground!” (Would Facebook have allowed someone to call for the killing of Antifa terrorists?)

Last summer, Antifa threatened to destroy a cross at a Christian college in Oregon, calling it a “racist” symbol. This was after some of them burned Bibles and an American flag in front of a courthouse in Portland. When hundreds of Christians turned out to sing Gospel music in the neighborhood taken over by rioters, Antifa showed up yelling obscenities and threatening local black pastors. Later that year, more than 100 of them vandalized a Catholic church, smashing its front windows.

Antifa’s attack on the family was recently showcased when some of its members took the side of a radical transgender person. A man who falsely claimed to be a woman entered a Korean spa in Los Angeles this month and paraded around totally naked “right in front of young girls, teens and grown women.” When a woman complained, Antifa terrorists showed up and clashed with the LAPD in defense of the pervert.

BLM is even more committed to destroying the family. It explicitly says it wants to eradicate the “nuclear family structure,” though it has since taken that post down from its website. Two of the three female founders “identify as queer,” and all of them are “committed to fostering a queer-affirming network.” One of the queers says she is “married to a trans male.”

Why does any of this matter? Because BLM is founded on Marxism, and Marxists deny human nature and want to upend the nuclear family. Similarly, Antifa is a nihilistic band of left-wing activists who also want to undermine civil society.

Antifa and BLM are not shy about boasting what their goal is and how they intend to achieve it. The only ones still not convinced are their cheerleaders in the media, education and the corporate world. At best, they are moronic. No matter, they are a danger to the wellbeing of every American.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the death of Jackie Mason:

We lost a true American icon on July 24 when Jackie Mason passed away at the age of 93. He was more than a remarkable comedian, he was a strong foe of anti-Catholicism. I worked with him for many years fighting this plague.

On April 20, 2005, journalist Don Feder launched a new organization, Jews Against Anti-Christian Defamation. He did so by holding a press confererence at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. His advisory board was stacked with distinguished rabbis, authors, professors, and activists. There was also a stellar entertainer—Jackie Mason.

On December 14, 2005, Don held a press conference on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Attending were Jackie Mason, author and activist Rabbi Aryeh Spero, attorney Raoul Felder, radio talk-show host Barry Farber, and myself. Jackie hired limousines that rode down Fifth Avenue with a huge banner declaring, “JEWS SAY IT’S OK TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS.”

Soon after Jackie and Raoul wrote a splendid piece explaining why it was important for Jews to speak up about attempts to censor Christmas. Here is a small selection of their essay.

• “You would have to be a refugee from a sanitarium not to look forward to Christmas. Christmas in America is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a celebration of diversity. But to lots of people, it doesn’t seem that way. Across America school districts are forbidding the singing of Christmas carols, nativity scenes are being banned in public places, and in malls the ‘Christmas sales’ are now ‘Holiday Sales.’”
• “We cannot see how our beliefs are jeopardized by someone else celebrating his beliefs—particularly if the celebrations are those consisting, at least in part, of love, family values, spirituality and giving thought to the less fortunate.”
• “We would have a very fragile religion if 2000 years of our culture and beliefs were threatened by Bing Crosby singing ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’—incidentally written by a Jew, Irving Berlin—Santa Claus and mistletoe.”
• “Jews seem to be heavily involved in this repeal movement. They would do well to remember Pastor Niemöller’s observation: ‘In Germany they first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me—and by that time no one was left to speak up.”

Jackie did not limit his efforts to combat anti-Catholicism to attempts to cancel Christmas. He spoke at a rally I held in 2010 outside the Empire State Building protesting the refusal of the building’s owner not to honor Mother Teresa on her centenary by lighting the towers in her colors, blue and white; 3,500 people were in attendance. We appeared on TV together about this issue.

Jackie Mason was more than a first-class comedian. He was a first-class person who went against the grain by standing up for the rights of Catholics. May he rest in peace.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s Catholicity:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi lied again on July 22 when she described herself as “a devout Catholic.”

Addressing the subject of abortion, she said, “As a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family—five children in six years almost to the day. But that may not be what we should—and it’s not up to me to dictate that that’s what other people should do, and it’s an issue of fairness and justice for poorer women in our country.”

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines “devout” as meaning “believing strongly in a religion and obeying all its rules or principles.” Pelosi does not obey the teachings of the Catholic Church on many key public policy issues.

Her enthusiasm for abortion is off-the-charts. She opposes laws that ban the killing of babies who are 80 percent born (partial birth abortion), and she even won Planned Parenthood’s highest award in 2014. In 2008, she stunned Tom Brokaw on “Meet the Press” when she falsely claimed that the Catholic Church has not taken a position on when life begins; the bishops unloaded on her for lying. That is not how “devout Catholics” act.

Pelosi not only rejects the Church’s teaching on marriage, she lied in 2015 when she said that her support for same-sex marriage is “consistent” with Catholic teaching. Last year she declared war on Catholic schools when she sought to rescind funding for Catholic schools that were granted money by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. That is not how “devout Catholics” act.

Pelosi also lied when she said she does not want to “dictate” to others what they should do. Last September, she sought to dictate to San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone what to do about Mass attendance during the pandemic. To be exact, she lectured him for opposing the mayor’s rule that only one person at a time was allowed inside churches to pray. That is not how “devout Catholics” act.

Pelosi’s remark that she supports abortion rights out of “fairness and justice for poorer women in our country” needs explaining.

Why didn’t she say it is an issue of “fairness and justice for all women”? Quite frankly, it sounds racist. Is that her way of “taking care of the urban problem”? After all, population control of African Americans is what galvanized Margaret Sanger to found Planned Parenthood.

Non-Catholics, never mind Catholics, know Pelosi is lying about her Catholic status. So does she.

Contact her chief of staff: terri.mccullough@mail.house.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a victory for the rights of priests: 

The rights of priests took a big step forward on July 21 when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that sided with an alleged victim of clergy sexual abuse. The law firm of Jones Day ably represented the Catholic League in an amicus brief that was filed in support of the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

The alleged victim, Renee Rice, argued that she had been molested in the 1970s by Fr. Charles Bodziak at St. Leo’s Church in Altoona, a town about 80 miles from Pittsburgh. The priest denied the accusation.

Rice’s lawsuit claimed that two bishops tried to cover up his behavior, even though the diocese sent her a letter 10 years before her lawsuit encouraging her to come forward about her alleged abuse. Even more bizarre, she never did anything to pursue her claim until 2016. That was when a grand jury report on sexual abuse in the diocese was released. She said the report awakened her to what supposedly happened.

To top things off, Rice’s lawyers maintained that the timeline of the statute of limitations for a civil claim seeking damages for an offense should not start when the alleged injury took place. In her case that meant at the time the grand jury report was made public.

Had Rice won, it would have meant that the established law regarding the statute of limitations would have been thrown out, thus crushing the rights of the accused.

When the Catholic League filed an amicus curiae brief with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in 2019, I commented on the Superior Court ruling that sided with Rice. “We have reached a new level of creative jurisprudence when a court can invoke a jury decision as the new clock determining when the limitations period starts to run.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the Superior Court’s reasoning. We won 5-2. Justice Christine Donohue (no relation to me) wrote for the majority, saying, “the statute of limitations expired decades ago.” In short, Rice had an obligation to pursue her case within the limitation period and elected not to do so.

The Catholic League’s lawyers were happy to note that Pennsylvania’s high court prominently cited a case that their brief highlighted, Colosimo v. Roman Catholic Bishops of Salt Lake City. It held that the lack of due diligence on the part of the plaintiff (in this case Rice) was fatal.

This victory means that the slew of “copycat” lawsuits filed after the lower court win will die on the vine. Thanks to our friends at Jones Day, the rights of priests are in much better shape.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on racism in the schools:

Never before has the education establishment in the United States been more determined to promote racism in the schools than today. In the past, there have been texts that glossed over slavery, and curriculum that did not adequately address racial inequities in American history, but those are instances of omission. What we are witnessing today is a full-court press to deliberately divide the races, and it is coming from the top.

What makes this especially perverse is that this is not being done by Klan-like educators. No, it is being done by those who claim to be combating racism. The public is being played: Those responsible for indoctrinating students with critical race theory, and its ilk, are dishonestly maintaining that their agenda is anti-racist. In fact, they are mainlining racism in the schools.

To tell one race of students that they are morally inferior to the other is racist, and that is the point of telling white kids that they belong to the oppressor class. To tell white students that their skin color alone makes them racists is manifestly racist. This is what critical race theory espouses. The logical effect of this agenda is to divide the races. The Klan could not do better.

Those who champion this pernicious assault on racial equality often lie about their cause. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) recently said that “Critical race theory is not taught in elementary school.” Yet the title of the msn.com article wherein she is quoted accurately notes, “AOC Defends Critical Race Theory Being Taught in Schools.”

To prove how dishonest AOC is, consider that in June the National Education Association (NEA) approved a motion to adopt critical race theory in the schools. Here are some of the curriculum items the NEA instructed teachers to adopt.

• “Share and publicize, through existing channels, information already available on critical race theory (CRT).”
• “Provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”
• “Join with Black Lives Matter at School and the Zinn Education Project to call for a rally this year on October 14—George Floyd’s birthday—as a national day of action to teach lessons about structural racism and oppression.”

This is the kind of Marxist claptrap we would expect from a brainwashed high school student, to say nothing of its illiteracy.

Nice to know that the NEA is opposed to capitalism but not socialism. There is a reason for this: The Zinn Education Project, a Marxist teacher-resource endeavor that it endorses, is named after Howard Zinn; he was a member of the Communist Party. Also, its support for Black Lives Matter, which explicitly declares that it wants to smash the nuclear family, is revealing. The Klan shares the same outcome.

The bullet items listed were taken from “New Business Item 39” that was adopted by the NEA in June. But it does not want the taxpayers and the parents of students to know about it: it has been deleted from its website. Sorry, it’s too late. To read it, click here.

It is important to acknowledge that the leadership of the NEA, and those who, like AOC, support critical race theory, are not liberals. They are far left-wing activists. The problem is they are drowning out the voice of reasonable liberals. Unless those who were previously in the center, and were pushed to the fringes, recapture their command seats, the result will be more racism, not less of it.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on a Catholic politician who is claiming victim status:

New Mexico State Sen. Joe Cervantes, a Catholic, was recently denied Holy Communion because he is pro-abortion. Now he is playing his constituents, as well as the general public. He wants everyone to think that he is the victim of Catholic persecution, when, in fact, he deliberately sought to place himself in a position so that he could make this false claim.

The teaching of the Catholic Church on abortion is very clear: it opposes the killing of innocent human life. In modern times, science has ratified what the Church has long taught, namely that life begins at conception. Cervantes knows this to be true, and he also knows that his pro-abortion stance is not in keeping with the teachings of the Catholic Church. More important, his recent bid to receive the Eucharist was done to create a stir.

There is a 1969 law in New Mexico that criminalizes abortion. It has never been enforced. That’s because Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in 1973, made it moot. For grandstanding purposes, two years ago pro-abortion politicians like Cervantes sought to repeal this law. They failed.

It is common practice in the Catholic Church in the United States for priests and bishops who live in an area where pro-abortion Catholics live to reach out to them in dialogue. The goal of this outreach effort is to persuade the office holder of the seriousness of abortion and the need to respect the Church’s teachings on this subject. In other words, contrary to what some in the media say, the clergy do not take cheap public shots at wayward Catholic politicians. Regrettably, the obverse is frequently not true.

According to the Diocese of Las Cruces, both the pastor at Cervantes’ church, and the local bishop, Peter Baldacchino, “reached out to him [Cervantes] multiple times in order to convey to him the teaching of the Catholic Church.” And what did he do? He blew them off. “Cervantes never answered or responded to diocesan communications.”

This was not the end of the outreach effort. The pastor of Cervantes’ church “advised him [Cervantes] that a vote in favor of this particular Senate bill would constitute a grave moral evil and that he should not present himself for Communion.” In other words, Cervantes sought to receive Communion on July 16th, knowing full well he would be denied. He did so purposefully.

Those who are not Catholic should know that it would have been perfectly legitimate for Cervantes to join the Communion line and then, instead of receiving the Eucharist, he could have elected to put his hands across his torso (one arm crossed over the other) and bow his head. At that point the priest would have blessed him. But this is not what Cervantes did. He wanted to be denied so he could claim victim status.

Phony Catholics have always been with us. But today we have an abundance of them, especially in political circles. That such persons are found at the national level as well is even more disturbing.

Contact State Sen. Cervantes: joseph.cervantes@nmlegis.gov

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on what is happening to Sports Illustrated:

Many men used to read Sports Illustrated in their barber shop, and some subscribed to it. Always informative, and loaded with color photos, it was the quintessential sports magazine for men. No longer. How many men really want to see a man dressed in a woman’s bathing suit featured on its cover?

The venerable sports publication has three cover swimsuit issues this year. One features rapper Megan Thee Stallion; one posts a photo of tennis star Naomi Osaka; and the third shows a picture of Leyna Bloom, a so-called trans model who is really a biological man.

Why is Sports Illustrated doing this? Like so many elites in the world of sports, those who run the magazine have turned left.

It flexed its left-wing muscles in 2017 when it depicted athletes and sports officials on the cover of its September 26 issue standing in unison against President Trump. The photo showed NBA stars Lebron James, Steph Curry and NFL CEO Roger Goodell in the front row linking arms; behind them were other left-wing sports personalities from baseball, football and basketball.

The trans model on the cover of Sports Illustrated indicates that the magazine has gone beyond politics: It has clearly joined the culture war. This has been brewing for some time. In more recent years, it has become decidedly secular, even going so far as to sport an animus against Christianity. It has a particular disdain for Roman Catholicism.

One of the most virulently anti-Catholic organizations in the nation is the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). Sports Illustrated loves these bigots. That is why it has cited their work on many occasions.

The atheists at FFRF and the secularists at Sports Illustrated have joined forces to protest college football chaplains and coaches. There is no college football team in the country they despise more than Clemson University.

Coach Dabo Swinney, who is a practicing Christian, has earned their wrath for his very public pronouncements of his faith. They would like to silence him if they could. The hit job that Sports Illustrated did on him in September 23, 2019 is proof positive of its anti-Christian sentiment.

Last year Sports Illustrated went for the jugular when it published a lengthy tirade against the New Orleans Saints. After noting that it was “a Catholic-named NFL team”—which was obviously disturbing to them—it attacked the team’s owner, Gayle Benson, for her “close ties to the [Catholic] Church.”

What was the problem? She gave advice to New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond on how to handle some internal issues. No one did anything illegal—owners of sports teams consult with local secular and religious officials all the time—and, of course, Sports Illustrated knows this to be true. Its goal was to declare a selective allegiance to separation of church and football.

In 2013, one of the magazine’s subscribers, Andrew Klavan, went public with his decision to let his subscription to Sports Illustrated lapse. He cited an anti-Christian article by left-wing writer Mark Oppenheimer that appeared in that year’s Super Bowl issue. “In the Fields of the Lord” was the last straw for Klavan, so laden with anti-Christian venom was it.

Two years ago, Sports Illustrated laid off over 40 employees. If it continues to play politics with its readers, it will have to lay off a lot more. Its hostility to Christianity is palpable, and it is this mindset that motivated it to flash a man in a woman’s bathing suit on its cover.

Americans are increasingly fed up with elites in the sports world trying to shove their agenda down their throats. Sports is, by nature, purely apolitical. Which is why those who are making it political are out of step with millions of fans. The rebellion has only just begun.

Contact the publisher, Danny Lee: Danny.Lee@si.com