Bill Donohue

The ongoing culture war between those who adhere to Judeo-Christian principles on one side, and militant secularists on the other, is increasingly taking on a political dimension. While there has long been funding for anti-Catholic art exhibits, what’s relatively new is the decision by Democrats to force taxpayers to fund the radical LGBT agenda. This issue is currently at a fever pitch.

On July 18, at a hearing on funding for transportation and housing programs, members of the House Appropriations Committee got more than testy—they engaged in the kind of verbal abuse we would expect from cable TV talking heads, not members of Congress.

Rep. Mark Pocan, a homosexual Democrat, branded Republicans who disagreed with him “bigots,” resorting to foul language while making the case for the radical LGBT agenda. Worse was Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the most anti-Catholic pro-abortion Catholic in the House. She called her critics “terrorists.” After she was called out for her invective, she asked that her “offending words” be withdrawn. But the damage was done.

Politico, the liberal media outlet, published a fine piece on this story (none of the major dailies covered it).

“What Do Drag Shows, Pride Flags and Latino Museums Have to Do with Roads and Parks?” The headline, while baiting, hit on something real: Republicans are becoming much more aggressive in tackling social and cultural issues. Perhaps that is because they realize, as a Gallup poll recently found, that social conservatism is rebounding.

Some of the issues that are being hotly debated include providing for so-called gender-affirming care; diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; the distribution of Pride flags; drag queen workshops, performances and documentaries; and dishonest exhibits that portray Hispanics as “victims.”

The national debt has never been greater, yet some members of Congress think we should pay for these ventures, several of which are morally offensive. They are taking their cues from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the influential gay activist organization.

To show how extremist HRC is, consider some of its objectives:

• It believes that it is acceptable to allow a person who misidentifies as transgender to use whatever bathroom he wants. In other words, women who object to showering with men have no rights.
• It contends that by ensuring safety and fairness in women’s sports that this amounts to a total ban on transgender persons from participating in athletics. However, transgender persons are not prohibited from competing against each other. But this is not what HRC wants—it wants males to compete against females, effectively destroying women’s sports.
• It contends that LGBT persons are being discriminated against if students and teachers are not forced to use “preferred pronouns.” In other words, it wants the government to abridge the free speech rights of students and teachers by mandating what words they must use when identifying those who have misidentified their sex, or who falsely think that they are more than one person (as in being called “they”).
• It is strongly opposed to parental rights. For example, it is opposed to state laws that notify parents if their child has chosen to adopt a transgender identity.
• It argues that age restrictions on drag queen shows—of any kind—are tantamount to discrimination against the performers. Moreover, it contends that protecting children from sexually explicit material is an expression of bigotry.

It is fashionable to say both sides are crossing the line these days. With rare exceptions, this is not true.

Those who are promoting the anti-science view that the sexes are interchangeable are all liberal Democrats. These are the same persons who want to gut women’s sports, allow boys to share locker rooms with girls, dictate what pronouns people must use, nullify parental rights, and expose children to perverted theater. To top things off, they want the taxpayers to flip the bill for their sick agenda.

Paradoxically, referring to those who object to this madness as “terrorists” may actually be a good sign. It suggests that the DeLauros of this world are losing, and in an act of desperation, the only ammo left in their armor is vitriol.

Bill Donohue

Hemant Mehta is an atheist activist who is not too happy with Richard Dawkins, one of the most prominent atheists in the world. He is angered that his fellow God denier insists that “sex really is binary.” This should be about as controversial as saying the world is not flat, but in some circles it is cause for apoplexy.

Dawkins is someone whom I have mostly criticized, and occasionally defended, in the past. In 2016, I called him out for his hate speech when he said, “I’m all for offending people’s religion.” In 2017, I defended the Englishman on free speech grounds when a left-wing radio station based in Berkeley, California disinvited him after he called Islam the “most evil” of world religions. Now I am defending him once again.

Mehta holds to the anti-science view that sex is fluid. It is not. It is binary, just as Dawkins said it is. We are either male (XY chromosomes) or female (XX), notwithstanding the biological disorder that affects boys called Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY). That does not make for a third sex.

Dawkins is a biologist. Mehta is a blogger. Despite the glaring difference in credentials, the occasionally employed blogger is accusing Dawkins of “abandoning” science.

“What is a woman?” We know that Mehta can no more answer this question than can Ketanji Brown Jackson, but when Dawkins was asked to respond, he was not puzzled. “A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes.” Mehta says, “That flies in the face of what many scientists have said about the subject.”

What Mehta is referring to is the alleged category of “intersex” persons. Yes, there are rare instances of babies who are born with both male and female genitalia. Anomalies exist in nature. It is also true that there are people who suffer from polydactyly, a condition in which a person is born with extra fingers or toes. So what?

Father Tad Pacholczyk has a doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did postdoctoral work at Harvard. Even those born with “confounding physiological factors,” he says, are either intrinsically male or female. In other words, humans are “marked by sexual ‘dimorphism,’ or ‘two-forms,’ namely, male and female. When problems arise in the development of one of these forms, this does not make for a new ‘third form,’ or worse, for an infinite spectrum of different sexual forms.”

Mehta is upset that Dawkins has previously said that trans people are similar to Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who claimed to be black. The analogy is apt: if self-identity is dispositive, then Dolezal is as black as the guy who claims he is a gal.

Finally, Dawkins insists that it is people like him who are being bullied today, not trans people. Mehta disagrees but Dawkins is right. It is true, as Mehta contends, that trans people are much more likely to experience violence than normal people are, but what he leaves out is that most of the violence against trans people is being carried out by other trans people. That’s the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about.

Bill Donohue

Survey data reveal that the most intolerant people in America are unquestionably young liberals. Why this is so needs to be probed, but first the data.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) studies free speech on college campuses, and its 2022-2023 “College Free Speech Rankings” is particularly insightful. In a survey of almost 45,000 college students from 201 schools, the University of Chicago was rated the top spot; Columbia University was rated the least respectful of free speech of any institution of higher education in the country.

Overall, the degree to which free speech is prized on campus was among its most alarming findings. Liberals, not conservatives, are the problem.

Opposition to allowing controversial conservative speakers on campus ranged from 59 percent to 73 percent, depending on the speaker.

However, opposition to controversial liberal speakers on campus ranged from 24 percent to 41 percent, depending on the speaker.

Is it acceptable to shout down a speaker? For liberals it is: 76 percent approve. For conservatives, the figure is 44 percent.

Is it acceptable to block entry to a campus speech? Almost half of liberals (47 percent) agree. Among conservatives, 25 percent agree.

Is it acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech? A quarter (25 percent) of liberals approve. For conservatives, the figure is 16 percent.

Not surprisingly, liberals are more comfortable expressing themselves on campus than conservatives are. As we might expect, 53 percent of college students describe themselves as “left of center”; only 20 percent identify as “right of center.”

When students were asked which subjects were the most difficult to have a conversation about on campus, they mentioned abortion, racial inequality, Covid mandates and transgender issues as the most difficult. With the exception of Covid restrictions, this reflects the Left’s obsession with sex and race.

A recent survey conducted for Newsweek found that 44 percent of those aged 25-34 want to make “misgendering” a person—using the “wrong” pronoun to describe a transgender person—a criminal offense. Among those aged 35-44, 38 percent support treating this as a crime. The overall figure for Americans is 19 percent.

Only in times of war has there traditionally been support for muzzling free speech. But we are not at war, so there is no need to balance free speech with national security. What we are witnessing today is unlike anything we’ve seen before.

There has been next to zero media outcry over this condition. Yet the assault on the First Amendment is palpable.

The reason for this situation should be obvious to those not drugged by ideology: it is young liberals, indoctrinated by teachers, especially professors, who are the most intolerant, and those who work in the media are so thoroughly politicized these days as to be unmoved by what is happening.

All this talk about “Christian nationalists” being a threat to free speech is a ruse. The real threat is coming from the Left, the very same persons guilty of blaming their favorite bogeyman—Christians.