Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at Liberty University:
On May 11, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at Liberty University’s Commencement, offering a stirring address. “The truth is,” he said, “we live in a time when the freedom of religion is under assault.” He cited a report detailing how Christians are being persecuted more than any other religion today. Indeed, the very next day, six people, including a priest, were killed during a Sunday Mass by Islamists in Burkina Faso, a northwestern African nation; the church was burnt to the ground.
Pence also talked about attacks on religion in the United States. He said that “we live in a time when it’s become acceptable and even fashionable to ridicule and even discriminate against people of faith.” He cited as an example the reaction on the part of “the media and the secular Left” to his wife’s teaching at a Christian elementary school earlier this year; she was vilified for doing so.
The vice president was right to say that “these attacks are un-American.” He was also right to say that “Some of the loudest voices for tolerance today have little tolerance for traditional Christian beliefs.” He didn’t hold back in his admonition to the graduating class. He warned that “you’re going to be asked not just to tolerate things that violate your faith; you’re going to be asked to endorse them. You’re going to be asked to bow down to the idols of the popular culture.”
If anyone wants proof that Pence is right, just read about the attacks on religious freedom coming from left-wing gay rights activists. They never stop. Their goal is not tolerance—they want affirmation, and they want to eviscerate the rights of those with whom they disagree.
Pence does not exaggerate. Just last week the Catholic League called upon state lawmakers in Pennsylvania to initiate a vote of censure against Brian Sims, an LGBT activist and member of the PA House of Representatives. He recently badgered, and placed in danger, an elderly Catholic woman in a totally unprovoked attack. Her crime? She was praying the rosary outside a Planned Parenthood clinic. Sims previously victimized three Catholic teenage girls for the same “offense.”
What Sims did was fascistic, but the media did not call him out for this the way they should have.
Already, Pence is being hammered by Charles Pierce, a left-wing secularist who hates Christianity. In an article posted on the website of Esquire, he calls Pence a “snowflake and drama queen.” Is that what he would call the woman and the girls who were victimized by Sims? That’s what Pence was getting at—serious stuff—not some stupid joke.
The Catholic League’s website provides all the evidence one needs to demonstrate the veracity of Pence’s remarks. Congratulations to Vice President Mike Pence for telling the truth about the unhealthy state of religious liberty and the positive steps that the Trump administration is taking to remedy this situation.
