Catholic League president Bill Donohue goes after the Washington Post and the New York Times for yellow journalism:
On November 24, John Kelly of the Washington Post distorted what I said last year about the American Humanist Association, and today Ian Urbina of the New York Times compounds the problem by plagiarizing from Kelly.
Kelly wrote a piece about the American Humanist Association’s new holiday ad promoting atheism. In referencing a previous campaign, he said it received “a bunch of publicity.” Then he wrote the following: “The head of the Catholic League lumped secular humanists in with such figures as Jeffrey Dahmer and Hitler.”
Here is what Urbina wrote today about the same subject: “The head of the Catholic League linked secular humanists to figures like Hitler and the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.”
On November 12 last year, I debated Jesse Galef of the American Humanist Association on the Fox News Network. After Galef spoke, host Heather Nauret said the following: “All right. You know, Bill, they have their First Amendment rights. They’ve got to say what they want.” Here is my reply: “Right. That’s right. They shouldn’t be profoundly ignorant, though. Sociology 101 says that morality has always been grounded in religion. They are trying to say, ‘No, it is grounded in individuals.’ Well, Jeffrey Dahmer had a conscience, too, Heather. And you know what? He destroyed his victims and then ate them. We saw what happened with militant secularism in the 20th century. Over 150 million dead because of this man’s philosophy—Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao and Stalin.”
To say, as Kelly and Urbina did, that I made my comment about the American Humanist Association’s silly campaign—and not the philosophy of militant secularism—is a gross distortion. And by the way, can’t they do their own research at the Times?
