This is the article that appeared in the April 2024 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
William A. Donohue
In my years dealing with the media, government officials, educators, activists, business people, lawyers, artists, and others, I have met my share of bigoted persons. This is not surprising given the nature of my job. Unfortunately, many of these people are also dishonest. When bigotry and dishonesty are mixed together, it’s a bad combo. Regrettably, this is commonplace.
This issue of Catalyst has its fair share of examples. I have added a few more current ones that may be of interest to our readers.
When a crowd of disrespectful LGBT activists turned out for a funeral service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in February, some in the media gave a totally dishonest account. The New York Daily News, which is hanging on by a thread, took the side of the disruptors saying that the Catholic Church “has long condemned queer and transgender people.”
As I pointed out, this is simply wrong. The Church does not condemn any demographic group. It condemns sinful behavior. That’s not a small difference.
Time.com falsely argued that the Church “has isolated many queer folks from its doors.” But the Church doesn’t isolate anyone. If some of these people chose to do so—because the Church condemns homosexual behavior (so do most world religions)—that is their choice. So be it.
In the run-up to the traditional St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Staten Island, the biggest media outlet in the area, Advance/SILive.com, lobbied to have an alternative parade because the traditional one did not allow gay groups to march under their own banner.
Since when is it the business of the media to hijack an ethnic or religious event, turning it into something that misrepresents its purpose? Just as obnoxious was the dishonest reporting. Gays have always marched in these parades—just like pro-life Catholics—but in neither case should they be allowed to do so under their own banner. The parade is not about gay rights or the rights of the unborn—it’s about St. Patrick.
“60 Minutes” recently aired a segment on Moms for Liberty, the women’s group that believes children should be treated as children and not be subjected to sexual engineering.
The segment was dishonest—the tape was cut and spliced—making it appear as though these women were book banners. Nonsense. They simply think that books that are highly sexual, if not pornographic, should not be made available to kids. But the show did not air that part of the taping.
When CBS asked me to comment on the Staten Island Patrick’s Day Parade it misspelled a word that I wrote in my email response, and attributed the misspelling to me! Similarly, when the Baltimore Sun insinuated that I misstated data regarding a plan to expand a probe of Catholic dioceses in Maryland and Delaware—I did not—it was nauseating to read that these “fact checkers” couldn’t even spell my name correctly.
Some government officials are guilty of bigotry and dishonesty. The Maryland Attorney General is obsessed with misconduct in the Catholic Church—his earlier investigation got him nowhere (the bad priests are long dead or out of ministry)—yet he has had absolutely nothing to say about the horrible sexual abuse of minors taking place right now in the state’s public schools.
We have to start calling those who work against women’s sports for what they are—misogynists. That applies to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul. She wants boys and men to compete against girls and women in sports, and to use the same locker rooms and shower facilities. Yet she has the nerve to say that those who disagree with her are exploiting “vulnerable children.”
On the night of his State of the Union speech, President Biden trotted out a woman from Dallas who left Texas to have an abortion. He referred to her baby as a “fetus” (he refused to call her baby a baby) telling everyone that she had to abort her child because her doctor said her own life was at risk. Not so. We know from court records that her doctor did not assert that the woman had a “life-threatening physical condition.”
To make matters worse, why didn’t Biden mention that the baby was diagnosed with a disability? Why was it important that he, and his wife, chose this particular woman to showcase that evening? Babies with disabilities deserve the same rights as every other baby.
Disney says it is committed to inclusionary policies, yet in its hiring decisions it continues to give preference to groups that are already overrepresented, e.g., LGBT persons, while never addressing those who are seriously underrepresented, such as Catholics.
On pp. 8-9, Fr. Paul Sullins has a splendid piece on how dishonest scholarship is these days. Anyone who threatens the conventional wisdom on college campuses, as espoused by left-wing professors, is subject to banishment, or worse.
To be sure, there are good men and women who work in all of these fields, but too often the bigots and the liars rule the roost. They must be outed, resisted and defeated.
