This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

The diversity industry functions more like a religious cult than a group of professional associations. It has a rigid core set of beliefs, and deviations from them are not welcome. Worse, the application of those beliefs often results in discrimination. It may strive for some degree of demographic diversity, but the most important expression of diversity of them all, namely diversity of thought, is not countenanced. Indeed, it is subject to punitive measures.

Disney is one of the nation’s premier exponents of diversity. As such, it is not a coincidence that it has been hit with a federal civil rights complaint alleging discrimination.

America First Legal, ably led by former Trump administration official Stephen Miller, contends that Disney “knowingly and intentionally” discriminates in its diversity, equity and inclusion policy.

“Disney maintains multiple programs that facilitate the limiting, segregating, or classifying of employees or applicants for employment and new business in ways that would deprive or tend to deprive, white, male, or heterosexual individuals of employment, training, or promotions because of their race, color, sex, or national origin.”

Disney says it bases its policy on norms adopted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the British Film Institute. These organizations focus on what they call “underrepresented groups.” Who are they?

• African American/Black/African and/or Caribbean descent
• East Asian (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Mongolian)
• Hispanic or Latina/e/o/x
• Indigenous Peoples (including Native American/Alaskan Native)
• Middle Easterner/North African
• Pacific Islander
• South Asian (including Bangladeshi, Bhutanese, Indian, Nepali, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan)
• Southeast Asian (including Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Mien, Singaporean, Thai, and Vietnamese)
• LGBTQ+
• People with cognitive or physical disabilities, or who are deaf or hard of hearing

There was no mention of the blind or dwarfs.

Nor was there any mention of Catholics or Protestants, yet everyone knows that, beginning in the late 1960s, Hollywood has produced a slew of Christian bashing movies, many of which have been chronicled by the Catholic League (prior to the late 1960s, Hollywood showed no signs of bigotry against Christians).

Why, then, in the name of diversity, does Hollywood—and Disney, in particular—not mention Christians?

Disney has a post on its website called “Belong.” Under the banner of “Our Diversity & Inclusion Journey,” it says, “Our focus and intent encourages people from every nation, race/ethnicity, belief, gender, sexual identity, disability and culture to feel respected and valued for their unique contributions to our businesses (our italics).”

Why was the term “belief” used and not “religion”? By saying people from every “culture” are to be respected, wouldn’t that mean religious people—religion is the heart of any culture—and wouldn’t that include Christians? Why the reticence?

In its “Community—Disney Social Responsibility” Statement, it lauds the Muslim Public Affairs Council Hollywood Bureau and the ADL, a Jewish anti-defamation organization. Why are no Catholic or Protestant civil rights groups mentioned?

Disney also aligns itself with Tanenbaum; it is a consulting group that deals with religious discrimination. Tanenbaum says its mission, in part, is to tackle “religious bullying of students [and] harassment” in the workplace. What about religious students who are bullied? There is no shortage of examples. Why are they treated as if they are only the victimizers?

In the name of inclusion, Disney practices some of the most exclusionary policies imaginable. There seems to be a place at the table for just about everyone, save for Christians. Not until it breaks out of its cult-like cocoon, will Disney mature and stop excluding Catholics and Protestants (especially evangelicals).

This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

She’s advertised quite a bit on Fox News, posing as an advocate for TikTok. In full habit, she is introduced as Sister Monica Clare. Most people would just assume she is a Catholic nun—there aren’t too many Protestant ones—but they would be wrong. She’s an Episcopalian.

Sister Monica Clare may look like a traditionalist, but she is very much a radical activist. She champions gender equality, “inclusion,” women’s rights (presumably abortion) and Black Lives Matter (she’s even marched with them).

Born Claudette Monica Powell, she grew up in an unhappy household. Her father was a drug addict and mentally ill. She attended a Baptist church with her family, recalling that the Southern Baptists “were very anti-Roman Catholic.” She now claims expertise in dealing with “religious trauma.”

The good sister belongs to a small group of nuns in Mendham, New Jersey. In fact, it’s a dying order: at 58, she is the youngest of them all. Before becoming a nun she was married for two years to a “fanatical atheist,” which ended in divorce.

She then considered joining a Catholic order of nuns, confessing that her life was unfulfilled. But she did not like the Church’s teachings on homosexuality and was put off by the male clergy. Lucky for her, she is now about to become an Episcopal priest.

Her future is uncertain. While she is sure to continue posting animal videos, will her quest to climb the hierarchy and assume a privileged position in the Episcopal Church leave her TikTok fans feeling disabused? Or will she use her new mantle to become an even more rabid advocate of left-wing causes?

One thing is for certain. TikTok needs her. Under fire by Republicans and Democrats alike, it has been accused of violating data privacy and national security. John F. Plumb, assistant secretary of defense for space policy, has called it a “potential threat vector” to the United States. “Chinese cyber intrusions are the most prolific in the world,” he says.

Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers has accused TikTok of conspiring with the Communists, saying, “The Chinese Communist Party poses the greatest national security threat to the United States of our time.” Congressman Mike Gallagher is even more pointed. “This is my message to Tiktok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to American users.” On March 13, the House voted 352-65 to ban TikTok.

When Sister Monica Clare climbs the social ladder to Rev. (it makes no sense for a woman to call herself “Father,” unless, of course, she wants to self-identity as such), she may be asked to save TikTok from Washington. The pivotal question is whether she is more likely to side with the Communists than the Congress.

This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

It is time for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to award an Oscar for Best Performance of Religiophobia. It would prove to be a very competitive field, and would have the benefit of raising awareness about Hollywood’s long suffering malady.

From all accounts, the movie with the most overtly religious theme that was nominated for an Oscar this year is “Poor Things”; it was in the running for Best Picture. It tells the story of a woman who was “created” by a scientist—its Frankenstein appeal is palpable—who raises her as his child. She refers to him as her father and as “my God.” Eventually, she turns on him, ultimately rejecting authority of any kind.

Movieguide, published by the Christian Film & Television Commission (Bill Donohue serves on its board of advisors), called “Poor Things” a “Marxist, humanist, socialist, feminist brand of hedonism and one of the most obscene, blasphemous, abhorrent, and disgusting movies ever released by a major Hollywood studio.”

This explains why the Academy nominated it for Best Picture.

Rob Reiner, more commonly known as “Meathead,” released a movie last month that demonstrates the pervasiveness of religiophobia in Hollywood.

“God and Country” is about an alleged threat to American democracy posed by so-called Christian nationalists. The Meathead would have the audience believe that we are on the verge of a theocratic takeover, though few outside of Hollywood and other secular subcultures pay any attention to this fable. The Hollywood Reporter went so far as to liken the current American situation to Nazi Germany.

As for the Meathead, he says Christian nationalism is out to make us a Christian nation, something the Founders rejected. It is true that the Founders did not want the establishment of a Christian nation, but it is also true that they recognized, and indeed applauded, the founding of a Christian-inspired nation. That is why there are four references to God in the Declaration of Independence.

Here’s the good news. “God and Country” is a bomb. It took in a whopping $38,415 in its first weekend—over four-days—playing in 85 theaters. As one movie critic put it, this means it averaged $451 per theater, a stunning achievement, even for the Meathead.

Time for Hollywood to award an Oscar for Best Performance for Religiophobia. Call it reparations to the faithful, especially Christians.

This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

The more states legalize drugs, the more crowded hospital ER’s become. But the liberal elites in charge of dealing with this issue are unable to connect the dots. Their policies are downright incoherent. Indeed, they are schizophrenic.

Connecticut lawmakers have sounded the alarms over drinking and driving and will soon decide whether to lower the state’s blood alcohol level from .08 to .05. The national norm is .08; only Utah pins it at .05.

Yet when it comes to marijuana, Connecticut goes easy. It fully legalized marijuana on January 10, 2023. Adults age 21 and over can legally buy seven grams for recreational use.

The government is so proud of its new policy that it hypes it on its “Visit Connecticut” webpage. It not only tells stoners where to buy weed, it advises them to buy “Munchies,” featuring chocolate. This is not an accident: brownies are a popular pot edible.

Are Connecticut officials aware that it takes a much longer time for edible users to experience a high, resulting in greater intake and greater risks? Those who take edibles are more likely to wind up in the ER than smokers.

Ever responsible, the webpage closes with a promo for gambling, exclaiming, “it’s worth letting loose in a casino.” Assuming the stoner is capable of standing up.

Ask any cop who pulls drivers over for reckless driving and he will tell you that driving under the influence of alcohol and marijuana is increasingly common. The problem is there is no reliable test for marijuana. Breathalyzers can be used to nail beer drinkers but are useless for nailing pot smokers.

There is a blood test for alcohol, as well as for marijuana, but the problem with the latter is that even if a driver smoked weed two days earlier (even weeks earlier in some cases), the test will come back positive, thus undercutting successful prosecution.

Many states, not just Connecticut, are treating marijuana as a relatively safe drug.

At the federal level, the Biden administration is pushing hard to deemphasize its negative effects. The Department of Health and Human Services wants marijuana use to be treated as a Schedule III drug, which would put it in the same class as Tylenol with codeine; currently weed is classified as Schedule I, meaning it is treated as a serious drug.

If the Biden administration is right to say that marijuana poses no major risk, then why did psychologists recently conclude that a California woman who stabbed to death her boyfriend 108 times—after taking one hit of marijuana—was suffering from “cannabis-induced psychosis”? Consequently, the judge set her free on probation.

Some people learn the hard way. In 2020, 58 percent of Oregon voters decided the time had come to decriminalize all drugs, including fentanyl, heroin, oxycodone and meth. They treated them like chewing gum. The result? One in five quickly became addicted and death due to opiod overdose skyrocketed. So did homelessness and crime. Now a majority of Oregonians (56%) want to repeal this insane policy.

No matter, the sages who run the editorial page at the Boston Globe still believe that banning drugs is not the answer. Yet they readily admit that because of decriminalization in some states, and relaxed enforcement in most of the other states, marijuana use has increased dramatically. More important, the medical professionals they interviewed admit that matters are out of control.

Dr. A. Eden Evins is the founding director of the Mass General Hospital Center for Addiction Medicine. Here is how he describes the changes. “Cannabis use is now the number one reason why young people present for addiction, which wasn’t the case before.”

Sharon Levy is chief of the Division of Addiction Medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital. When she started practicing addiction medicine around 2000, the editors note, “she hadn’t heard of hyperemesis—severe vomiting caused by repeated cannabis use. Now she hears cases where adolescents are hospitalized repeatedly because they cannot keep food down (our emphasis).”

“Levy said she is also seeing more teens with psychotic symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, disordered thinking, and paranoia. This is particularly troubling, she said, because a teenager with cannabis-induced psychosis is more likely to develop mental illness as an adult (our italics).”

In other words, what these doctors are saying is that relaxed sanctions for marijuana use have resulted in a crisis condition. But the editors at the Boston Globe still don’t get it. What do they recommend? Education. We need more “consistent and accurate labeling.” Yeah, that’ll do it.

Liberals are a tortured people. They hate the effects of drug use yet they don’t want to do anything about it. They hate homelessness yet their only answer is to build more tents. They hate migrants overburdening towns across the country yet they love sanctuary cities and don’t want to prosecute illegals.

But it is not as though liberals are against using the law to punish all lawbreakers. They are very much in favor of locking up non-violent protesters who pray outside abortion clinics—they are an existential threat to the social order.

This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

Most Americans are conflicted about abortion, and most are reluctant to condemn a woman who has had one. But they are also reluctant to honor those who have. Not the Bidens.

At the State of the Union on March 7, the Bidens showcased Kate Cox, a woman who left Texas in December to have her baby aborted. The First Lady and the president spoke to her in January after the abortion.

Cox’s child was diagnosed as having Trisomy 18, more popularly known as Edwards syndrome. It is a severe genetic disorder that typically results in a miscarriage during the first three months of pregnancy; 95 percent of these babies do not make it to term. Cox was 20 weeks pregnant when she had her abortion.

According to White House Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, Cox was “forced to go to court to seek permission for the care she needed for a non-viable pregnancy that threatened the life—that threatened her life.” But the justices in Texas who ruled on this case did not all see eye to eye on this issue.

It is true that the District Court of Travis County said that Cox’s doctor, Damla Karsan, concluded that her patient’s life was threatened and merited a D&E abortion. But the Texas Supreme Court noted that “Dr. Karsan did not assert that Ms. Cox has a ‘life-threatening physical condition’ or that, in Dr. Karsan’s reasonable medical judgment, an abortion is necessary because Ms. Cox has the type of condition the exception requires.”

Turning to the medical community, a study published in the American Journal of Perinatology in 2017 concluded there was no increased maternal risk involved in Trisomy 18 pregnancies.

Cheering Cox on is the Center for Reproductive Rights who, with Cox, sued Texas. It is one of the most well-funded pro-abortion institutions in the world. It is disturbed that so many disabilities organizations are decidedly pro-life. “At times,” it says, “the disability rights movement has in fact alienated feminists by forging strategic alliances with anti-abortion groups to advance shared priorities, or by remaining silent on the abortion issue in order to avoid controversy within their own movement.”

In a poll taken last month, 58 percent of Americans believe that babies born with Down syndrome should not be aborted.

It is bad enough that the Bidens are flagging Kate Cox’s decision to abort her baby. It is worse that they deliberately chose a woman to be honored who was carrying a baby with disabilities. Quite frankly, Jill Biden is exploiting this woman to enhance the political capital of her husband.

This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.

The Iowa Senate has passed a bill protecting religious liberty. Every Republican voted for it and every Democrat voted against it. The vote was 31-16.

The bill is based on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that was signed into law in 1993 by President Bill Clinton. It prioritizes religious liberty, meaning that if the government is going to encroach on First Amendment rights, it had better have a “compelling” reason for doing so.

The law defines religious liberty as an exercise that is “substantially motivated by one’s sincerely held religious belief, whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.” This means that if someone believes his religious rights are being “substantially burdened,” he can take his case to the courts.

The Democrats believe that religious liberty should be a subordinate right to LGBT rights. They claim that religious rights should not be privileged and that the state RFRA law will be used to discriminate against LGBT people. They are historically wrong, and their current fears are based more on conjecture than reality.

As law professor Patrick Garry observes, “Textually, the Constitution provides greater protection for religious practices than for any secular-belief-related activities.” Similarly, there is nothing in our legal history that would afford greater protection for LGBT rights than religious liberty. This does not mean that religious rights are absolute—no right is. But it does mean that religious liberty must be awarded “favored treatment” when it conflicts with other rights. That was the conclusion reached by the Supreme Court in a religious liberty 2015 case.

We’ve had a federal RFRA for over 30 years, and many state RFRA laws since then. Where are the horror stories that the Democrats are talking about? Where are LGBT people being persecuted? Who’s doing it?

Not only is this nonsense, it is those with sincerely held religious beliefs who are the ones having their fundamental rights being eviscerated these days. Perversely, it is LGBT activists who are largely responsible for this condition.