On April 4, news reports said that a Catholic priest, Father Greg Shaffer, was under fire by two homosexual students at George Washington University (GWU). His crime? He holds to Church teachings on homosexuality and abortion.

On the same day the story broke, Bill Donohue contacted every senior administrative official on the campus warning them of the civil liberties issues involved. He vigorously defended Father Shaffer, the Chaplain of the Newman Center, and pledged to fight for his rights.

In his open letter to GWU officials, Donohue said, “Nothing that has been reported by the media suggests that Father Shaffer has said anything inflammatory about these subjects, and the students themselves do not offer any evidence of abusive speech or behavior.”

Donohue made it clear that this issue “transcends Father Shaffer: it is an attack on the freedom of expression of Catholics on campus to discuss their religious beliefs and practices with impunity. In short, this is a civil liberties issue involving both freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”

Neither of the students who made the complaint was Catholic. One belonged to some faux Catholic entity, and the other was an agnostic Jew. What angered them most was the refusal of Father Shaffer to give his blessing to their homosexual relationship.

After Catholic League members who receive our news releases contacted GWU, the university was forced to respond. It said it “strives to embody the spirit of mutual respect and reasoned debate that is essential to our academic mission. We are therefore committed to ensuring that all members of our community are free to express their religious beliefs while honoring the right of others to express theirs.”

Donohue replied saying, “This is classic doublespeak. There is only one party to this controversy that has crossed the line, and it isn’t Father Shaffer. The attempt to silence him shows nothing but contempt for diversity and tolerance, the twin towers of academic virtue these days.”

Here’s the good news: immediately following this news release on April 12, the provost told the Faculty Senate that GWU defends Father Shaffer’s freedom of speech. We hasten to add that the Archdiocese of Washington played a key role by issuing stinging statements on the way GWU responded.

It is unfortunate that this issue had to surface in the first place, but we are delighted that Father Shaffer’s rights will be protected. We are also happy to note that the Newman Center will receive an increase in funding from the Student Association next fall.

When we learned that California lawmakers were considering whether to strip the Boy Scouts of America of their tax-exempt status in the state, Bill Donohue decided that he wanted to play this tax game as well.

Here is an excerpt from his letter to Sacramento legislators:

I understand that California lawmakers are weighing a decision to rescind the tax-exempt status of the Boy Scouts of America; at issue is whether it is a discriminatory organization. While you are considering this issue, I would like you to also determine whether a San Francisco-based group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, should lose its tax-exempt status.

The Sisters are an anti-Catholic group of homosexuals who dress as nuns and mock every conceivable Catholic belief and practice. When Pope John Paul II visited San Francisco in 1987, the Sisters held an “exorcism” and a Condom Savior Mass; at the latter event, they featured “the Latex Host” and referred to “the Condom Savior.” Perversely, it was in 1987 that the Sisters were granted a tax-exempt status.

We have collected reams of information on the Sisters, and all of it demonstrates how this group not only mocks Catholicism, it also shows how it mocks the very reason why a tax-exempt status is awarded in the first place (serving the public interest).

So in your deliberations on the Boy Scouts, please consider the tax-exempt status of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

We’ll keep you informed.

William A. Donohue

On virtually every college campus there is an office of diversity, or an office of diversity and inclusion. No candidate for an administrative post at any college can be expected to win the job unless he embraces diversity and inclusion. However, the diversity industry is not limited to higher education: diversity and inclusion managers, speakers, and trainers dot the landscape, instructing institutions ranging from the U.S. Army to the Fortune 500.

The title of this essay is happily heterodox, or politically incorrect. It suggests there is a tension between these two popular virtues, inviting us to choose between them. We must. But to those who have mastered the language of diversity and inclusion—they know the drill by rote—nothing could be more foreign than to cast these attributes as polar opposites. Indeed, the very idea that these are contradictory principles is enough to make them nauseous.

Diversity means one size does not fit all; inclusion means one size fits all. One cannot logically support both at the same time. We have to choose. Either we believe in pluralism, which is what diversity means, or we believe in uniformity, which is what inclusion means. Diversity is based on exclusion, the very opposite of its alleged co-virtue. Behaviorally, diversity means we are allowed to shop around: if we don’t like Macy’s, we can go to Neiman Marcus. Inclusion means there are no exceptions: Fourth of July celebrations exclude no Americans.

There are plenty of good reasons to support diversity and inclusion, but not simultaneously. We want men’s and women’s sports, including the sex segregation that marks the Olympics; otherwise, it would be unfair to women. That’s a tribute to diversity, not inclusion. We want men and women, of all races, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations, to have one vote. That’s a tribute to inclusion, not diversity.

Sometimes the confusion is over the meaning of equality and equity. Equality means sameness, or an identical status; equity means fairness, or justice. It is only fair that students be given the grade they deserve; to give them all the same grade is to counsel injustice. It is only fair that all those in police custody are treated equally before the law; to treat some differently is to counsel injustice.

There is much talk these days about “marriage equality.” It is shorthand for allowing homosexuals to marry. But there are problems with this position, one of which touches on fairness. In other words, it is not axiomatic that marriage equality means marriage equity.

There is no limiting principle to marriage equality. If all those who seek to marry are to be treated equally, i.e., equal to a man and a woman who seek to marry, then on what basis can we deny two women from seeking to marry one man? On what basis can we deny a father from marrying his daughter? These are not hypothetical.

We have no shortage of Americans pushing for polygamy. While incest is still a taboo, there are cases like Patricia and Allen Muth, brother and sister, who have sought to get married. Then there is the case of David Epstein, a Columbia University professor of political science; three years ago he sought to justify having sex with his 24-year-old daughter. Indeed, his lawyer said to the court, “It’s okay for homosexuals to do whatever they want in their own home. How is this so different?”

Without a limiting principle, there is no logical way to deny marriage to anyone. This is the problem with marriage equality. Marriage equity, however, invokes the principle of justice, its limiting principle being procreation. Historically speaking, up until yesterday we thought it just to limit marriage to the only two persons capable of creating a family, namely one man and woman. Moreover, we know from countless studies that children do best when reared in intact families—it is the veritable gold standard. This begs the question: why would any society want to confer equal status on sexual relationships other than those that are heterosexual, monogamous, and united in the institution of marriage?

If something is special, it must be treated as special in society, and in the law. If it is not special, then we can adopt a random system, treating all competitors as equals. But history has shown that the most equitable marital relationships for society—the ones that most fairly serve the public interest—are heterosexual monogamous unions.

It is argued that if marriage is tied to procreation, that would disqualify sterile men and women. Not at all. They possess the attributes that make them ready substitutes to assume parental responsibilities in the event their kin suffer divorce or death. Those attributes are tied to the respective sexes: for different psychological and social reasons, boys and girls need moms and dads; two adults of the same sex are not adequate substitutes.

In short, marriage, defined equitably, should rest on exclusivity: it should be reserved exclusively for one man and one woman. That’s what nature ordained, and what nature’s God intended.

On the March 22nd episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” Bill Maher launched one of his most obscene assaults yet on the Catholic Church. This time he attacked Pope Francis. After labeling him a “virgin bachelor,” Maher opined, “What other business could you be in where your com- pany gets caught running a child sex ring since forever and you still keep your customers?” Maher then mocked key Catholic teachings. It’s not clear whether HBO is afraid of Maher, or if it likes what he has to say. It’s also unclear whether HBO’s parent company, Time Warner, feels the same way that Maher does.

In response to Maher’s latest of many tirades, the Catholic League mailed a copy of his anti-Catholic remarks, dating back to 1998, to Time Warner’s board of directors. Having given up on HBO to do anything about Bill Maher’s bigotry, the Catholic League contacted Time Warner, the parent company of HBO. All the members of the board received a report detailing Maher’s relentless assaults on priests, dating back to 1998. Maher’s hatred of Catholicism is pathological, pure and simple. Here is the letter that Bill Donohue sent to Jeff Bewkes, Chairman of the Board and CEO of Time Warner:

“There is no other entertainer in the nation who has repeatedly spoken about the Catholic Church, especially its priests, in more vile and obscene terms than Bill Maher. Vicious beyond belief, his remarks would be condemned—indeed he would be fired—if directed at any other demographic group. Over and over again he libels priests, portraying all of them as sexual abusers. And he does so with impunity.

“Catholics need to know just how far Time Warner is prepared to play the role of spectator. Does stewardship not count at all? HBO has been contacted many times, but nothing changes. From the enclosed report, it is evident that Maher’s bigotry is not merely visceral, it is relentless. The time has come for someone in a position of responsibility to have a serious talk with this man.”

Although Time Warner did not respond directly to the Catholic League, our campaign may nonetheless have reaped some positive results. For one thing, since the release of the report, Maher has backed off considerably as far as attacks on Catholicism go. In a recent newspaper interview, when Maher was asked about a separate topic altogether, he brought up the Catholic League report out of the blue. Clearly he had this on his mind. (During the same interview, Maher even called anti-Catholicism “very traditional Southern bigotry.”)

Nonetheless, the time has come for both HBO and Time Warner to own up to Maher’s history of rabid anti-Catholic bigotry which goes back for over two decades.

Listed below are excerpts from the report sent to Time Warner,“Bill Maher’s History of Anti-Catholicism, 1998-2013.”

• October 8, 1998, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on the Catholic Church: “But Catholics nowadays are like, you know, ‘The pope says we shouldn’t do this and this, but we really wanna pick and choose the parts of the religion that we feel fits us. You know the pope says you shouldn’t masturbate or have abortions, but that’s fine for him, he’s an elderly man, but for us…’”

• February 4, 1999, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on the pope and abortion: “The pope had his dress up about the abortion issue.”

• August 9, 2000, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on sex abuse: “Look, it’s a fact of life. Priests, a lot of times, molest boys, okay? They are celibate and it’s a magnet for homosexual pedophiles.”

• October 27, 2000, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on Christianity and Halloween: “Christianity is grafted from paganism… It’s all about a man in the sky who’s going to send you in a burning lake of fire if you screw up… Which is the perfect descrip- tion of religion itself. I mean, what is scarier than drinking the man’s blood every Sunday? That’s not a spooky ritual? ‘Here kids, drink his blood and eat his body.’ Like that’s not pagan? What can be more pagan than that?”

• May 7, 2002, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on sex abuse settlements: “I am not defending the Church. I have hated the Church way before anyone else. I have been pounding religion for nine years on this show.”

• March 8, 2002, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on the sex abuse problem: “Before puberty, I would say nobody caused me more pain than the Catholics.”

“I apparently was not attractive enough to be hit on [by priests].”

Jason Jones of Human Life International commented that the sex abuse problem was not prevalent in Europe or South America. Maher shot back, “You’re right. In African countries they rape the nuns.”

• May 10, 2002, “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” [ABC], on the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church: “So it is in this spirit that I offer this modest proposal that the Catholic Church just drop the pretense and just go gay. Just come out of the confessional. Preach the sermon on the mountain. Embrace it. Let the straight people be Baptists. It’s high time you gay Catholics stood up and announced to the world, ‘We’re here, we’re queer, get Eucharist.’”

• April 8, 2005, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], mocking the death of Pope John Paul II: “The Pope may be cold but this crowd is hot.”

“American Catholics say, ‘We love the pope, he should be a saint but he is kind of full of sh*t on everything we believe.’”

“For a church that is so against homosexuals they put on a pageant that you could not believe.”

• April 13, 2007, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], attacking the Eucharist: Maher showed a picture of Keith Richards and said, “New Rule, snorting your father isn’t crazy.” Then, he showed a picture of a Catholic priest giving Communion and said, “Eating your father, that’s crazy.”

• January 25, 2008, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on the Virgin Birth: “But I think it is much more likely that there could be space ships from outer space, than what a lot of things people believe. People still believe, you know, excuse me, I know I may inject religion into every show, but UFOs are a lot more likely than a space god [that] flew down bodily and you know who was the Son of God and you know had sex with a Palestinian woman…”

• February 4, 2008, “Larry King Live” [CNN], on being an anti-Catholic bigot: “They accuse me of being a Catholic bigot. First of all, I don’t have it out especially for Catholics. I think all religions are koo-koo. OK? It’s not just the Catholics. I’m not a bigot. Just because I wish for the demise of an organization that I think is entirely destructive to the human race, that doesn’t make me a bigot. I also wish for [the] demise of Hamas and the KKK.”

• April 11, 2008, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], attacking pope as Nazi and accusing him of covering up for molesters: “And, finally, New Rule: Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there’s going to be some child f***ing going on. In fact, whenever a cult leader sets himself up as ‘God’s infallible wing man’ here on earth, lock away the kids.

“Which is why I’d like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound. And this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats.

• March 11, 2011, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on a ‘Catholics Come Home’ ad campaign: “The Catholic Church is changing. We get it. You don’t want us touching your kids. Message received. This chart shows alleged inappropriate behavior toward children since 90 AD. (Chart shows arrow going up every year) When we first started keeping records. We are going to bring those numbers down. We are not miracle workers but here is our pledge to you. You bring your kids back to church and there will be a significantly lower chance that he or she will be inappropriately touched—particularly she. And if one of our priests does touch one of your kids, you will dine absolutely free at Long John Silver’s. We’re the new Catholic Church and we know it’s time to roll up our sleeves and pull up our pants.”

• May 20, 2011, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on the 2011 John Jay Report on Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church: Maher and his panel of guests discussed the release of the 2011 John Jay Report on Sex Abuse in the Catholic Church. Maher branded all priests as abusers and falsely claimed that the report blamed the 60s for the abuse scandal.

Maher said, “Here is what they found: Not as bad as you think; it magically solved itself one day in 1985…. And the Church isn’t the problem, celibacy isn’t the problem, repressed homosexuality isn’t the problem. You know what the problem was? The 60s… I’m not kidding, they said it was the permissive attitude of the 60s.”

• February 15, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI: “Now…as you all know, this week, Pope Benedict told Vatican Radio—you know, Vatican Radio, playing the hits from the 8th century, 9th century and today— Benedict told them he was going to resign because the Church needs a fresh, young face, somewhere other than a priest’s lap.

“It’s okay to let go. No one can fault you for losing faith in an organization that won’t even allow women as priests, because, the reasoning goes, Jesus didn’t have any female apostles. Yeah, you remember the Last Supper: a total sausage party.

“The fact is that any enterprise that excludes women almost always descends into sexual deviancy. At least at my bathhouse.”

“Show me any culture that’s traditionally hostile to women, and I will show you a culture that is screwed up. Like the Taliban. Like our military with its enormous rape problem. And like the Catholic Church.”

• March 22, 2013, “Real Time with Bill Maher” [HBO], on Pope Francis: After labeling the pope a “virgin bachelor,” Maher opined, “What other business could you be in where your company gets caught running a child sex ring since forever and you still keep your customers?”

On April 5th, U.S. District Judge Edward Korman ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the “morning-after” emergency contraception pill available without a prescription to girls of any age.

In a public statement, Bill Donohue noted that a twelve-year-old girl in a New York City school cannot be given an aspirin by her teacher, even if she has a fever. The same girl cannot buy a large soda during lunchtime because Mayor Michael Bloomberg has decreed that it is not good for her. But now she can be given a pill, unbeknownst to her parents, that could arguably abort her baby.

Neither Judge Korman nor Mayor Bloomberg said what the aspirin-denying teacher should do if he saw a girl reaching for a large Coke to down her abortion-inducing pill.

This is what we’ve come to in our culturally schizophrenic society. Our moral code is patently incoherent, and the contempt shown for parental rights is astonishing. Hopefully, this imperial decision will be overturned.

Dr. Ben Carson has been forced to apologize for defending marriage as it’s been understood since time immemorial. He’s also been forced out as this year’s commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins, because he called marriage “a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality—it doesn’t matter what they are—they don’t get to change the definition.” He was immediately vilified, even though he didn’t equate bestiality with homosexuality.

But when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked attorney Ted Olson whether incest might be permitted with no state restrictions on marriage, nobody condemned her.

Both Carson and Sotomayor asked whether gay marriage supporters recognized any limits to their redefinition of this basic social institution, a perfectly legitimate line of inquiry.

It’s somewhat late in the game for liberals to get exercised about bestiality. In 1948, Kinsey and associates concluded that “sexual contacts between the human and animals of other species are at no point basically different from those that are involved in erotic responses to human situations.” Today, college textbooks on human sexuality call bestiality nothing more than “atypical behavior.”

Princeton professor Peter Singer asks us to keep an open mind about Fred having sex with Fido. He says, “sex with animals does not always involve cruelty,” and that “mutually satisfying activities” of a sexual nature should be respected. At a Yale “sensitivity training” exercise, Dr. Jill McDevitt touted bestiality’s merits. She wanted to “increase compassion for people who may engage in activities that are not what you would personally consider normal.” Dr. Carson is a good man who was framed. It’s the sexologists and the Ivy Leaguers who need to explain themselves.

On four Easter weekend talk shows, Catholic leaders were asked to discuss current events. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick was interviewed on March 29 on the Bloomberg show, “Political Capital with Al Hunt”; Cardinal Timothy Dolan was interviewed on Sunday by Bob Schieffer on the CBS show, “Face the Nation,” as well as by George Stephanopoulos on the ABC show, “This Week”; and Cardinal Donald Wuerl was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News.

Same-sex marriage was the subject of discussion in all four interviews, not surprising given that the U.S. Supreme Court just finished hearing oral arguments on two gay marriage cases. Bringing up women’s ordination, however (which Hunt and Schieffer did), had nothing to do with current events. Schieffer was the worst: one of his questions managed to touch on the homosexual scandal, abortion and celibacy (as well as gay marriage and women’s ordination).

Moreover, unlike marriage, which is a public policy issue, gender roles in the Catholic clergy are as much the business of outsiders as are the absence of female clergy among Orthodox Jews, Muslims, et al. Yet only Catholics are asked about this issue.

To demonstrate how engulfed the media are with this subject, consider the following: so far this year, a LexisNexis search of U.S. newspaper articles that mention either women’s ordination, or women priests, in the Catholic Church turns up 426 articles; in all of last year, there were 323. Similarly, there have been 63 transcripts on this subject over the last three months; in 2012, there was a grand total of 21.

To say that the papal transition accounts for this wide gap is incomplete: it also reveals media bias. Let’s face it, it’s not rank-and-file Catholics who suffer from priest envy; it’s a small dwindling number of Catholics, and a politically motivated segment of non-Catholics.

Recently, the administration at Florida Atlantic University issued an apology for an offensive incident involving one of its faculty members. The professor involved, Dr. Deandre Poole in the School of Communications and Media Studies, was placed on administrative leave for the rest of the semester, after a protest ensued regarding an activity that took place in his classroom.

The incident took place last month in Dr. Poole’s Intercultural Communications Class. Students were asked to write the name “Jesus” on a piece of paper, fold it up and stomp on it. One of the students, a junior who identified himself as a Mormon, refused to participate in the exercise on the basis of his religious beliefs. When he protested to Dr. Poole’s supervisor, he was told that he was suspended from the class.

Soon thereafter, Bill Donohue wrote directly to Dr. Poole, asking him why he didn’t invite students to write the name “Obama” on a piece of paper, instead of “Jesus,”and then have them stomp on that.

In his letter, Donohue wrote:

The assignment you gave asking students to stomp on a piece of paper with the word “Jesus” on it was reportedly an exercise in the cultural meaning of symbols taken from the textbook, “Intercultural Communications: A Contextual Approach,” 5th edition. But the word “Jesus” is never mentioned in the textbook, so that was your call. You could have asked them to stomp on the word “Obama,” but that may have made you feel uncomfortable given your activist role in the Democratic Party and the pro-Obama book you are currently writing. Get the point?

In a press release, Donohue provided Poole’s e-mail address so that Catholic League members could relay their concerns.

Included in the university administration’s apology was a statement that no protesting student would suffer any sanctions. The Catholic League is happy with the outcome, and is grateful that its subscribers helped to bring it about.

Recently on his TV show, Bill O’Reilly once again bemoaned what he says is the absence of a Christian response to anti-Christian bigotry. In his exchange with Rev. Robert Jeffress, a Baptist minister, he said, “There isn’t really a leader in the American Catholic Church…There is no Christian society like the Jewish Defamation League.”

This is stunning. The man chosen to discuss anti-Christian bigotry is known for slamming O’Reilly’s own religion. In 2010, Jeffress said the Roman Catholic Church was the outgrowth of a “corruption” called the “Babylonian mystery.” He continued, “Much of what you see in the Catholic Church today doesn’t come from God’s word. It comes from that cult-like pagan religion. Isn’t this the genius of Satan?”

Moreover, if there is no Catholic anti-defamation league, then why do O’Reilly’s producers keep calling our office for information? This has been going on for years. Why did one of his producers recently come to our office to obtain a video we have in our archives of James Hormel laughing approvingly at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? O’Reilly used the video on January 9.

O’Reilly has been selling himself as the lone crusader against radical secularism for years. This is nonsense. Also, if he wants to know who the real leader of the Catholic Church is in America today, he should have an extended interview with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.