The Catholic League’s documentary, “Walt’s Disenchanted Kingdom,” was an entry in the L.A. International Short Film Festival; the U.S. was one of 22 nations to offer nominations. We were nominated for six categories, and we learned on March 24 that we won in four of them—we even won the big one!

We won the award for “Best Documentary,” “Best Editing,” “Best Sound Design,” and received Honorable Mention for “Best Trailer.”

In each category, there were 3-5 nominations. Importantly, the awards we won for editing, trailer production and sound design were not just for documentaries—they were judged the best of all films submitted to the international festival. Bill Donohue and Jason Killian Meath are the executive producers.

Our movie has also been nominated for “Best Documentary” and “Best Poster Design” at The Prisma Film Festival in Rome, Italy; The Perth Christian Film Festival in Perth, Australia selected it for “Best Documentary”; and The Arizona Faith and Family Film Festival chose it as an “Official Selection for Best Documentary.”

Moreover, we are delighted to report that our movie is doing extremely well on Amazon Prime, doubling or tripling the number of people who view it each week. When we add in the numbers from all platforms that have featured the film, it is clear that we have reached millions of Americans.

We never heard a word from Disney. They basically had two choices: sue us or shut up. They chose the latter, knowing they had not a leg to stand on by suing us. We were very careful to take material that was in the public domain, effectively disarming those who may have wanted to settle this in court.

We did this movie because we wanted to alert Americans as to what has happened to this once family-friendly giant. Disney continues to do some good work, but that is overridden by its insistence on siding with those who are bent on sexualizing children. If only Disney would consistently treat children as children, no one would complain.

At a recent shareholder’s meeting, Bob Iger, the Disney CEO, was asked about the agenda-driven content of Disney offerings. “We’ve recently gotten criticisms, as you expressed, for what some perceived to be agenda-driven content, and I’m sensitive to that actually,” he said. “I’m very serious about that. It should not be agenda-driven. It should be entertainment-driven. That should be the goal of all of our stories.”

Wonder who he had in mind?

We still don’t trust him. That is why we will continue to press Disney whenever they go off the rails.

The FBI wants Catholics to rat on each other. In doing so, it has crossed the line.

On April 11, Bill Donohue wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking him to make public those documents that are related to the FBI’s outreach program to “mainline Catholic parishes” and “local diocesan leadership.” They were targeted because of “radicalization” within the Catholic Church.

“This is taking the FBI into new, and disturbing territory,” he said.

We know from previous disclosures that the FBI was probing “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics” (RTCs). To this day we have not seen any evidence that they are a threat to anyone. Now the FBI has upped the ante, going after “mainline” Catholics and dioceses.

On February 9, Donohue made public his concerns about the FBI’s interest in RTCs. “What’s next?” Will it be a war on “Catholics who are orthodox?”

The First Amendment provides for a healthy measure of autonomy between church and state, so when the state encroaches on religious bodies, it had better have unambiguous and very serious reasons for doing so. Donohue asked Wray, “I would like to know what they are in this instance.”

Catholics have a right to know what the FBI is up to. The evidence is clear: Violence against Catholic churches and crisis pregnancy centers are largely going unattended to, yet probes of innocent Catholics are being conducted. This raises important questions that go to the heart of the FBI’s legitimacy.

William A. Donohue

War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class is Killing the American Dream is a book I had to get off my chest. To be blunt, I am seething mad at the smug, arrogant, patronizing, condescending and frankly racist white ruling class who are working overtime to undermine the prospects of realizing the American dream for millions of Americans, especially African Americans.

I was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, largely by my grandparents who moved from Ireland to the Bronx. As a boy, I was never interested in anything but sports and clowning around. I was always in trouble in elementary school and high school, and I got thrown out of college. I finally grew up when I enlisted in the Air Force.

My years at Beale Air Force base in northern California, during the late 1960s, were spent reading voraciously about the civil rights movement. This was a new experience.

What drew me to the civil rights movement was jazz. At a young age, I fell in love with Billy Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and many others. The only magazine I read with any regularity was Downbeat, the premier jazz magazine. No one can read about jazz without learning about black history.

In the course of my readings, I learned much about the racism and discrimination that blacks had to endure. This really struck home during the civil rights movement. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. captured my attention. So did Robert Kennedy, whom I shook hands with about a week before he was assassinated.

Prior to this time, I had no political preference. But that soon changed, and, like so many other young people at that time, I became a liberal.

While in the Air Force, I had taken courses at the nearby community college, and for the first time in my life, I excelled in school. When I was discharged, I completed three years of college in two years at New York University. It was then that my flirtation with liberalism ended.

At NYU, I wrote satirical articles for the student newspaper, taking turns lampooning conservatives one day, and liberals the next; I was finding myself politically. After a while, I noticed that my pieces satirizing liberals were no longer published. When I confronted the editors, they acted as though no politics were involved. They were lying, and I told them to their face. I quit.

I soon began to read a lot of articles and books on subjects that I was studying, but were written from a conservative perspective; they challenged the assigned readings in my sociology and political science courses.

Next I found myself debating liberal students in the classroom; I realized they couldn’t mount a credible defense. Then I started questioning my professors, and when I realized that they would either explode at me, or failed to persuade, I realized I was happy being a conservative.

After graduating, I went to the New School for Social Research, another Greenwich Village institution. It was even more radical than NYU. Upon receiving my Masters, I went back to NYU for my Ph.D.; I worked during the day at a Catholic school in Spanish Harlem and took classes at night.

My left-wing professors, and mostly left-wing classmates, proved to be unconvincing. But that alone did not push me to the right—it was their unabiding hypocrisy that pushed me over the edge. For example, they spoke endlessly about oppression, yet they defended the genocidal maniac, Mao Zedong. They expressed solidarity with blacks, but when I asked my Ph.D. classmates to go to Spanish Harlem on weekends to tutor my black and Puerto Rican students, none volunteered.

After working with blacks in Spanish Harlem, and again as a professor in Pittsburgh—I was the faculty advisor to the basketball team, working closely with black students—I came to know that if teachers made it their priority to see to it that they learned, and had high expectations of them, most did well. I also identified with these students; I, too, came from a fatherless family.

Today, it is the white ruling class that has given up on them. These elites don’t treat African Americans as equals. If they did they would encourage the inculcation of the vital virtues—self-control, personal responsibility and perseverance. Instead, they are undermining them.

We will never have racial equality until more blacks earn their way to the middle class. It can’t be forced top down.

To do that the ruling class has to stop undermining the black family with hand-out programs and promises of reparations. They need to stop dumbing down standards and start helping blacks to succeed; they also need to support school choice. They need to stop declaring war on the police—blacks don’t want it. They need to stop telling all white people they are racists (this does nothing but create division and does not improve the life of one black person).

In short, the white ruling class is the problem.

Bill Donohue

Bill Donohue, War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class Is Killing the American Dream (Sophia Institute Press, 2023)

This book is about the making of the American dream and attempts to thwart it by the ruling class.

Having studied why some people are a success, as measured by educational and economic achievement, I came to the conclusion that cultural factors are the key to understanding success. Virtue matters.

People do not do well in school or in the workplace because they are lucky, or even smart. They come out on top because they possess the three most important virtues that make for success: self-discipline, personal responsibility and perseverance. Having these attributes does not guarantee success, but not having them guarantees failure. This is as true for athletes as it is pianists. I call them the “vital virtues.”

Without self-discipline, the kinds of sacrifices that it takes to measure up isn’t going to happen. In fact, those who cannot, or will not, exercise self-control are destined to fail in school and in the workplace.

The Catholic Church has long understood the role that virtue plays in character formation. That is why Catholic schools do so well, even in neighborhoods where public school students fail. In fact, no institution has done more for those at the bottom of the socio-economic scale to succeed than the Catholic Church.

Taking responsibility for oneself is critical to success. Blaming others for one’s failures may be psychologically comforting, but it is a dead end. Even when an individual, or an entire racial or ethnic group, has clearly been mistreated, it makes no sense to wallow in misery. Victimhood is one of the most destructive characteristics anyone can possess—it breeds a sense of impotence.

High achievers have all experienced failure, but unlike many others, they find a way to better themselves. They persevere. They have grit. Basketball superstar Michael Jordan was a model of grit. “If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

There are four demographic groups that embody the vital virtues, par excellence: Asians, Jews, Mormons and Nigerians.

These groups succeed in school and in the workplace because they exercise self-discipline, personal responsibility and perseverance. The source of the vital virtues is the same in every case: they all come from intact two-parent families. Those who come from one-parent families can succeed, but their chances are slim compared to those who come from homes where there is a father and a mother.

The social science evidence on this is overwhelming. Why, then, does the ruling class—the elites who run our institutions—not do more to nurture the vital virtues? Worse, why are they increasingly doing everything they can to undermine them?

No group has suffered more at the hands of the ruling class than African Americans. It is not white supremacists whom they need to fear—it is the mostly white, well-educated elites who claim to be on their side. They are the real menace. They are the ones who promote policies that subvert the inculcation of the vital virtues.

Well-educated white people who claim to be on the side of blacks—but are in fact their real-life enemy—are not new.

George Fitzhugh was America’s first sociologist. He is the author of the 1854 book Sociology of the South. Like many of those on the Left today, he railed against what he perceived to be the exploitative nature of capitalism. He was also a strong proponent of slavery.

Why would a “progressive” support slavery? He said blacks were not capable of competing with white people in a capitalist economy, and it was therefore preferable for them to remain as slaves.

In his work “The Universal Law of Slavery,” written in 1850, Fitzhugh explained his view that “the Negro is but a grown up child and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian.” He noted that slavery had a positive effect. “The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world.” Everything was taken care of for them.

Fitzhugh said something that the white “allies” of blacks would never say today, though their thinking and their behavior toward them suggests a similar outlook.

“The negro is improvident [and] would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has a right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate.”

Fitzhugh was not an anomaly. During the Progressive Era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Richard T. Ely was one of the most prominent leaders in the social-justice crusade; he was considered sympathetic to blacks. What he said was similar to what Fitzhugh said. “Negroes, are for the most part grownup children, and should be treated as such.”

Fast forward to 1988. That is when the astute social scientist, Charles Murray, wrote a classic essay wherein he predicted the “coming of the custodial democracy.” His prediction has come true. He said “what is now a more or less hidden liberal condescension toward blacks in general, and toward the black underclass in particular, will have worked its way into a new consensus.”

Murray maintained that liberal intellectuals and policy makers would come to terms with their view that “inner-city blacks are really quite different from you and me, and the rules that apply to us cannot be applied to them.” Therefore the best that can be done is to generously supply them with “medical care, food, housing, and other social services—much as we do for American Indians who live on reservations.” This is the face of custodial democracy, treating inner-city blacks as “wards of the state.”

Matters have only gotten worse. Now we have an array of reparation policies and equity programs designed to “help” blacks. In essence, the ruling class has given up on blacks.

If the elites in government, education, law, the media, the entertainment industry, non-profit advocacy sector, the big corporations and the foundations truly believed that black people were just as capable of exercising personal responsibility, self-discipline and perseverance as white people, they would never give up on them.

The dirty little progressive secret—the sentiment that they don’t want to state publicly—is their conviction that blacks can’t make it on their own. This explains why they are always looking to implement new government policies, initiatives that smack of racism.

For example, the thinking behind critical race theory is that blacks can’t move forward unless white people move backwards. As one of the chief gurus of this pernicious idea says, Ibram X. Kendi, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Kendi is the darling of the corporate, government and education elite. Not only does he promote racist ideas—in the name of combating racism—he sends a message of victimhood to blacks. There is no surer way to promote failure than to convince people that they are incapable of self-improvement, yet this is what the ruling class does every day.

If the elites were serious about treating blacks as equals, they would do what they can to repair the damage that the welfare state has done. It was the welfare programs of the 1960s—pushed by the ruling class—that did more to undermine the black family than any other factor, including racism and discrimination.

Instead of strengthening marriage, the ruling class is responsible for weakening it. Now every conceivable social arrangement qualifies as marriage. After a clear majority of the people in the very liberal state of California voted in 2008 not to recognize same-sex marriage, who rushed into the courts to overturn the expressed will of the people? Two of the most elite lawyers in the nation—one a Republican and the other a Democrat.

When Theodore B. Olson and David Boies (who had squared off against each other in the 2000 presidential election debacle) were granted a hearing in a San Francisco court in 2010, the voters in thirty states had already voted 30-0 to affirm legal marriage as the union between a man and a woman. But that didn’t stop the elite duo from neutering the voice of the people.

The schools should be promoting the vital virtues, but instead they often work to undermine them. Students who are given the most homework do the best in school, and no group does more homework than Asians. Their parents see to that. Students raised in one-parent families do the least homework; they also do the least well in school.
Students cannot learn unless there is order in the classroom, but in many schools it is difficult to maintain order. This is a function of the teacher unions and the courts. By putting a quota—a cap—on the number of students from any given racial or ethnic group that can be disciplined, the elites who make these policies are ensuring that those at the bottom stay there.

A key prerequisite for academic success—indeed success in almost any area of life—is civility. But when self-discipline breaks down, the incidence of criminal behavior increases. When personal responsibility is eschewed, crime follows. When young men, in particular, fail to develop the virtue of perseverance, attempts at rehabilitation invariably fail—resulting in more crime. When all three virtues are under attack, it is nearly impossible to achieve civility.

Following some ugly incidents between the police and black men in 2020, crime started to get out of control. Instead of holding everyone accountable—rioters as well as cops—the elites promoted policies that went easy on criminals and all but disarmed the cops. The “defund the police” movement—which blacks opposed—did nothing to ensure justice, but it did much to guarantee incivility.

It is a tribute to the patriotism of most Americans that they still believe in the goodness of the nation. It is a tribute to their commitment to the vital virtue of perseverance that they refuse to give up on the prospect of realizing the American dream. This is especially true of minorities who refuse to give up, despite the obstacles deliberately erected by the ruling class.

The time is ripe for leaders who embrace the vital virtues to bring about a cultural renewal. No institution is better suited to do that than the Catholic Church. Its moral voice was hurt by the clergy abuse scandal, but that is behind us. We need the clergy to become more vocal, and we need the laity to be supportive of their efforts. Making the American dream a reality for everyone depends on it.

The Nashville mass shooting, which resulted in the killing of three children and three adults, needs to be investigated as a hate crime against Christians. Police Chief John Drake told NBC news that “There’s some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school.”

The shooter, Audrey Hale, is a female who misidentified herself as a male. Her resentment against The Covenant School, a Christian school, is important given that Christianity teaches we are either male or female.

In all likelihood, this is the source of her resentment. After all, she targeted this school—she did not go on a rampage in a local public school. To top things off, her mother works at a local church and frequently posts about religion on social media.

There is another reason why Hale’s killing spree must be investigated as a hate crime: transgender persons are often taught to hate normal men and women, what transgender activists call “cisgender” persons, namely men and women who are not at war with their God-given, and nature-ordained sex. Here’s the evidence.

Lisa Littman is a physician who teaches in the Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Brown University. In 2018, she published an article in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed journal, on the subject of parents and their transgender adolescents and young persons. She touched on many issues relevant to this topic, one of them being the way these young people look at normal males and females.

Let’s first say that the use of the term “normal” is ours, not Littman’s. Nonetheless, in her study she found that 46.6 percent of transgender young people suffer from anxiety and 39.4 percent suffer from depression. Almost half, 48.4 percent, said they experienced traumatic or stressful experiences prior to the onset of their problem, namely gender dysphoria. And 61.4 percent admitted that they were “overwhelmed by strong emotions and tries to/goes to great lengths to avoid feeling them.” None of this is normal. [In the case of Hale, her close friend called a suicidal hotline shortly before she went to the school.]

As to the critical point—the way transgender youth view normal males and females—what Littman found is as enlightening as it is disturbing. She concluded that their friends “praised and supported people who were transgender-identified and ridiculed and maligned non-transgender people.”

The following are direct quotes from her article commenting on the friendship groups of transgender youth.

“The groups targeted for mocking by the friend groups are often heterosexual (straight) people and non-transgender people (called ‘cis’ or ‘cisgender’). Sometimes animosity was also directed towards males, white people, gay and lesbian (non-transgender) people, aromantic and asexual people, and ‘terfs.’ One participant explained, ‘They are constantly putting down straight, white people for being privileged, dumb and boring.'”

Another participant opined, “In general, cis-gendered people are considered evil and unsupportive, regardless of their actual views on the topic. To be heterosexual, comfortable with the gender you were assigned at birth, and non-minority places you in the ‘most evil’ of categories with this group of friends. Statement of opinions by the evil cis-gendered population are considered phobic and discriminatory and are generally discounted as unenlightened.”

In addition, transgender young people and their friendship groups “also directed their mocking towards…[their] parents, grandparents, siblings, peers, allies and teachers.” As one participant said, “They call kids who are not LGBT dumb and cis.” Another confessed they that were “asked to leave [a school-based LGBT club] because they were not queer enough [as straight and bisexual allies]. [One of them] was bullied, harassed and denounced online.”

The disparagement of normal people online cannot be exaggerated. Littman mentions Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as the worst platforms. As one participant put it, “They speak with derision about how cis-gendered people do not understand them and are so close-minded.” Another said, “I hear them disparaging heterosexuality, marriage and nuclear families.”

Turning on their parents is another problem. “My daughter called me a ‘breeder’ and says things in a mocking ‘straight person voice.’ Her friends egg her on when she does this.” Another parent noted, “If they aren’t mocking ‘cis’ people, they are playing pronoun police and mocking people who can’t get the pronouns correct.”

Trans youth see themselves as victims. “They seem to wear any problems they may have, real or perceived like badges of honor.” Another said, “But all talk is very ‘victim’ centered.” Finally, another said, “They passionately decry ‘Straight Privilege’ and ‘White Male Privilege’—while emphasizing their own ‘Victimhood.'”

There we have it. Normal people are “privileged,” “dumb,” “close-minded,” and “evil.” They deserve to be mocked and bullied. And no one is more evil than white men.

Transgender young people have emotional and mental disorders. They need help. They are also being taught to hate everyone not like them.

When you add these conditions to the resentment that the Nashville shooter exhibited towards her Christian school, you have a recipe for disaster. We cannot allow a biased media to spin this story any other way. We need a probe to determine whether this was a hate crime.

Power and control are what drives the left. They want the power to run our lives and control our thinking. They also hate the First Amendment: they do not believe in freedom of speech, freedom of association or freedom of religion.

This was on big display with their reaction to Audrey Hale, the Nashville mass shooter. Consider the way the media and activists responded to the serial killing in a Christian school by a disturbed transgender biological female who resented her time at the school.

The Associated Press pitched the story as one about guns, not violent transgender persons. Reuters, its British counterpart, took note of the religion the killer was raised in (Christianity)—and which she rejected—saying, “Former Christian school student kills 3 children, 3 staff in Nashville shooting.” Similarly, the Daily Mail put the blame on her Christian parents.

If the killer had been a white supremacist, the media would be focusing on that, and nothing else.

NBC News was upset that some media outlets were mentioning the trans status of the murderer, even going so far as to say that the real victims are those in the transgender community (they are allegedly fearful for their lives). Newsweek blamed Republicans for opposing “drag queen” shows, somehow tying that noble position to the deranged act of a disturbed person.

Activists have gotten into the act by demanding that Hale’s game plan, contained in a manifesto that the police have yet to release, should not be made public. They want it censored. The head of Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere, Jordan Budd, flatly said, “It should not be published.” Are they afraid it will detail her hatred of Christianity, a sentiment which is common in left-wing and trans circles?

Some activists are threatening violence, the ultimate expression of power. “If you transphobes do try to come for me I’m taking a few of you with me.” This threat was posted in an online video by Kayla Denker, also known as “Pinko Scum.” Denker was shown holding a gun.

All of this is of a bigger piece: the left does not want the truth to be told about trans people, and nowhere is this more evident than in the academy. Left-wing professors, which is to say most professors, will censor any voice that challenges the reigning orthodoxy, and this is especially true of gay and transgender issues.

Lisa Littman is a physician and a professor at Brown University. After she published a study of trans children and their parents, in a peer-reviewed journal, that challenged the conventional thinking, she was immediately condemned by academicians and activists. Brown even pulled its promotion of her work. In short, the left tried to silence her.

Littman’s experience is the norm, not the exception to the rule.

Dr. Paul Sullins, a distinguished sociologist, knows this subject well, and he recently noted that studies on gay and trans persons reflect the “monoculture” that is prevalent in higher education. “The American Psychological Association, which manages most of the psychological journals in the U.S., has a committee staffed by ‘LGBT’ activists that actively censor what they see as ‘heterosexist’ bias.”

The left rejects the existence of truth, which explains their advocacy of the most pernicious ideology of our time, namely transgenderism. Their animus against science is palpable, and their commitment to politicizing every subject, including mathematics, makes them a danger to a free society.

Trans people should not be scorned. They should be treated for their maladies. But no amount of compassion for their disorders should come at the expense of telling the truth.

There is no religious organization in the history of the world that has ever taught that there are more than two sexes. However, in the 21st century, there are members of the clergy, and in other religious roles, who disagree: they believe that everyone who came before us in human history, including the teachers of their own religion, got it wrong.

Micah Louwagie is a woman who pretends to be a man and who calls herself “they/them.” She is a pastor of a Lutheran church in Fargo, North Dakota, and she says that the primary victim in the Nashville slaughter was the mass killer, Audrey Hale. Micah compared Hale’s death to the crucifixion of Jesus.

In March, the Episcopal Church issued a Resolution, adopted by the bishops, saying they “decry legislative initiatives and governmental actions targeting trans children and their families.” It would be more accurate to say they oppose legislation designed to protect children from those who seek to affirm transgenderism.

Daniel P. Horan is a Franciscan gay-friendly priest who recently branded the bishops as “evil” because they do not accept the myth of transgenderism.

Over 6,000 nuns recently published an open letter calling on everyone to support Trans Day of Visibility. The heretical nuns condemned the Catholic Church for “oppressing” trans persons, though they did not offer any evidence to support their baseless claim.

Rabbi Mychal Copeland brags that, “At Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, San Francisco’s LGBTQI synagogue, any day is a good day for drag. But this year, with drag under legal attack in some states, we felt it was especially important to hire drag performers for our Purim celebrations.”

Rabbi Elliot Kukla says he is “transgender and nonbinary,” and claims that in the Jewish tradition there are six sexes.

It used to be that those who cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy were called schizophrenic, and were treated in mental facilities. Now they are actively engaged in their churches and synagogues, anxious to inform the rest of us that we are the crazy ones.

March 31 was “Trans Day of Visibility,” a day that was supposed to “raise awareness about transgender people,” while also “drawing attention to the poverty, discrimination, and violence the community faces.”

Regarding the violence, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) said that “predatory cisgender” people are attacking transgender persons. That is a lie.

The dirty little secret is that trans people are the ones victimizing each other. It is not normal people (the so-called cisgender people—those of us who are comfortable with our father-determined sex) who are the ones attacking trans people. They are doing it to each other.

Psycom Pro is a psychiatry resource for clinicians, and last year it concluded that “More than half of transgender individuals experience partner violence or gender identity abuse.”

In 2020, seven experts published a study in the American Journal of Public Health on “Intimate Partner Violence in Transgender Populations; Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Prevalence and Correlates.” They concluded that “Transgender individuals experience a dramatically higher prevalence of IPV [intimate partner violence] victimization compared with cisgender individuals, regardless of sex assigned at birth.”

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reviewed the literature on domestic violence in the LGBT community and found that “43.8% of lesbian women and 61.1% of bisexual women have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime, as opposed to 35% of cisgender women.” It also found that “Transgender individuals may suffer from an even greater burden of intimate partner violence than gay or lesbian individuals.”

The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, reviewed a number of studies on this subject. One of them found that “31.1% of transgender people and 20.4% of cisgender people had ever experienced IPV or dating violence.” It also said that three studies concluded that the lifetime intimate partner sexual violence prevalence among transgender people ranged from “25.0% to 47.0%.”

Even in sympathetic pop culture magazines, such as Portland Monthly, it is acknowledged that “statistically speaking, the most common perpetrators of violence against trans women are domestic partners.”

In addition, virtually every study concludes that trans people suffer from high rates of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and suicide, making it plain that this is a mentally challenged population. How much this contributes to their propensity for violence is not known.

We know one thing for sure: It’s not white, heterosexual Christian men who are roaming the streets looking for trans people to beat up—it is trans people who are committing the lion’s share of the violence. That’s the dirty little secret that the AOC’s on the left don’t want you to know.

Their demonization of normal men is bad enough, but that it is being employed as a cover up—as a way of deflecting the truth about who the violent ones really are—makes it doubly repugnant.

You will recall that last summer we did battle with the Connecticut education establishment over an assistant principal in the Greenwich Public Schools. Jeremy Boland was caught on tape admitting that he does not hire “hardcore Catholics,” and that is because they are “brainwashed.”

We immediately called upon school officials and lawmakers to deal with this issue with the utmost seriousness. An anti-Catholic bigot like Boland—the evidence is conclusive—does not belong on the public payroll in any capacity, much less as someone who hires school teachers and administrators.

Several investigations were launched, and we wrote to every person who was party to the probes. Some of the investigations are over; some are ongoing.

It was recently announced that Boland handed in his letter of resignation, effective June 30.

While we are pleased with this outcome, it is not enough. Will he be able to collect his pension? Will he be subjected to sanctions? Can he take another job in education? Would administrators who were shown to be bigots against other segments of the population be treated so lightly?

On another front, DirecTV has decided to reinstate Newsmax TV.

A dispute over the terms of their licensing agreement led DirecTV to drop Newsmax. At least that is what the carrier said. Newsmax contended that it was its conservative leanings that led to it being dropped.

Bill Donohue knows Chris Ruddy, the founder of Newsmax, and once the news broke on this story, he quickly rushed to his defense. Newsmax provides for diversity by allowing views not aired on most other cable TV channels.

Legions of others also came to Newsmax’s defense, putting pressure on DirecTV to settle this matter. Of the hundreds of VIPs who came to Ruddy’s defense, Donohue was the first to do so.

Both the Cos Cob case and the Newsmax case prove that those who treat our side unfairly can only be held accountable if we push back. There is no guarantee that we will win, but it is a sure bet that we will lose if we do nothing. Doing nothing is not the Catholic League way.

Maryland is historically famous for being home to religious toleration, a commitment born of delivering justice to Roman Catholics in the 17th century. Today it has become their enemy.

In one of the grossest injustices in the modern era, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed into law a bill that created two tiers of justice in cases involving the sexual abuse of minors: one for public entities and one for private entities. This kind of disparate treatment is not likely to pass muster in the courts. We are already in conversation with counsel on this issue.

This is all about money, not justice. How can anyone fairly adjudicate claims made about an alleged offense when the offender is dead and buried? He can, of course, because the claimant is not going after an individual—he is going after an institution.

If this were about getting guilty individuals, then trial lawyers would sue live-in boyfriends; they are the most likely to abuse a minor. But there is nothing but chump change there, so why not stick it to the Catholic Church?

The real topper is this: those who sue private institutions—and we all know which private institution will be targeted—can get awarded as much as $1.5 million, but if the exact same offense were incurred in the public sector, such as in a public school, the maximum amount that can be awarded is $890,000. This amounts to religious profiling, and that is why the courts will have a field day with this issue.

This law was inspired by an attack on the Catholic Church: No other institution, religious or secular, was investigated.
On April 5, Maryland issued the “Attorney General’s Report on Child Sexual Abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.” The report’s stated goal was “to make public for the first time the enormous scope and scale of abuse and concealment perpetrated by the Archdiocese of Baltimore.” Unlike most journalists who have commented on this report, we actually read it.

The 463-page report does not provide the kind of clear-eyed accounting that would be expected. Rather, it buries critical information in “Abuser Narratives” that provide varying degrees of detail on the alleged offenses by the accused.

That did not stop us from doing a deep dive into the report, matching it up with data culled from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Here is what we found.

Who were the alleged offenders?

The report lists 156 individuals accused of molestation dating back to the 1930s. Of that number, the Archdiocese of Baltimore had already published the names of 152 of these individuals. Two were nuns, four were male teachers, five were deacons, one was briefly in the seminary in Maryland before being kicked out, and 144 were priests.

Of the 156 named in the report, 104—two thirds—are dead. Another third, 51, are alive, but to our knowledge none are still in ministry; it is unknown if one is dead or alive.

Who were the victims?

Approximately two-thirds were male; approximately a quarter were female; the rest were both male and female.

When did the abuse occur?

Most of it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

Between the mid-1930s and the mid-1940s, instances of alleged abuse were zero. Between the mid-1940s and the end of the 1950s, there were an average of 20 allegations for each of the three five-year periods.

In the first half of the 1960s, the numbers increased to under 60; they then shot up dramatically to approximately 100 in the late 1960s. In the first half of the 1970s, there were approximately 100 alleged incidents; there were almost 120 in the second half of the decade.

In the 1980s, the number of accusations declined (there were approximately 120 incidents in the decade). In the first half of the 1990s, there were approximately 20 alleged incidents.

Between 1990 and 2019, there were virtually no instances of alleged abuse.

This profile is consistent with Bill Donohue’s own research. In his book, The Truth about Clergy Sexual Abuse: Clarifying the Facts and the Causes, he found that almost all the molesters were homosexuals who preyed on postpubescent boys; they were either dead or thrown out of ministry. Almost all of the abuse took place during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

We have called on Maryland’s Attorney General and state lawmakers to launch an investigation into the sexual abuse of minors in the public schools. When USA Today did a study of every state, awarding a letter grade based on the degree of diligence exercised in dealing with this problem, it gave Maryland an “F.”

Maryland failed in providing adequate background checks; failed in offering transparency; failed in having strong mandatory reporting of teacher misconduct; and failed in sharing misconduct information with other states.

The gig is up. We contacted the Maryland Attorney General and all members of the legislature, asking them to launch a probe of the public schools.