In 1970, a 14-year-old girl and her 17-year-old sister went to his hotel room after his concert to get his autograph. He came to the door naked and then sexually abused the 14-year-old in front of her sister. He was sentenced to a one-to-three-year prison sentence, but only served three months. On May 19, he was honored in New York City by the Parents Association of his alma mater, LaGuardia Arts High School (the FAME school). Al Roker and Deborah Roberts co-hosted the fundraiser, and many stage and screen stars performed.

The child molester is Peter Yarrow, of the Peter, Paul, and Mary trio. Yarrow, who was convicted of “immoral and improper liberties” with a minor, brushed off criticism by saying what he did was not uncommon.

• “In that time, it was common practice, unfortunately—the whole groupie thing.”

• “It was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by categorically male performers.”

• “In Washington, it was considered a felony. In New York, it would have been a class B misdemeanor.”

In 1981, he was pardoned by President Jimmy Carter, a man who has spent much of this year hawking his book on the mistreatment of women by the clergy. At the time of the pardon, Yarrow was married to the niece of Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy. Yarrow wants us to take note of his pardon: “With the mean-spiritedness of our time, it gets hauled out as if it’s [his sexual assault of the 14-year-old girl] relevant. You don’t get a presidential pardon if you’re not doing great work, have paid your debts to society.”

Bill Donohue was asked by Nina Shea, the Director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, to sign a “Pledge of Solidarity and Call to Action” expressing support for persecuted Christians around the globe. “No one has done a better job calling attention to this problem than Nina Shea,” he said. “She has the full support of the Catholic League. I am happy to sign the Pledge.”

Christians are being beaten, tortured, and murdered by radical Muslims all over the Middle East. Yet there are few brave voices out there condemning this onslaught. That is why everyone needs to stand by Nina Shea’s initiative.

The following article by Bill Donohue was published by Newsmax on May 9:

After it was learned that a Southern California eighth-grade class was asked to debate the reality of the Holocaust, a firestorm ensued. Apologies followed, and pledges were forthcoming from the Rialto Unified School District not to let this happen again. While it may not happen again in this school district, it will certainly happen again elsewhere. Why? Because this is hardly the first time something like this has happened. More important, the critics of the assignment don’t seem to understand what is really driving this issue.

The Rialto students were asked to respond to the following: “When tragic events occur in history, there is often debate about their actual existence. For example, some people claim the Holocaust is not an actual event, but instead is a propagandizing tool that was used for political and monetary gain.” This was supposed to be an exercise in critical thinking.

Immediately, the Anti-Defamation League said this assignment has “no academic value,” saying it “only gives legitimacy to anti-Semites.” The Simon Wiesenthal Center complained that the Holocaust “is the most documented monstrous crime in history.” One of the Center’s speakers, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, wondered what is “broken” in the school district. All of these statements are true, but they miss the most salient point: What leads people to second-guess the reality of the Holocaust is not bigotry; rather, it is the proposition that moral absolutes do not exist.

The idea that truth is a fiction, and that all moral precepts are equally valid, has been the reigning wisdom in academia for decades. It is not just deconstructionists who cast doubt on the plain meaning of words; rather, it is those who fancy themselves as critical thinkers. When students are told, over and over again, that what appears to be reality is nothing but a social construct, certain outcomes follow. Nowhere is this more deeply entrenched than in the humanities and the social sciences; the law schools are just as bad.

In the 1990s, Hamilton College professor Robert Simon said that while his students acknowledged the reality of the Holocaust, 10 to 20 percent of them refused to condemn it. “Of course I dislike the Nazis,” one student told him, “but who is to say they are morally wrong?” At about the same time, professor Christina Hoff Sommers recalled how a student at Williams College took this issue a step further. “Although the Holocaust may not have happened, it’s a perfectly reasonable conceptual hallucination.”

The late James Q. Wilson encountered the same phenomenon. When discussing the Nazi genocide of Jews with his students, he found that “there was no general agreement that those guilty of the Holocaust itself were guilty of a moral horror.” These are more than anecdotes: in 2002, a survey of college students found that 73 percent believed that “what is right and wrong depends on differences in individual values and cultural diversity.” More recent studies show no departure from this perspective.

It would be a mistake to think that none of this matters. The great English historian Paul Johnson sought to uncover the causes of mass murder under the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. He concluded that “Moral relativism in monstrous incarnation” is what undergirds totalitarianism. Think of it this way: When morality is reduced to personal predilections, and when objective standards give way to subjectivism, anything can be justified.

“There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense.” Those are the words of Adolf Hitler. This proposition is the etiological basis upon which doubts about the Holocaust are based. Morality becomes a free-for-all once objective standards of right and wrong, such as the Ten Commandments, are jettisoned. Indeed, the moral relativism of the Weimar Republic is what made Hitler possible. To be exact, it was moral ennui that resulted in the gas chambers.

If we are to break open students’ minds about the horror of the Holocaust, we need to spend more time educating the educators on the dangers that are inherent in an ethics of moral relativism. Then the educators might be able to teach their students that there are truths, among them being that the Holocaust not only existed, but that it was a moral monstrosity.

Recently, Pope Francis met with U.N. officials, led by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The media are already gushing over the pope’s call for a redistribution of wealth, but they are downplaying his remarks on abortion and euthanasia. And what he said about the economic responsibilities of wealthy nations is, quite frankly, old stuff. Indeed, he cites his two predecessors as saying the same thing. To be specific, the pope did not call for economic equality: He twice called for economic equity. Equity means fairness; it does not mean sameness.

More important, the pope linked the rights of the unborn, and those who are ill, to the cause for justice. “Today, in concrete terms,” he said, “an awareness of the dignity of each of our brothers and sisters whose life is sacred and inviolable from conception to natural death must lead us to share with complete freedom the goods which God’s providence has placed in our hands, material goods but also intellectual and spiritual ones, and to give back generously and lavishly whatever we may have earlier unjustly refused to others.”

The pope also denounced our “throwaway culture” and the “culture of death.” He has used those terms before (the latter was coined by Saint John Paul II), so there is no ambiguity: He is clearly speaking about the disposal of unborn babies and the plight of the terminally ill.

Militant atheists have a new goal: they object to students hearing the name of God in the Pledge of Allegiance. No atheist has to say the Pledge, or utter the dreaded words, “under God”—it is optional—but that is not enough: they want to stop others from saying it.

The American Humanist Association is suing a New Jersey school district because state law requires students to say the Pledge. Since 1943, students have been able to opt out of saying it under federal law (the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Jehovah’s Witnesses did not have to say it because its members held that the flag salute constituted idolatry).

Regarding state law, in 2010, the very liberal Ninth Circuit upheld the words “under God” for their “ceremonial and patriotic nature”; the judges said it was not a violation of the First Amendment. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal of a unanimous ruling by the First Circuit that also said that the inclusion of “under God” did not violate anyone’s rights. In all cases, no student was required to recite the Pledge.

The American Humanist Association, and its ilk, are not satisfied to opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance. They want the government to silence everyone from saying it.

We do not have to worry about the Taliban in the United States—religious fanatics are properly impotent. But we do have to worry about their secular counterpart—atheist fanatics. It is their impotence that we must secure.

Just a few weeks ago in Seattle, Planned Parenthood  staged “Bar Nun Bingo” at Poquitos in the Capitol Hill neighborhood; two days later, it held another “Bar Nun Bingo,” this time at the downtown Pike Brewing Company. Both fund-raising events bashed nuns, and were led by the demonstrably anti-Catholic gay group, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Pictures of previous “Bar Nun Bingo” affairs show how sick it is.

Planned Parenthood has a long history of Catholic bashing. Its founder, Margaret Sanger, was both a racist and an anti-Catholic. In 1987, it trashed Mother Teresa, calling her an “old and withered person, who doesn’t look the least like a woman.” In 1994, it mocked the Eucharist at the Monmouth County Fair in New Jersey. In 1995, it blamed New York Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor for the killing of an abortion doctor in Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1998, its opposition to school vouchers led it to brand the Catholic Church an “extremist” group on Long Island.

In 1999, Planned Parenthood passed out green condoms on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day at the state Capitol in Connecticut. That same year it sought to oust the Holy See from its non-member state permanent observer status at the U.N. In 2000, it accused Pope John Paul II of waging “war” against the “sexual and reproductive rights” of women. In 2009, one of its male leaders in Florida dressed as a pregnant nun at a Halloween party; others joined him in a “Safe Sex Bash.” It regularly insults Christians at Christmas with its “Choice on Earth” program. And so on.

Planned Parenthood receives more than half a billion in tax dollars per year. Moreover, a quarter of this money comes from Catholics. A few weeks ago, the Catholic League wrote to Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who recently introduced a bill prohibiting public funds for abortion providers, about Planned Parenthood’s bigotry.

The Catholic League’s boycott of Guinness continues to grow. We have contacted all 14 regional offices of the Holy Name Society, and over 100 of its officers. Additionally, we reached out to 175 Catholic War Veterans posts across the country. We have asked them to join our boycott of Guinness.

We also contacted over 200 Irish pubs in New York City and asked them to join our boycott of Guinness.

Furthermore, over 250 more Irish pubs across New England  were recently contacted to join our boycott of Guinness. We are particularly singling out pubs in Boston and blanketing them with information about the boycott.

Additionally, we contacted over 250 more Irish pubs across Long Island, New Jersey and in Albany to ask them to join our boycott of Guinness.

In the upcoming weeks, we will continue to announce additional cities where the pub owners will be asked to join our boycott.

On Easter Sunday night, more Americans watched “The Ten Commandments” on ABC than any other show, even allowing for the fact that the audience was not as big as last year’s showing. What was most telling was how it creamed the religious fare shown on the Travel Channel and the Science Channel.

The Travel Channel gave us “Greatest Mysteries: Holy Land,” a one-hour presentation that took the viewer on a rambling ride through hidden rooms and caves looking for the Holy Grail; a guest appearance by Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS, rounded out the first segment. The Shroud of Turin was featured in the second segment: the audience was asked to consider whether the cloth’s impression was the face of Leonardo da Vinci. Another segment speculated on whether there is a hidden code and cipher in the Torah. Finally, we learned that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was actually his best buddy.

The Science Channel gave us two programs. The first explored why nefarious Church leaders sought to suppress some non-canonical gospels. Predictably, the Gospel of Mary posits that the male-dominated Church did not want to deal with a woman (who may have been the leader of the apostles!). The second program called into question many biblical accounts of Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection.

It is striking that a Christian-themed entertainment movie offers a more accurate historical account of the Bible than programs that purport to be scientific. Unfortunately, what passes as scientific these days is often more sci-fi than real, more myth than fact, and more idle speculation than collected data.

It only goes to show that the average American is a lot smarter than the elites who seek to manipulate them.

If Maureen Dowd had guts, then she would demand the resignation of her boss, Mark Thompson, who is the president and CEO of the New York Times.

In one of her recent columns, Dowd rails against the canonization of Pope John Paul II, saying, “he presided over the Catholic Church during nearly three decades of a gruesome pedophilia scandal and grotesque cover-up.”

Dowd ought to get her facts straight: there was no pedophilia scandal—less than five percent of molesting priests were pedophiles—it was homosexuals who accounted for 81 percent of the sexual abuse cases. The facts are incontrovertible. So it’s time she stopped her cover-up.

More important, Thompson worked at the BBC for decades, and claimed to know nothing about the BBC’s biggest child molestation case in its history: Jimmy Savile was a true pedophile, raping hundreds of children. Both Savile and Thompson worked at the BBC for decades; Thompson was Director General from 2004-2012. And unlike John Paul II, we have proof that Thompson lied: after Savile died in October 2011, a “Newsnight” story exposing his conduct was spiked, and Thompson said he knew nothing about it. In fact, he was told about the cover-up at a Christmas party that year. On top of that, he told his BBC lawyers in September 2012 to write a letter to The Sunday Times threatening to sue if they ran a letter implicating him in the Savile matter. His only concern was to land a plum job at the New York Times (he was set to join the Times on November 12, but events forced him to wait).

According to Dowd, the pope is supposed to know exactly what is going on in an organization that consists of 1.2 billion, but somehow we are supposed to believe that Thompson knew nothing about Savile when he presided over an organization of 23,000. Everyone else seemed to know about Savile’s rapes, so why didn’t Thompson?

It’s time Maureen Dowd showed some guts and demanded that Mark Thompson resign.

Bill Donohue wrote the following letter to Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie urging him to veto S.B. 2687, a bill that would suspend the statute of limitations for cases involving the sexual abuse of minors:

May 8, 2014

Hon. Neil Abercrombie
Governor, State of Hawaii
Executive Chambers, State Capitol
Honolulu, Hawaii 96813

Dear Governor Abercrombie:

As president of the nation’s largest Catholic civil rights organization, I implore you to veto S.B. 2687.

Justice demands that those who sexually abuse minors should be punished with the full force of the law. Justice also demands that the civil liberties of the accused be respected. Unfortunately, S.B. 2687 does violence to the latter.

In 2012, you signed a bill that allowed a two-year window permitting alleged sexual abuse victims to file a lawsuit for offenses that occurred when they were a minor. It did not apply to the public schools. This bill, S.B. 2687, does apply to the public schools. However, it is clear from those who are pushing for this legislation that its real target is the Catholic Church.

Every student of this issue knows that it is not in the Catholic schools where this problem is extant—it is in the public schools. We know from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice investigation into this matter that almost all of the cases of the sexual abuse of minors that took place in Catholic institutions occurred between 1965 and 1985. By contrast, in the last five years, the average number of credible accusations made against 40,000 priests is exactly 7.6. Quite frankly, there is no entity in  the United States today, private or public, that can match this record.

It could be argued that if the public schools were previously exempted from the suspension of the statute of limitations, S.B. 2687 is a necessary corrective. But the right remedy to this problem is not to violate the civil liberties of any person, independent of whether he or she works in the private sector or the public sector. There are fundamental due process reasons why statutes of limitation exist: memories fade, witnesses die, and determinations of the truth are compromised. The idea that cases can be fairly adjudicated when they extend back decades—even a half-century or more—is ludicrous.

There are plenty of steps that can be taken to protect minors from being abused today. The Catholic Church has implemented the most serious, and effective, measures of any institution in the nation; this accounts for its tremendous progress. Indeed, nothing would do more to curb the sexual abuse of minors today than for non-Catholic entities to adopt the same reforms that the Catholic Church has established.

It is for these reasons that I urge you to veto S.B. 2687.

Sincerely,

William A. Donohue, Ph.D.
President