Bill Donohue

They really don’t like Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post (WaPO). Not only did the opinion editor, David Shipley, resign, their longtime columnist Ruth Marcus called it quits; so did other staffers. Moreover, many of those who are sticking around are not happy campers. In fact, news stories report that the paper’s employees were “shocked and stunned.”

The hysterical response stems from the announcement Bezos recently made. “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.”

Why would this set workers off? There are three possible reasons: (a) they don’t like being told what to write about, (b) they don’t like personal liberties, and (c) they don’t like free markets. In fairness, the reason why Marcus resigned was more personal—WaPO refused to publish an editorial she wrote criticizing Bezos for making the aforementioned changes.

Regarding the first reason, it is understandable that reporters and other staffers would object to anything that might compromise their independence. But how independent were they before? If a reporter, or someone on the editorial staff, were pro-life, how secure would that person be in expressing his independence from his colleagues?

Why would staffers object to free markets? After all, they make their living from a market economy. But maybe that doesn’t matter. It is hardly a secret that WaPO is home to liberal and left-wing reporters, and for them, socialism is not a dirty word. Capitalism is. This is a reflection of what they learned in school.

New York Post columnist John Stossel recently noted that a prominent TikTok star, Madeline Pendleton, told her considerably large audience that “Socialism is working better than capitalism 93% of the time.” Forget Stossel’s astute rebuttal, what matters is that a lot of young people, in particular, believe this to be true.

Similarly, Touro University professor Yuriy V. Karpov observes that half of young voters are pro-socialist. “According to a recent survey, 49.6 percent of young American voters would prefer to live in a socialist country.” But for some reason, none want to move to Venezuela.

In short, the hard left has taken command of a large portion of our nation’s youth. While staffers at WaPO may not be quite as radical as these young people, many are closer to them than they are to the Young Republicans. After all, the staffers were also trained by those on the left.

Karpov reports that a survey of faculty at elite American universities found that 91 percent identify as liberal. Importantly, he notes that “liberal” means people like Angela Davis. He accurately describes her as “a radical communist and a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has been awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.”

What about personal liberties? Why would staffers object to that? They don’t when it comes to drugs and abortion. But when it comes to free speech, that is problematic. Even though they make their living by exercising their right to free speech, recent studies show that liberals are the least supportive of this First Amendment right.

Two years ago, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression released its annual survey on the status of free speech on campus. In a survey of almost forty-five thousand college students from 201 colleges, it found that liberals were the most intolerant of free speech; conservatives were much more tolerant.

Bezos is trying to move the newspaper away from being a forum for liberal-left thinking. He has no nefarious agenda: he simply wants employees to start showing an appreciation for the liberties that allow for a free society. That this is controversial shows how deeply ideological WaPO has become.

Bill Donohue

As we approach the 10th anniversary of homosexuals marching under their own banner in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, it behooves us to understand how this happened.

To begin with, gays were never banned from marching. As I said on radio and TV in New York for two decades, no one ever asked anyone what they did in bed and with whom. Gays were banned from marching under their own banner, and that is because to do so would deflect from what the day is all about—honoring St. Patrick. For the same reason, pro-life groups were banned from marching under their own banner.

The first gay group to march was in 1991. Mayor David Dinkins entered into a discussion with the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), the parade organizers, and a compromise was reached: members of the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization (ILGO) could march with the mid-town chapter of the AOH, accompanied by the mayor.

When ILGO sought to march in the 1992 parade, they were barred. They were accused of “outrageous behavior” when they marched in 1991, making obscene gestures in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and in front of the reviewing stand at 5th Avenue and 67th Street.

On January 21, 1992, the Hibernian National and State Boards issued a joint statement asserting that “no organization or organizations are allowed to use New York City’s 231st Annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 17, 1992 as a vehicle to publicly insult any person or group watching or reviewing the parade.” They repeated the charge that ILGO engaged in “outrageous behavior and conduct.”

ILGO did not give up and proceeded to march, illegally, in the 1994 parade. They were arrested for marching without a permit on March 17, but that didn’t make any difference to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Robert Sackett. On November 2, 1994, he threw out the charges, saying the arrest of the ILGO members was a “blatant denial of First Amendment rights.”

A week later, here is what I said about that ruling.

“Judge Sackett is an embarrassment of the courts. For him to simply disregard the fact that ILGO (a) had no permit to march (b) never sought one in the first place (c) was never denied the right to protest elsewhere and (d) had already lost in the courts in its bid to march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, demonstrates that Judge Sackett shows no respect for the law.”

In 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that banning ILGO from the Boston St. Patrick’s Day Parade was constitutional. It was a private parade, the high court said, and the organizers had a First Amendment right to freedom of association, essentially affirming their right to craft their own rules.

Meanwhile in New York, the AOH handed the parade over to a new group, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, headed by John Dunleavy. Even though the Supreme Court upheld the right of parade organizers to ban ILGO, they attempted to march in the late 1990s, and were arrested for doing so. I took pictures of them and was assaulted by one of the lesbians. I did not hit her back knowing the media would capture my retaliatory move, and blame me.

Why was ILGO so determined to march? It had nothing to do with honoring St. Patrick. This is not an opinion—it is what they said.

In 2017, Anne Maguire and Maxine Wolfe published their reminiscences on an array of subjects, one of which was the parade. Maguire, who was co-founder of ILGO, talked about the politics of the group. She explicitly said that the protests at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade “sort of dovetailed with ACT UP.” She also admitted that “the vast majority” of ILGO members were illegal aliens who sought to mobilize politically.

Maguire said that within their first year in the U.S., “somebody brought up in a meeting, ‘Wouldn’t it be kind of funny if we marched in the St. Patrick’s Day parade?’” To which most of them said, “Are you kidding me?” This is how it all began—as a lark.

They asked for a permit, were denied, and “it just completely blew up.” They saw homophobia everywhere, from being denied a permit to “ACT UP and AIDS.”

Maguire’s admission that there was a nexus between the parade and ACT UP is telling: she was referring to what ACT UP did on December 10, 1989 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. That was the day when gays crashed the Sunday 10:15 a.m. Mass, celebrated by Cardinal John O’Connor. ACT UP activists interrupted the Mass, handcuffed themselves to the pews, blew whistles, shouted obscenities and spat the Host on the floor. One of the most prominent members at the “Stop The Church” protest who was arrested was Ann Northrop.

Northrop blamed Cardinal O’Connor for AIDS, not promiscuous homosexuals. How did the archbishop cause AIDS? By saying that monogamy protects against the sexually transmitted disease! This is like blaming obesity on those who diet.

Further proof that ILGO’s interest in marching in the parade was a lark, having everything to do with making a political statement and nothing to do with honoring St. Patrick, was made plain by Maguire. In 1996, a year after the Supreme Court ruled against ILGO, she wrote the following.

“What is clear about ILGO and the St. Patrick’s Day parade is that most [ILGO] people, particularly those of us who are most actively involved, had no inclination to be associated with, never mind march in, the parade. [The protest], very simply, is where our ‘coming out’ took place.”

This is exactly what the AOH had been saying all along.

In September 2014, as I previously recounted, Dunleavy was pushed aside by the vice chairman of the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee, John Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University. At a press conference held at the New York Athletic Club, welcoming a gay group to march, OUT@NBCUniversal, Lahey and others spoke, but Dunleavy did not. He was treated like dirt by the heavyweights who sucked up to the media. I was never invited, and we all know why.

Lahey paired with elites from other universities, corporations, lawyers and the media to take the reins from Dunleavy. Dunleavy was a former transit dispatcher, a great blue collar guy from Ireland. He was outclassed by these sharks. It did not matter to the elites that the Supreme Court declared that parade officials had a First Amendment right to bar ILGO. What mattered is that they wanted the affirmation of elites unconnected to the parade.

Lahey and company would have us believe that the parade was being threatened with a boycott from its sponsors, and that they could not have it televised on NBC without their advertising support. It is true that Guinness, Heineken and the Ford Motor Company were planning to do just that. It is also true that Manhattan College, Fairfield University and the Irish government were pressuring parade officials.

What Lahey did not say is that they could have looked for other alternatives. What about WPIX? Would they have agreed to televise the march? What about EWTN, the Catholic media giant? What about looking for new sponsors? Quite simply, they used this as an excuse to get what they wanted all along—the elites were all on the same side.

I know that their hearts were not in it because in the spring of 2014, right after the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, the issue of gays marching in 2015 was coming to a head. I met with seven owners of Irish pubs in New York City; they owned roughly 25 percent of the Irish bars. All but one agreed to my plea to boycott Guinness. Some chose to cut the price of Guinness’ competitors, thus enticing drinkers to choose an alternative; others simply took out the Guinness tap. But it was not enough to change things, and that is because parade officials wanted nothing to do with it.

On September 17, 2014, I wrote Dunleavy a letter restating how I was lied to about gays marching in the parade. I mentioned to him that one of the parade officials, John Fitzsimmons, an attorney, had called me at the end of August. I knew him well and would have fielded the call but I was in Montauk, Long Island taking a break. The call was about including a gay group in the parade in 2015. Here is part of what I said.

“I told Bernadette [the vice president] to let John know that it was okay by me [to include a gay group], as long as (a) there was a formal change in the parade rules governing marching units allowing those that have their own cause to march, and (b) a pro-life group would be marching under its own banner as well. John said he believed that a formal revision of the rules had been made, but that he had to ‘check his notes.’

“John called back saying that he checked with you about this issue, and that he also checked his notes. He said there was, in fact, a formal change in the rules, and that a pro-life group would be marching. Bernadette then urged him to pick a pro-life group so that it could be announced at the same time as the NBC gay group [which had already been approved]. He agreed to do this.”

It was plain that I had been lied to by Fitzsimmons, so I closed my letter to Dunleavy saying, “John is the source of the problem.” (Both Fitzsimmons and Dunleavy have since passed away.) I pulled our Catholic League unit the next year and we will never march again.

On the day that gays first marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade under their own banner, March 17, 2015, Northrop said she still wasn’t happy. She was angry that a gay group was chosen by NBC, which televised the march, saying “it’s all a corporate deal. It has nothing to do with really opening up the parade and welcoming gay people in and certainly not Irish gay people.”

It’s never enough for narcissistic gays—it’s always about them.

To show how crazed Northrop is, consider that she once celebrated the news that human cloning could make men obsolete. “Essentially, this is sort of the final nail in men’s coffins. Men are now totally irrelevant, if [cloning] is, in fact, true and possible and becomes routine. Men are going to have a very hard time justifying their existence on the planet, I think.” Male hatred is not unusual among radical lesbians, but this comment is hard to beat.

Ten years after the first gay group marched up Fifth Avenue, there is still no pro-life group allowed to march. Each year Irish Pro-Life USA, founded by John Aidan Byrne, requests a permit to march, and every year he is denied. Parade organizer Hilary Beirne never gets back to him.

In other words, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade officials allow homosexual groups to march but not pro-life Catholics. In short, we can thank the Irish elites, in the U.S. and Ireland, for ganging up on John Dunleavy.

Bill Donohue

The sexual abuse of children is one of the most evil acts that anyone can commit. That is why accusations must not be made casually—this is serious business. Yet that is exactly what is happening when Democrats charge that enforcing norms to ensure that males cannot compete against females in sports leads to child sexual abuse. That is a lie.

On March 3, Democrats in the Senate voted against “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” effectively killing it (60 votes were needed and the 51 mustered by the Republicans were not enough). The bill sought to amend Title IX to prohibit schools from allowing boys and men to compete with girls and women in athletic programs.

Common sense dictates that because males are, on average, stronger and faster than females, there should be separate sports for males and females. Common decency dictates that males and females should have separate locker rooms and shower facilities. But common sense and common decency are not commonplace among Democrats.

It is bad enough to allow men to crash women’s sports—all in the name of showing tolerance for transgender individuals—but it is worse when some of those who support this travesty maintain that stopping them from doing so will cause the sexual abuse of minors.

When the House took up this bill, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called it the “Republican child predator empowerment act.” He explained that the bill “risks unleashing child predators on the children of America in the sports context.” Similarly, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the bill allows “genital examination into little girls in this country.”

Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern claimed the bill is an example of Republicans’ “creepy obsession with your kids’ private parts.” Vermont Rep. Becca Balint said that the “logical conclusion” of the bill is to violate the bodies of young girls. More recently, Rep. Jennifer McClellan went even further claiming “the only way” to enforce this bill is “to pull children’s pants down to determine what sex they are.”

When the Senate voted on the bill, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said that because the bill would ban male school athletes from competing with females, the law would “allow anyone to subject girls to invasive physical exams just because of the way they look,” leading to “an increased risk for abuse and harassment.” Sen. Dick Durbin agreed, saying the bill would allow “the right to physically inspect a girl or a young woman if the other opposing team accuses them of being transgender.”

Not one of these persons offered a scintilla of evidence to back up their outrageous claims, and no one from the media challenged them. However, they unwittingly undercut their position that self-identification determines one’s sex: if that were the case, why would the Democrats argue that “the only way” to determine one’s sex is to pull down their pants?

We decided to check the links that Google AI provides as evidence that banning males from competing with females in sports leads to child sexual abuse. What we found was another unsupported assertion. Florida Rep. Jessica Miranda said the bill “would require children to have genital exams to play high school sports,” claiming this was “nothing short of state-sanctioned sexual abuse.” So much for AI: This is not evidence—it is an opinion.

It is not as though evidence is lacking altogether. Roughly half the states have laws ensuring that males cannot compete against females, and as a result not one of them has experienced child sexual abuse. That’s because most of them insist on just one criterion: provide a birth certificate. This is true in Florida, as well, making mince meat out of Rep. Miranda’s bogus theory.

Democrats need to stop making false accusations about child sexual abuse and start explaining why they want to destroy women’s sports and women’s privacy.

Contact Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries’ chief of staff, Tasia Jackson: tasia.jackson@mail.house.gov

Bill Donohue

There is a difference between those who are mostly “pro-choice,” oftentimes reluctantly so, and those who love abortion. March 10 is a festive day for the latter group. It’s called, “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day.” It’s a time when those who love abortion rally to the side of medical personnel who make a living by killing kids in utero.

The most rabid pro-abortion members of Congress who celebrate this day are Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Sen. Mazie Hirono and Sen. Gary Peters. They are responsible for a resolution marking this “happy” day, paying homage to some obscure abortionist who was killed in 1996.

We looked into the origins of “Abortion Provider Appreciation Day” and found that its original proponents were ideological extremists, many of whom belonged to the Communist Party; almost all were men.

Those who started this day in 1987 belonged to a radical group called Refuse and Resist! (“R&R!”). They opposed a “Christian fascist, fundamentalist morality.” Funded by the Ford Foundation, which is notoriously anti-Catholic, “R&R!” was pro-abortion and anti-death penalty. To put it differently, two of their goals were to kill as many innocent unborn kids as possible, and to save the lives of convicted serial murderers and rapists.

The two most famous members of “R&R!” were William Kunstler and Abbie Hoffman. Kunstler spent a good part of his life defending anyone who hated America. His clients included the Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, the Weather Underground Organization, the Attica Prison rioters, and the Chicago Seven. Hoffman was a member of the Chicago Seven, the group that was convicted for crossing state lines in 1968 to start a riot at the Democratic National Convention; he was co-founder of the Youth International Party, the so-called Yippies.

Other founding members of “R&R!” included Charles Clark Kissinger and Conrad Lynn. Both were members of the Communist Party. John “Tito” Gerassi joined with them, and his friend was Che Guevara, the Cuban terrorist; he also befriended Fidel Castro. “R&R!” dissolved in 2006; the day they made famous was picked up by pro-abortion zealots.

Notice that most of the founders of “Abortion Providers Appreciation Day” were men. It would be a mistake to think that they spent their lives promoting abortion. In fact their interest in abortion had almost nothing to do with the rights of women—it had to deal with their conviction that a sexual revolution was integral to a political revolution. That was their real goal. In other words, men like Kunstler used women to further their radical agenda.

Abortion is a tragedy for the babies whose lives have been taken, and for the women who made a choice that forever haunts them. The only ones who truly benefit are the abortionists—they get rich by exploiting women, all in the name of championing their rights. To celebrate these predators is obscene.

Bill Donohue

Eight-in-ten Americans are against boys and men competing against girls and women in sports and showering with them. Even two-in-three Democrats take this position. But the elected Democrats in Congress are not listening.

On March 3, a bill that would bar males from participating in women’s sports, “The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” failed to achieve the 60-vote margin needed to fend off a filibuster. The Democrats killed the bill. The vote split along party lines: 51 Republicans supported the bill and 45 Democrats opposed it. On January 14, the House voted in favor of the bill, splitting again along party lines, 218-206; two Texas Democrats voted with the Republicans.

Why would the Democrats, who got clobbered in the election, want to go against the express will of the people, including members of its own party? Money explains part of it: some very rich individuals and foundations are committed to the radical LGBTQ agenda. Ideology also matters: the Democratic Party has become the party of sexual engineers, supported overwhelmingly by the teachers unions.

Still, why go against the grain? Isn’t it political suicide to push an agenda that the public abhors?

After the Democrats lost in November, Rep. Tom Suozzi, a moderate Democrat from Long Island, said, “The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left. I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.” Another Democrat, Rep. Seth Moulton from Massachusetts, said, “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

When it came time to vote, both Souzzi and Moulton caved and voted to deny girls and women their right to compete against athletes of their own sex; their right to privacy was also shattered.

Some Democrats do get it. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell noted that during the presidential campaign, Donald Trump made hay out of the Democrats for supporting gender ideology. Ads that were run saying, “Kamala is for they/them; President Trump is for you,” resonated with the voters. “Week by week when that ad hit and stuck and we didn’t respond, I think that was the beginning of the end.”

It’s not just seasoned Democratic politicians who understand how pivotal this issue is—liberal celebrities get it.

Bill Maher lambasted a former Obama speechwriter for defending the rights of transgender students against their parents. “You want to lose every election? Just keep coming down on the side of parents coming in second in a ‘Who get to decide what goes on with my kid contest.’”

Celebrity fitness trainer Jillian Michaels brought the transgender issue up in a recent TV interview, saying to Democrats, “This is why your entire party got their butts kicked in the election.” Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith told Democrats that Trump is “closer to normal” on this issue. He wondered why they were catering to “the transgender community” when they “pertain to less than 1% of the population.”

Comedian Andrew Schulz said the Democrats can’t even have a conversation and “make jokes about pronouns” or “make a gay joke.” Radio host Charlamagne tha God, noting how the Democrats have sunk their teeth into the transgender issue, opined, “Democrats will never win another election ever again.”

To deny the reality of nature-based differences between men and women is as irrational as it is anti-science. But that is what the Democratic Party has become.

It really is mindboggling. The Democrats, who pride themselves as the champion of women’s rights, are doing more to destroy them than any other segment of the population. They have morphed into the most misogynistic force in American society. As the celebrities observe, good luck with that.

Bill Donohue

Six years after Pope Francis rejected the practice of publishing the names of accused priests, the Vatican has finally codified his plea. Henceforth, dioceses are discouraged from publishing such a list. Among the reasons cited was the inability of deceased accused priests to defend themselves.

This should never have been an issue in the first place. But in the panic that ensued following the 2002 series in the Boston Globe detailing clergy sexual abuse, the bishops convened in Dallas in 2004 to adopt a charter that listed comprehensive reforms, some of which substantially weakened the rights of the accused.

At the time, I was highly critical of the way some bishops allowed a gay subculture to flourish, one that resulted in a massive cover-up of the sexual abuse of minors (homosexual priests—not pedophiles—were responsible for 8-in-10 cases of abuse). But I also said of the Dallas reforms, “there is a problem regarding the rights of the accused. It appears that the charter may short-circuit some due process rights.”

One of the problems was the desire to publish the names of accused priests. Egging the bishops on was Judge Anne Burke, the first person to head the National Review Board commissioned by the bishops to deal with this problem.

She made it clear that priests—and only priests—should be denied their constitutionally prescribed right to due process. “We understand that it is a violation of the priest’s due process—you’re innocent until proven guilty—but we’re talking about the most vulnerable people in our society and those are children.” Such thinking allowed the bishops to make public the names of accused priests.

In an interview I had in my office with a female reporter from CNN, she became quite critical of the Church for not posting the names of accused priests on its diocesan websites. I picked up the phone and, holding it in my hand, asked her for the name and phone number of her boss. When she asked why, I said I was going to accuse her of sexual harassment. I added that I wanted to see if CNN would post her name on its website. She said, “I get it.” I put the phone down. (For more on this see my book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse).

No organization in the United States, religious or secular, publishes the names of accused employees. That there should be an exception for priests is obscene.

The rights of accused priests need to be safeguarded, and the penalties for those found guilty need to be severe. The Church failed on the latter, which is why the scandal took place, and it failed on the former, which is why Pope Francis, and now the entire Church, had to act.

The sexual abuse of minors in the Church in America has long been checked—almost all the cases in the media are about old cases, and most of the bad guys are dead or out of ministry. Now that the rights of the accused have been given a much needed shot in the arm, we can say with confidence that this problem has also been ameliorated.

March 17 marks the tenth anniversary of homosexuals marching under their own banner in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. When the decision was reached in September 2014 that gays could march in 2015, Bill Donohue pulled the Catholic League contingent from ever marching again. He did so because he was double-crossed—he was lied to by senior parade officials.

In late August 2014, Donohue was asked by John Fitzsimons, a lawyer and parade organizer, if he would object to including a gay group marching in 2015. Donohue, who was acting as the PR point man for the parade for 20 years, said it would be okay provided they made a formal change in the rules, and they included a pro-life group to march.

The latter was important because Donohue had been telling the media for decades that gays and pro-life people have always been free to march in the parade; they just could not do so under their own banner. He was assured that would happen. On September 3, 2014, Donohue issued a news release about this development.

On September 4, William O’Reilly, the parade’s spokesman, said that only one gay group (affiliated with NBC) would march. A few hours later, John Lahey, president of Quinnipiac University and vice chairman of the parade, announced that other gay groups could also apply to march.

On September 9, Donohue issued a statement about three new gay groups applying to march. He took a shot at Lahey for opening the door and for implying that a pro-life group might not be included.

On September 11, Lahey made it official. When asked if a pro-life group would be allowed to march, he said, “That won’t be happening.” That same day, Donohue released a statement titled, “We Will Not March.”

This ugly chapter started only two weeks after the 2014 parade.

On April 1, 2014, Lahey sent a letter to the directors of the parade citing pressure from the corporate and collegiate elite. Heineken, Guinness, Manhattan College, Fairfield University, the Irish government, and the Ford Motor Company were threatening to pull their role in underwriting the costs of televising the parade on NBC. The latter found an ally in Frances X. Comerford, parade organizer and chief revenue officer for NBC. Irish Central also played a role in pushing for gays to crash the parade.

We had the law on our side, and the people on our side. It was corrupt members of the ruling class that lied and sold us out.

To this day, the Catholic League is the only group to pull its contingent from marching.