Transgender Day of Visibility is an international event that is held every year on March 31. This year it fell on Easter Sunday.

Left-wing government officials, led by President Biden and his administration, along with left-wing LGBT activists, led by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), called attention to the heroics of transgender persons. They should instead have called attention to their lifestyle, which too often is marked by drugs and violence.

At the end of 2023, HRC listed 32 incidents of transgender persons who died a violent death. It took the occasion to say that “These victims, like all of us, are loving partners, parents, family members, friends and community members. They worked, went to school and attended houses of worship.”

Well, not so fast. We examined each of the 32 cases and found that, while all are tragic, many of the incidents are still open to investigation; there was a lot of random violence. Importantly, there was not one incident that clearly merited the tag “hate crime” (in one instance, the police said it was a possible hate crime).

The fact is that a large portion of the violence was the result of an altercation between the transgender victim and the assailant. Too often the victim was not the kind of model citizen that HRC portrays.

Why was it necessary to get into a confrontation with someone who was innocently “misgendered”? Asking a stranger for sex is not a smart thing to do—it often results in violence. Assaulting a security guard can end in death, as happened in one instance. When an ex-con robs a store and is killed by a security guard, we shouldn’t be shocked. When an ex-con shoots at state troopers, that is really stupid. And so on.

Even HRC admits that in more than a third of these cases (36 %), the killer was a “romantic/sexual partner, friend or family member.” We found that in five of these cases, the killer was another transgender person. Which raises the question: Why are these people so violent?

Just looking at the pictures of these transgender persons who were killed is enough to conclude that they are not just like the guy next door. That obviously doesn’t justify violence. Still, the idyllic portrayal that HRC presents is nonsense.

No innocent person deserves to die a violent death. Unfortunately, in too many cases the transgender persons that HRC mourns were not innocent victims. Their lifestyle is very much in need of a corrective.

Militant secularists would like to erase our religious heritage, but they are clearly in over their heads. Our nation’s Capitol abounds with Judeo-Christian iconography, so much so that it overwhelms attempts to cancel it.

• The dome of the U.S. Capitol was inspired by the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, as well as St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
• The Supreme Court building is modeled after a Roman temple.
• St. Joseph’s church on Capitol Hill was built in 1868.
• The Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress features The Court of Neptune Fountain; it resembles a grotto.
• The west end of the Mall—from the U.S. Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial—has a statue of Lincoln surrounded by comments he made about his respect for God. At the far end of the Mall, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the Capitol building have inscriptions honoring our Judaic heritage.
• Within the Capitol there are statues of Catholic priests and nuns and medallions of Pope Innocent III and Pope Gregory IX.
• On the first floor of the Main Reading Room in the Library of Congress there is a statue of St. Paul.
• In the Library there is a quote from the Book of Proverbs and a reference to God from Shakespeare.
• There is a chapel in the U.S. Capitol. Moreover, prayer meetings for Senators and Congressmen are commonplace throughout.
• Crucifixes abound in the Capitol.
• On the front doors of the Capitol are pictures of Franciscans with rosaries, symbolizing the history of Columbus.
• In the Rotunda, there is a painting of Hernando De Soto and his armies standing on the banks of the river rejoicing, as well as a depiction of priests planting a cross.
• There is also a painting in the dome of the burial scene of De Soto depicting a Mass being celebrated; a barge is carrying his body for burial in the Mississippi. A priest is shown holding a crucifix during burial prayers.
• In front of the Federal District Court, across from the National Gallery of Art, there is a depiction of pilgrims praying before a cross—a splendid recognition of religious liberty.
• On the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th St. N.W. is the Temperance Fountain with the inscription of Temperance, Charity, Hope, and Faith. Nearby is a quote from St. Paul.
• Near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, engraved on the sidewalk, there is the 56 Signers of the Declaration of Independence Memorial with an inscription referencing our “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
• There is a frieze on the Supreme Court Building that depicts Moses.
• The entrance doors to the Supreme Court, made of oak, have the Ten Commandments engraved on each lower portion of each door.
• Inside the Supreme Court, right above where the Justices sit, there is a display of Moses and the Ten Commandments.

These are just some of the tributes to our Judeo-Christian heritage found in Washington, D.C. Noticeably absent are tributes to the contributions made by secularists. Small wonder.

P.S. To read more about this issue, see One Nation Under God: Religious Symbols, Quotes, and Images in Our Nation’s Capitol, by Fr. Eugene F. Hemrick.

A new poll on LGBT rights was published in March by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), a left-wing outfit with a reputation for crafting politically skewed surveys. Its most prominent researcher, sociologist Robert P. Jones, is well known for demonizing so-called Christian nationalists.

PRRI recently released its 2023 American Values Atlas report, “Views On LGBTQ Rights In All 50 States.” It offers more proof that the aforementioned flaws are extant. As a sociologist and a Catholic leader, Bill Donohue has great interest in this subject.

First a word about LGBT people (there is no need to add a “Q”—it stands for Queers and is therefore a redundancy).

The typical LGBT person is a young Democrat with no religious affiliation. This makes perfect sense.

Transgenderism, the ideology that falsely holds that the sexes are interchangeable, is a culturally induced phenomenon that is more attractive to young people than older Americans. Democrats are mostly liberals, and as such they have an expansive view of sexuality. Secular-minded persons reject nature, and nature’s God, and are therefore easy bait for transgender influencers.

To put it differently, the older a person is, the less likely he is to buy into this mad idea. Republicans tend to be conservatives and are therefore more immune to trendy fashions unhinged from reality. Religious Americans appreciate nature, and nature’s God, and are thus inhospitable to militant secular ideas.

There are two aspects of the survey that deserve a riposte.

One of the questions asked respondents was whether they supported or opposed “allowing a small business owner in your state to refuse to provide products or services to gay or lesbian people if doing so would violate their religious beliefs.”

This is a dishonest question. In fact, it is a red herring designed to make religious persons look intolerable.

It is dishonest because PRRI knows that this issue, which was broached in two similar Colorado cases that wound up in the Supreme Court, had nothing do to with denying homosexuals products or services because of their sexual orientation. It had to do with the religious rights of Christians being violated for having to affirm conduct they could not in good conscience do.

Neither Jack Phillips nor Lorie Smith ever denied serving a customer who was gay or lesbian. Phillips sold them cakes and Smith serviced their websites. But when Phillips was asked to personally inscribe a wedding cake for two men, he refused. Smith issued a preemptive strike by publicly stating that she would not provide web services celebrating gay weddings. The high court agreed with them, noting the obvious religious liberty issues involved.

PRRI, following Jones’ obsession with Christian nationalism, claims that those who believe that America was founded as a Christian nation and should return to its moorings are a threat to democracy.

If someone were to say that America was founded as a secular nation and should become even more secular, would it be fair to say that this person is a threat to democracy? Of course not. One may disagree, but to assert that we are on the verge of a despotic secular regime would be as irresponsible as saying that Christian nationalists are about to establish a theocracy.

PRRI is not simply reporting survey results—it is setting the political table for liberals.

For example, Politico, a mostly responsible liberal media outlet, seems to go off the rails when it comes to Christian nationalism. Last month it maintained that if Trump wins in November, his allies are ready to infuse Christian nationalism in his second administration. It claimed to have the evidence to buttress its position, yet it conceded that “The documents obtained by Politico do not outline specific Christian nationalist policies.” That’s because there are none.

Heidi Przybyla wrote a piece for Politico last month that set off the alarms. The issue was the conviction, shared by millions of Americans, and encoded in the Declaration of Independence, that our rights come from God, not from government (that was what Stalin, Hitler and Mao believed). This simple observation was enough to send her into orbit. Now it would have come as a shocker to Jefferson, who was not exactly a religious guy, that he was a Christian nationalist.

PRRI knows what it is doing. None of what they did was a mistake. Which is why they are not to be trusted.

Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, for a free society to have a vibrant role for religion? The Founders, not all of whom were practicing Christians, were unanimous in their conviction: the public role of religion is indispensable to the crafting of a free society. The American people in 2024 seem to agree.

In a recent survey by Pew Research Center, 80 percent of Americans say that religion’s role in American life is shrinking, and most conclude that it is not a good thing. This is significant given that this is the highest percentage ever recorded in a Pew survey on this issue. It was also found that 57 percent of Americans express a positive view of religion’s influence in American life.

The survey did not ask why it is not a good thing for religion’s role to recede, but it is likely that it has something to do with the fact that the inculcation of religious values has a stabilizing effect on individuals, and hence on society. Also, character building, which is essential to citizenship, is facilitated by religion. Unfortunately, American society has become more unstable and character building has become more difficult.

Another bad sign: the faithful are in a precarious state. Almost half, 48 percent, say there’s “a great deal” of or “some” conflict between their religious beliefs and mainstream American culture (up from 42 percent in 2020). In fact, 3-in-10 (29 percent) now think of themselves as religious minorities. This is what we would expect from an increasingly secular society—religious Americans are in an uneasy spot.

The public looks to the president of the United States to defend the faithful. Indeed, 64 percent say it is important for the president to stand up for religious Americans. Interestingly, most don’t believe that either Trump or Biden is very religious: the figures are 13 percent and 4 percent, respectively. This is striking given that Biden has gone out of his way to hawk his Catholic credentials.

While Americans are concerned about the declining effect of religion on society, they are wary about extremists, and not just religious extremists. They do not support those who are too aggressive in pushing either a religious or a secular agenda. This is prudent: extremists are not a good role model.

Regarding this issue, it is interesting to note that secularists—atheists, agnostics and the religiously unaffiliated—are more likely to say that conservative Christians have gone too far with their agenda (72 percent) than Christians are to say that liberals who are not religious have gone too far with their agenda (63 percent). This helps to explain why the faithful believe there is a tension between their beliefs and the mainstream American culture. In short, it seems likely that they are feeling the pinch of militant secularists.

Secularists have made a lot of hay lately over the threat of so-called Christian nationalists. But if these people were really the threat that secularists say they are, the majority of Americans wouldn’t say they have never heard or read about Christian nationalism. So much for this bogeyman. It would be more accurate to say that it is not those being charged as extremists who are the problem; it is those making the charge.

The survey also found that while most Americans don’t want Christianity to be the official religion, a plurality (44 percent) of those who think this way nonetheless believe the federal government should promote Christian moral values. There is nothing inconsistent with this view. In fact, it is identical to the beliefs of the Founders: they did not want an established church, but they also maintained that the nation would benefit by advancing Christian-inspired values.

It would be instructive to learn what Americans consider secular values to be and why they are not supportive of them. The findings would no doubt prove to be enlightening, both for the faithful and for secularists.

Christopher Durang died on April 2nd. In its obituary on the homosexual anti-Catholic playwright, the New York Times predictably treated him with admiration, saying he had an “impish wit.”

The most anti-Catholic, and celebrated, play that Durang ever wrote was “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You.” The Times obit branded it “an absurdist lacerating one-act” play. It said not a word about its vicious portrayal of Catholicism.

When the play was first performed in New York City, many prominent non-Catholics labeled it anti-Catholic, including the Anti-Defamation League and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

Here is what we previously said about the play.

“The play features a malicious nun who is confronted by four of her former students. All of them are obviously dysfunctional, a condition directly traceable to their Catholic upbringing. The play not only manages to mock virtually every Catholic teaching, it goes after Jesus with a vengeance—from the Nativity to the Crucifixion; the Virgin Mary is similarly disparaged. In the end, the nun shoots and kills two of her ex-students.”

The New York Times knows all about the anti-Catholicism that marks “Sister Mary Ignatius,” but it is not offended.