On July 1, the National Organization for Women (NOW) announced that Kim Gandy was elected the new president of the organization. We told the press that this was not an auspicious moment for Catholics. But before doing so, we demonstrated how absurd it was for anyone to claim that Gandy speaks for women.
NOW claims to represent 145 million women in the United States yet has only 500,000 members. Even more telling, less than 1,000 members showed up to vote for Gandy as their new president. In short, she has no mandate to speak for women.
We then detailed why Gandy’s election spelled trouble for Catholics. In 1987, she supported NOW’s protest of Pope John Paul II’s visit to the U.S. In 1992, she attacked New York Archbishop John Cardinal O’Connor for recommending that the Knights of Columbus build a “tomb of the unborn child” in Catholic cemeteries across the nation. Though it was none of her business, Gandy labeled the Cardinal’s plan “outrageous.” In 1996, when the Knights built temporary memorials to the unborn on the Mall in Washington, Gandy branded it “offensive.”
In 1993 and 1994, she supported efforts that would coerce the Catholic Church into funding abortions. Her enthusiasm for abortion rights is so strong that she even favors silencing the free speech rights of abortion protesters: in 1993, she advocated using the draconian RICO law to gag pro-lifers.
Regarding women, Gandy was livid at the Dulles Chapter of NOW for supporting Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against President Clinton. Her curious brand of feminism also allows her to oppose the ban on prostitution: “How come I can rent my uterus,” she said in 1987, “but not my vagina? They’re only an inch apart.” Gandy also opposes Internet filtering software to block pornography from children and considers Promise Keepers to be a “political army.”
William Donohue concluded his remarks to the media saying, “I can’t wait to ask her whether she supports NOW’s S/M Policy Reform Project. But I will do so at a distance.”
