Bill Donohue

When truth doesn’t matter, all things are possible, including some very unseemly things.

There is a front-page article in the September 25 edition of the New York Times that is as fascinating as it is disturbing. Well researched, it is the story of Amy Griffin, one of the richest women in the country. She is the 49-year-old author of The Tell, a best-selling memoir that recounts her recollections of being raped on several occasions by a middle-school teacher in Amarillo, Texas, starting when she was 12.

Her recollections were not of the ordinary kind—they were drug-induced memories. To be specific, she claims that her memory was repressed until she took MDMA, a drug found in Ecstasy and Molly. The allegations she made against the teacher were disclosed during therapy sessions while under the influence of the illegal psychedelic drug.

The newspaper would not have posted a 5,000 word article about Griffin unless she was a VIP. And that she is. The glitterati who came rushing to her side, promoting the book, include Oprah Winfrey, Jenna Bush Hager, Gwyneth Paltrow and Reese Witherspoon. The latter spoke for many when she said, “By opening up her heart, she became a beacon for women everywhere.”

She spoke too soon.

What do we know about the alleged rapist? We know that he has worked in the school district for 30 years and his record is spotless: there has never been one complaint made about him.

Suspicions about Griffin’s account have mushroomed. “Some have questioned the reliability of decades-old memories unearthed during drug-assisted therapy.” Others are questioning why no one knew anything about what allegedly happened. Where are the bruises from her violent experiences? There are many other serious issues with Griffin’s story.

She claims that subsequent to her memory being jarred, she believes that one of her childhood friends, “Claudia,” was also abused by the same teacher. But when Griffin asked her about this she said no. Griffin also writes about an incident that took place at a church youth group gathering in her house. But her family says they never hosted such an event.

In her book proposal, Griffin said another man had raped her. But she made no mention of it in her memoir. When she reported her claims of abuse to a detective, she never told him her account was a recovered memory, induced by drugs. More important, he says that from his experience, sex crimes against children typically have many victims. Yet no one, other than her, has ever accused the teacher of anything.

When New York Times reporters asked Griffin for an interview, she stiffed them for more than three months. To top things off, her lawyer said that by asking her to answer 11-pages of questions, “the mere sending of this document has caused additional trauma and extreme physical and emotional harm to a survivor of sexual assault, which is inexcusable.”

Rick Doblin is the nation’s biggest advocate of the therapeutic drug MDMA; he also connected her to her therapists. When asked about the reliability of “repressed memories,” he said, “Whether it’s real or not—meaning whether the incident actually happened—from a therapeutic perspective, it doesn’t matter. A lot of times people will develop stories that help them make sense of their life. In the therapeutic setting, what Amy went through whether it’s true or not, it has value because the emotion is real.”

This is what happens when the quest for truth is abandoned: falsehoods can be treated as a positive good—even if they ruin someone’s life—as long as they bring solace to the complainant.

Why should Catholics care about this story?

Father Gordon MacRae is sitting in a New Hampshire prison today because an ex-con claimed that once his “repressed memory” was unleashed, it allowed him to recall that MacRae abused him many years earlier. And he is not the only priest to have suffered this fate.

Sociologist Richard Ofshe and journalist Ethan Watters studied the issue of “repressed memory” and they noted that “it has never been empirically demonstrated.” Dr. Paul McHugh, the renowned Johns Hopkins psychiatrist, has long dismissed this as a dangerous idea that literally manufactures victims. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that “repressed memory” is a “cultural creation having no basis in science.”

William O’Donohue, and other clinical psychologists at the University of Nevada, Reno, studied the literature on this subject and concluded that “there is a large amount of scientific evidence that clearly shows that repressed memories simply do not exist.” People do not forget their trauma, they said. “Indeed, traumatic events are actually quite memorable.”

The media should ask Oprah, Jenna, Gwyneth and Reese, along with Amy Schumer, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Anna Wintour, Savannah Guthrie, and Katie Couric, how they feel now about their heroine.

Assuming that accused men are definitely guilty of sex crimes against women has become so easy, especially for cultural elites. But as this story reveals, those who rushed to Griffin’s side are the ones with egg on their face. Throwing the first stone can be risky.

September 23, 2025

The Honorable Richard Durbin
711 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Senator Durbin:

On November 3, you are scheduled to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the “Keep Hope Alive” Benefit, presented by the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office of Human Dignity and Solidarity Immigration Ministry.

You are no doubt honored to receive this award. However, it has created a firestorm in the Catholic community, involving both the clergy and the laity. In particular, it has drawn the ire of some bishops. The anger being expressed is not confined to Chicago—it is national in scope. I am afraid  it will only increase once more Catholics learn of the controversy.

The proximate cause of the backlash is your voting record on abortion, an act which the Catholic Church declares to be “intrinsically evil.” Your support for same-sex marriage, and your probing of the religious convictions of Catholic nominees for the federal bench, have also elicited much criticism.

Pope Leo XIV is off to a good start, and among his top objectives is the restoration of unity in the Catholic Church. This is also a priority of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Regrettably, once it was learned that you were chosen to receive a Catholic award, it created the very division that the pope and the bishops have been trying to quell.

Accordingly, I respectfully request that you decline this award. In doing so, you will help ameliorate Catholic discord. Moreover, by putting the interests of the Catholic community above your own interests, it will only redound to your benefit.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President

Bill Donohue

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), who identifies as Catholic, has been named by the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich, the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the “Keep Hope Alive” Benefit on November 3. It has already set off the alarms among the clergy and the laity.

Leading the criticism is another Illinois bishop, Thomas Paprocki, Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield. “Senator Durbin, who has been banned from receiving Holy Communion in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois since 2004 for his public support for abortion, should not be celebrated by the Church.”

Durbin supports partial-birth abortion, the procedure where the skull of a child who is 80 percent born is crushed so as to allow him to pass through the birth canal. He also believes that a child born alive as a result of a botched abortion does not need to be attended to by medical personnel, letting him die on the physician’s table. Similarly, he holds that even though an unborn child can feel pain—and indeed can even survive—at 20 weeks gestation, he does not want to ban these abortions.

Supporting Bishop Paprocki’s position is San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone. He posted on X a statement of “solidarity” with him.

The Catholic League has often tangled with Sen. Durbin.

It seems every time Durbin takes a position against religious liberty, he walks it back, only to walk it back again.

On July 27, 2005, I issued a news release noting how Durbin told a CNN correspondent that he “needs to look at everything, including the nominee’s faith.” He was referring to the Catholic faith of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, something he pledged to probe during the hearings.

This was a departure from what Durbin said on April 15, 2005, when he was asked about the religious beliefs of a nominee to the federal bench. “By the Constitution and by law, we cannot even ask that question, nor would I.”

Yet on June 11, 2003, Durbin took umbrage at Circuit Court nominee William Pryor when Pryor merely noted the historical relationship between Christianity and the nation’s founding: “Do you understand,” Durbin said, that this “raises concerns of those who don’t happen to be Christian that you are asserting an agenda of your own, religious belief of your own inconsistent with separation of church and state?”

After taking flack for that remark, Durbin said on July 23, 2003 that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee ought “to expunge references to religion from this point forward.” He added, hypocritically, “This is beneath the dignity of the committee.”

The very next day, July 24, he reversed himself, saying, “If Senator [Jeff] Sessions is suggesting that anyone who has a religious belief should never be questioned about it, even if it has political implications, I just think [that] is wrong-headed.”

On July 31, he reversed himself again, this time having the audacity to co-sponsor a resolution saying, “It shall not be in order to ask any question of the nominee relating to the religious affiliation of the nominee.”

The man’s duplicity is astounding.

On September 7, 2017 I wrote to Durbin about the suitability of Notre Dame Law School professor Amy Coney Barrett to sit on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. I asked why he continued to probe her about her “orthodox Catholic” views when she made it clear that it is never appropriate to impose one’s religious convictions on cases before the bench. I had to ask, “Do you similarly probe prospective federal judges who are not Catholic about the orthodoxy of their religious beliefs?”

I addressed Durbin again on November 11, 2021, after he complained about being singled out by Bishop Paprocki by refusing to give him Holy Communion (because of his pro-abortion votes). He was right to note that he was being singled out, but what he failed to say is that he had previously been told not to go to Communion by then Monsignor Kevin Vann (now bishop of Orange, CA) of Blessed Sacrament Church in Springfield. In other words, Durbin was making up his own rules again.

On the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops there is a document, “Catholics in Public Life.” It says, “It is the teaching of the Catholic Church from the very beginning, founded on her understanding of her Lord’s own witness to the sacredness of human life, that the killing of an unborn child is always intrinsically evil and can never be justified.”

It also says, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” (Emphasis in the original.)

No wonder the alarms are going off.

Bill Donohue

Today the United Nations is holding a high-level meeting celebrating the 30^th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women. Too bad it is such a sham. But this is nothing new.

In 1995, the Catholic League was denied a request to be recognized as an NGO (non-governmental organization) by the UN Representative on Accreditation, NGO Status; we sought to participate in the Fourth World Conference on Women. We are a legitimate Catholic organization, listed in the Official Catholic Directory. Catholics for Choice is a pro-abortion, anti-Catholic entity, yet it was granted NGO status. That was a sham.

At the Fourth World Conference on Women, the Holy See delegation, led by Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, succeeded in stopping a challenge to the proposition that the family is the basic unit in society. Those who railed against the Holy See sought to elevate alternative life styles such as cohabitation and homosexual liaisons to the status of family. Thus did they make a sham of the objective meaning of the family.

The latest sham is having Sima Bahous preside over the 30^th Anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women. She is Executive Director of UN Women and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. The purpose of the anniversary celebration is to advance “gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.” Choosing Bahous to lead this effort is a curious choice given the status of women in her home country, Jordan.

To begin with, the United Nations primarily views women rights as revolving around three main topics—abortion, contraception, and LGBT ideology. This has nothing to do with the most basic hardships experienced by women in most parts of the world. Rather, it reflects the ideological preferences of the highly secular Western nations.

If Bahous were truly an advocate for women, it would not have taken two months to condemn the kidnapping, rape and murder of innocent Israeli women by jihadists in the aftermath of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

Moreover, if Bahous actually listened to what Jordanian women wanted, she would change her focus. The status of women in Jordan is pathetic.

• In August of 2017, Jordan finally repealed a law that allowed rapists to skirt justice for their crimes. According to Article 308 of the Jordanian legal code, which was adopted in 1960, a man who raped a woman could avoid punishment for his crime if he married her for three to five years. After a contentious debate, the Jordanian parliament voted to repeal this barbaric law.
• Similarly, while Jordan moved to criminalize “honor killings,” several legal loopholes allow this practice to continue. An “honor killing” is a sanctioned murder of an individual perceived to have brought dishonor to the family. Typically the victims of these savage attacks are women, and this is common in Muslim countries. Under the current Jordanian penal code, judges can impose mitigated sentences if the families of the female victims do not support the prosecutions of the male attacker. Additionally, the penal code allows men to kill or attack their wives or other female family members if they catch them in the act of adultery or in an “unlawful bed” and receive a reduced sentence.
• Jordanian women face unequal treatment when it comes to marriage.
  • If a woman wishes to marry before she turns 30, she needs the permission of her male custodian, usually her father. Without the custodian’s consent, she will be barred from marrying.
  • Further, Jordanian women are not allowed to marry non-Muslim men.
  • Additionally, Jordanian women who marry non-Jordanian men cannot automatically pass their citizenship on to their children.
• Likewise, Jordanian women face unequal treatment in family courts. In Jordan, family-related matters are handled by Sharia courts using Islamic law, and, unsurprisingly, women do far worse than men under this legal code.
  • Jordanian women generally receive less inheritance under Sharia law than their male family members.
  • Likewise, Jordanian mothers have limited custody over their children. All decisions regarding the raising of children are made by the fathers.
  • Conversely, if a father chooses to abandon his children, a mother has very little recourse. Paternity in Sharia courts is determined by a father claiming the child—there is no authority for mandating a paternity test. If a father refuses to acknowledge the child as his own, then he has no obligation to care for the child. Of course, women do not have this option.
• In termination of a marriage, Jordanian men essentially have access to no-fault-divorce. A man can simply pay back his wife’s dowry to end the union. Jordanian women, on the other hand, most show cause for why the marriage should be ended.

There are so many real problems facing women the world over, yet the UN is bent on addressing abortion and the LGBT agenda, matters of interest only to Western elites. Thus have they made a sham of the conference.

The FBI is now cracking down on anti-Catholic bigotry, trying to undo the incredible anti-Catholicism that existed in the Biden administration.

To read Bill Donohue’s letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, pledging the support of the Catholic League, click here.

Bill Donohue

The Catholic Church regards animals to be part of God’s creation, and are therefore deserving of respect. But only men and women are made in the image and likeness of God. Moreover, animals do not share the same dignity as human beings. Nor are they capable of being held morally responsible for their behavior. As such, while animal welfare is imperative, in no way can animals be said to possess rights.

However, the latest Gallup poll on morality reveals that Democrats and young people appear to be more concerned about the rights of Fido than his owner, Freddy.

When asked if abortion is “morally acceptable,” 78 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of those 18-34 agree; this compares to 20 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of those 55 and over. But when it comes to medical testing on animals, only 45 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of young people agree; the majority of Republicans (69 percent) and the oldest generation (52 percent) agree.

In other words, while nearly 8-in-10 Democrats are okay with abortion, less than half are okay with medical testing for animals. The majority of young people are also okay with abortion, but they draw a hard line when it comes to medical testing of animals.

Why are Democrats and young people showing more respect for the rights of Fido than Freddy?

From a wealth of survey data we know that Democrats and young people are the least religious; they are much more likely to answer “none” when asked what their religious affiliation is. How does this explain their moral choices?

What unites Democrats and young people, and what separates them from most Americans, is their penchant for autonomy. For many of them, autonomy is their god. Abortion, they reckon, is all about “bodily autonomy,” hence it is morally acceptable. The competing right of the child to live is given short shrift.

The interest in protecting animals cannot be explained by an affection for autonomy. Something else is going on.

Young people are more likely to own a pet than older people, and may therefore be more protective of their status. More important, however, is their relatively high exposure to videos and instruction on animal rights in school and social media. As for Democrats, they are more likely to take an expansive view of rights than other Americans (save for the life of the unborn). Because they fancy themselves as being open-minded, they regard an exclusive interest in human rights as chauvinistic.

If there is one person who has given intellectual heft to the moral choices of Democrats and young people it is Princeton professor Peter Singer. He is the father of the animal rights movement. He is also a proponent of infanticide.

Singer believes that chimps and gorillas should have the same rights as humans. He takes animal rights so seriously that he won’t eat clams. Why not? Because he is uncertain about the capacity of shellfish to suffer. But what about babies? He is not only okay with abortion, he argues that parents should be allowed to kill their kids until their offspring are 28 days old.

Now it would be unfair to say that Singer is representative of what Democrats and young people believe. But even if he is an outlier among them, it is disturbing to see Democrats and young people having more in common with him than with Republicans and older Americans.

Whether it is Singer’s influence or not, his inhumane perspective has made its way into the pop culture. In a recent ESPN interview, there was a sign on a bookshelf behind the speaker that read the following:

DOGS ARE WELCOME
Humans Tolerated

We need to get our moral house in order. If we can’t conclude that Freddy should be awarded a higher moral plane than Fido, we are heading towards disaster.

Bill Donohue

Charlie Kirk was assassinated because he was an outspoken Christian. This is undeniable. Yet the media continue to bury this fact. Of course he was a conservative Christian—those are the only Christians targeted by Christian haters.

The suspected killer, Tyler Robinson, was also a sexually confused young man. It takes a very disturbed man to be “romantically involved” with a man who desperately wants to be a woman.

Apparently, Robinson’s roommate, Lance Twiggs, had a great effect on his ideological convictions, and they were not of the MAGA variety. They also spent a lot of time together engaging online communities, many of them violent. Not surprisingly, Robinson had an affection for Antifa, the urban terrorist group of left-wing maniacs.

According to relatives of Twiggs, “He hates conservatives and Christians. He hated us. He was not raised that way, but he, over the years, has become really detached [and] been radicalized. He has obviously gotten progressively worse the last year or two,” saying he was “always very angry.”

Robinson made it plain to his family that he had a special hatred for Kirk’s Christian message. In an affidavit, a relative said that he “didn’t like Kirk” and was “full of hate and spreading hate.”

An important part of Kirk’s message was a strong defense of traditional Christian family values, something which is anathema to the LGBTQ crowd. Kirk deplored the entire transgender movement, and was therefore seen as the enemy. Liberal Christians tend to be on the transgender side, which is why they are safe.

In a YouGov poll, more Americans (24 percent) believe that Robinson was a Republican than any other political affiliation. That is flatly wrong.

As federal authorities, and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, said, the evidence shows that he became “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.” They concluded that he had only been “radicalized” in recent years. Those years coincide with his relationship with his trans boyfriend.

The public can be forgiven for being wrong about this. After all, they have been victimized by the media, which is mostly covering up for Robinson’s lifestyle and convictions.

It is true that Robinson was raised a Mormon, but it is also true that he was no longer a practicing member of his religious community. His parents are Republican, but he never was. It appears he was apolitical until, that is, he hooked up with his boyfriend.

Robinson was not simply involved with a man who hated being a man,  he himself exhibited ties—at least online—to the “furry” community. “Furries” are people who dress up as animals and consider themselves to be a mix of humans and animals. Many give themselves names, choose a species, and attend conventions with like-minded people. Most of the “furries” are homosexuals.

Now why aren’t most of those in the media telling the truth to the American people?

Too many of them believe in a libertine conception of morality, one which prizes unbounded sexual freedom. It is a destructive mentality, resulting in higher mortality rates, depression, loneliness and suicide for those who practice it. It is not only self-destructive, it is socially destructive.

What could be more different from Christian sexual ethics than the idea that it is natural for people to hate their sex and their humanness? Let’s face it, it is not normal to rebel against one’s nature, reconceptualizing oneself as a member of the opposite sex and another species.

The big media are in denial. We researched how many have reported on the maladies that consume Robinson and Twiggs, and came away practically empty. Nor are they highlighting the virulent anti-Christian bigotry that bedevils them. They would rather lie than let the truth be known. They have too much invested ideologically, financially and emotionally to change.

Bill Donohue

Every year the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) releases its annual survey results assessing free speech on college and university campuses. The “2026 College Free Speech Rankings” was recently published, and the results are not sanguine. Indeed, they are disturbing.

The survey included 68,510 student respondents from 257 colleges and universities. The average overall score was 58.63, which was a failing grade. In fact, 166 of the 257 schools got an F for their speech climate; only 11 received a C or higher. Here’s a sample of the state of free speech on campus.

“The percentage of students saying it is acceptable to shout down a speaker, block entry to a campus speech, or use violence to stop a campus speech all increased since last year and are at record highs.”

The school which is number-one in the country allowing free speech to rein is Claremont McKenna College, followed by Purdue University and the University of Chicago. The worst is Barnard College, a women’s school affiliated with Columbia University. Columbia is the second most intolerant of free speech, followed by Indiana University.

Catholic schools that were included in the survey are Georgetown, Duquesne, Fordham, DePaul, Dayton, Marquette, Villanova, Notre Dame, Loyola University, Chicago and Boston College. All received a grade of F. Loyola and Boston College were in the bottom ten worst schools in the nation, both Jesuit run.

The topics that ignite the greatest intolerance on campus—subjects that are considered too hot to discuss—are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, abortion, the presidential election of 2024 and transgender rights. The Left, which controls most schools, is virulently against Israel and Donald Trump, and strongly favors abortion and transgender rights. In other words, conservatives find it hard to speak freely on most campuses.

What was perhaps the most alarming finding was the percentage of students who find violence to be an acceptable response to stop campus speech—34 percent are okay with it. This is up from 24 percent in 2021. Who do they want to stop? It is not left-wing speakers—they are always welcome.

For example, students were asked about six controversial topics and whether they thought a speaker should be allowed to discuss them on campus. Three-in-four said no one should be allowed to discuss whether   “Black Lives Matter is a hate group” (76 percent), and the same proportion (74 percent) said no one should be allowed to discuss whether “Transgender people have a mental disorder.”

This is striking given that some Black Lives Matter leaders taught its followers to hate white people (they also ripped off the organization to such an extent that it barely exists), and a number of the most prominent psychiatrists in the nation are convinced that transgender people have a mental disorder. Yet such speakers are treated as if they belonged to the Flat Earth Society.

Interestingly, one of the six controversial topics the students were asked about was whether “The Catholic Church is a pedophilic institution.” While 62 percent said such speakers should not be allowed on campus, the entry begs the question—why was it included in the first place? We know that four percent of the priests between 1950 and 2002 had an accusation made against him for sexually abusing minors, but most of the abuse was committed by homosexuals, not pedophiles. Thus did the survey seriously misrepresent this topic to the students.

When students were asked if they felt comfortable disagreeing with a professor about a controversial topic, only 41 percent said they did. A majority (52 percent) said they felt uncomfortable expressing their views on a controversial political topic during an in-class discussion. From what we know, they were obviously conservatives.

The greatest intolerance for free speech was experienced by those who expressed themselves on social media. Two-in-three (66 percent) said they felt uncomfortable discussing an unpopular political opinion to their fellow students on a social media account tied to their name. One more reason not to trust social media—it is flooded with crazies.

In short, reasoned debate does not exist on most campuses. This is precisely what Charlie Kirk died defending—the right to speak freely in colleges and universities. Lucky for him he dropped out of college. No wonder he spoke so clearly and persuasively. He was never corrupted by tyrannical professors.

Bill Donohue

We do not yet know the identity and the precise motive of the person who killed Charlie Kirk, but we do know who hates free speech, and that is what he championed.

Charlie Kirk was a conservative icon, especially in the eyes of young people. That made him a threat to those who see free speech as a problem, and there is no shortage of such people.

In 2023, a Real Clear Opinion Research survey on free speech found that Democrats were the least supportive of free speech and the most supportive of censoring speech they found disagreeable. In fact, a third of them said Americans have “too much freedom.” This was in stark contrast to 14.6 percent of Republicans.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression does an annual survey of free speech on college campuses. In its 2026 survey, which covered 68,150 students at 257 colleges and universities, it found that 34 percent of the students approved of using violence to stop campus speech.

The idea that violence is an acceptable way of settling political differences was promoted by the Communist Party USA. In his 1958 book, The Naked Communist: Exposing Communism and Restoring Freedom, W. Cleon Skousen detailed 45 communist goals. One of them was the normalization of violence.

“Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ‘united force’ to solve economic, political or social problems.”

A few years later, Herbert Marcuse, the intellectual grandfather of the New Left, penned his essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” justifying censorship. He also advocated the use of violence.

There are crazies on the right who also hate free speech and endorse violence, but they tend to be on the margins of society. Those on the left who share these views are much more likely to work in education, the media, the entertainment industry, the arts and non-profit advocacy organizations. Special mention must also be afforded left-wing foundations who underwrite these causes.

Charlie Kirk did not die in vain. He inspired millions and his legacy is secure. May he rest in peace.

Bill Donohue

It is officially known as “The Cross at Ground Zero.” The 17-foot high column and cross-beam retrieved from the World Trade Center is included in the September 11 Memorial and Museum. Most Americans, regardless of what religion they belong to, or don’t belong to, are happy with this decision. The Christian cross symbolizes hope, and this particular one is a poignant reminder of 9/11.

“Most” means not all. Among the few who disapprove, none has been more vocal—and vicious—than American Atheists.

In 2002, it publicly declared its opposition to this religious memorial. It cited the usual “church and state” argument, saying it constituted government endorsement of religion. But its opposition was not motivated by First Amendment concerns. Its opposition was based on hatred of Christianity.

American Atheists filed a lawsuit on July 27, 2011, seeking to prevent the cross from being displayed. In 2013, U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts ruled against them, concluding that the cross “did not amount to an endorsement of Christianity.”

The atheists appealed, and its president, David Silverman, blamed God for the Islamist attack on America. “The WTC [World Trade Center] cross has become a Christian icon. It has been blessed by so-called holy men and presented as a reminder that their god, who couldn’t be bothered to stop the Muslim terrorists or prevent 3,000 people from being killed in his name, cared only enough to bestow upon us some rubble that resembles a cross.” (My emphasis.)

In July 2014, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied the American Atheists their wish, ruling that “there is no evidence that the static display of this genuine historical artifact excessively entangles the government with religion.”

As indicated, American Atheists was never motivated by fidelity to the Constitution. Here’s the proof: It argued before the courts that The Cross at Ground Zero was “offensive” and “repugnant.” That is the voice of anti-Christian hate speech—it is not the voice of reason.

The appeals court noted as such. It said “the stated purpose of displaying The Cross at Ground Zero [was done] to tell the story of how some people used faith to cope with the tragedy” and that it was “genuine.”

It then demolished the American Atheists argument that it was “offensive” and “repugnant.”

It concluded that “an objective observer would understand the purpose of the display to be secular.” It further stated that “an objective observer would not view the display as endorsing religion generally, or Christianity specifically.” It cited its inclusion in an exhibit that “includes various nonreligious as well as religious artifacts that people at Ground Zero used for solace.”

American Atheists is a lousy example of what constitutes an “objective observer.” There is nothing “objective” about hate speech. They gave away the store when they branded The Cross at Ground Zero “offensive” and “repugnant.” Only those who think this way are deserving of such an appellation.