Bill Donohue is mad again

You knew this would set ol’ Bill’s non-existent hair on fire: the Los Angeles Dodgers invited a drag group, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, to a baseball game, and even apologized for a previous disinvitation. Cue a Catholic League tirade.

In a statement released to the press, the Dodgers said they had “much thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities, honest conversations within the Los Angeles Dodgers organization and generous discussions with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.” On May 22, the “Sisters” met with Kasten and LGBTQ organizations, as well as local government officials.

There was no indication that Catholic leaders, clergy or lay, were invited to participate in these “honest conversations.” Only one side was listened to—the side that sponsors hate speech. The fact that gay and trans leaders agree with the vulgar anti-Catholic rhetoric and behavior of the “Sisters” means they now have no moral leg to stand on when asking for an end to bigotry against them.

Knowing full well how the ruling class in this country can no longer be trusted, I told my staff yesterday that it wouldn’t surprise me if MLB and the Dodgers reversed course. To that end, I personally went through our files on the “Sisters” and prepared a report on them.

Cool. So now the Catholic League claims that their bigotry is warranted, because the Catholic church was not invited to a conversation between a baseball team and a LGBTQ advocacy group. Why would anyone expect Catholic leaders to be invited to everything?

Two things intrigued me, though: one is that he told his “staff” something. He has a staff? What is it, one part-time secretary and the building custodian? He’s another of those people with a history of amplifying his constituency with a fax machine and a bullhorn, like Moms for Liberty, Libs of Tik-Tok, and Mel and Norma Gabler.

But the second thing…Bill has a dossier on the the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence? Of course he does. And it makes me like them even more.

SISTERS OF PERPETUAL INDULGENCE
Bill Donohue

1979: This was the beginning of the Sisters. In San Francisco’s Castro
District three men dressed in traditional nun’s habit walked the streets.
One of them carried a machine gun. Then they went to a nude beach. It
was then that they adopted the name the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
1982: A year after AIDS was discovered, the Sisters were upset, but they
did not complain about the lethal sex practices that gave rise to AIDS;
rather, they complained about the “fear and prejudice” that it was
engendering. “Sr. Florence Nightmare” and “Sr. Roz Erection”
addressed the issue.
1987: The Sisters were granted a tax-exempt status after trashing Pope
John Paul II’s visit to San Francisco. The Sisters held an “exorcism” and
a “Condom Savior Mass” in Union Square. At the event, they featured
“the Latex Host” and referred to Jesus as “the Condom Savior.” They
also burned the Pope in effigy.
1987: They staged a “Hunky Jesus” contest, something they do every
year on Easter Sunday.
1989: On their tenth anniversary, they held many events, including one
with “Sr. Psychedelia’s” rise from the dead, and “Pope Dementia’s
Altered Boys.” They wore “only thongs and smiles.”
1989: At the “Condom Savior Mass,” the Sisters read from a text of the
“Condom Savior Consecration.” It said, “The Latex Host is the flesh for
the life of the world. Just as the Creator who has life sent us, we have life
because of the Condom Savior. Those who feed on this latex will have
life because of it. This is the bread that comes down from Heaven, and,
unlike those who eat not and therefore die, those who feed on this bread
shall live forever!”
1990: A staff writer for the Miami Herald said the Sisters were noted for
“carrying a 20-foot replica of a penis” at its street events.
1992: At a rally in Sacramento at the Capital Christian Center, the Sisters
held signs of the Cross with a pink inverted triangle in the place of Jesus;
the inscription read, “Stop Crucifying Queers.”
1992: “On Parade,” a publication of the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay
Freedom Day Parade and Celebration Committee, published an article by
“Sister Dana Van Iquity” which said the motto of the Sisters is “Encroach
not on my crotch!” and “Leave my loins alone.” He described the day’s
events, including “Dykes on Bikes” and “Dykes with Tikes on Trikes.”
1993: At another rally at the Capital Christian Center, protesters held a
sign, “Queer Alert: Fighting for Freedom From Religion.”
1993: Twelve years after AIDS hit, they demonstrated in Washington,
“reeling in anger and despair” over five of their members who died of the
sexually transmitted disease.
1993: The Sisters were banned from the March on Washington’s stage
for being “too controversial and not the appropriate image” for C-Span
and “the movement.”
1993: The Sisters are seen as so offensive that they incur the wrath of
Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, the authors of a landmark book on
gays, After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of
Gays in the 90s. They say of the Sisters, “‘Fringe’ gay groups ought to
have the tact to withdraw voluntarily from public appearance at gay
parades, marches, and rallies, but they don’t care whether they fatally
compromise the rest of us.”
1994: They served “holy communion wafers and tequila” to the
congregation at a mock Mass.
1999: On the cover of the April 1, 1999 edition of the San Francisco Bay
Times there was a full-page picture of a Sister superimposed on a crosslike photo with his hands stretched out, imitating Jesus on the Cross.
2000: In San Francisco, they held a Good Friday event where they
sponsored a fetish fashion show that provided “a chance to get spanked
and free “Sticky Buns.” Dr. Carol Queen held her “Good Vibrations
Dildo Fashion Show.”
2001: I petitioned the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Sisters,
citing multiple examples of “vulgar, obscene and bigoted material against
the Catholic Church and its members.”
2002: They celebrated Easter with an “Indulgence in the Park” event that
featured a “clown-drag-nun” fundraiser, along with the annual “Hunky
Jesus” contest.
2004: They spent the entire month of December bashing Christmas in
Los Angeles.
2008: San Diego House of the Sisters—The Asylum of the Tortured
Heart, which was founded in 2005, held a “Midnight Confessional
Contest” that gave prizes to those with the “hottest confessions.” It was
held in a gay bar.
2009: They held a block party in San Francisco where some of the men
danced naked in the street.
2010: At the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts winter gala, the Sisters
were asked to perform six musical acts in a “Nunway Noir” drag fashion
show where attendees could “bask in the bloody gore of occult film
screenings.”
2011: In a Daily Beast column, gay writer Andrew Sullivan called the
Sisters’ “Hunky Jesus” event a form of “blasphemy.” He was so angry at
them that he said, “This makes me feel like Bill Donohue.”
2018: The Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon hosted “Drag
Queen Storytime with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” despite their
history of anti-Catholicism. The event explicitly targeted kids 2-6.
2022: The Sisters gave an award for featuring Lil Hot Mess, “a man who
dresses as a woman for children and one of the leading activists behind
Drag Queen Story Hour.”
2023: A Sister won the “Free Choice Mary” pro-abortion award. The
man, dressed with a nun’s veil, wearing a bra and panties, was featured
holding a baby doll with a sign, “I Had A Choice.”

I gotta appreciate that not only did they raise the ire of Bill Donohue, but they outraged Andrew Sullivan.

I’m also amused that their great crime in 2004 was spending the entire month of December bashing Christmas in Los Angeles.

I like it!

Bill Donohue, ghoul

Oh god. Bill Donohue weighs in on Anthony Bourdain’s suicide.

If Anthony Bourdain had been a religious man, would he have killed himself? Probably not. The celebrity chef was found dead today in his hotel room in Strasbourg, France.

…

As I have recounted in my book, The Catholic Advantage: How Health, Happiness, and Heaven Await the Faithful, there is an inverse relationship between religiosity and suicide: those who are regular churchgoers have a much lower rate of suicide than atheists like Bourdain.

Nice of him to use the opportunity of the man’s death to plug his book.

You know, though, I think he’s sort of right: if you’re told over and over again from childhood on that suicide, in addition to ending your life and bringing grief to loved ones, will only lead to even greater misery as you’re tortured for eternity, I can see where it might dissuade some potential suicides. So let’s take it as a given that you can reduce the suicide rate by being indoctrinated in the Catholic faith (there’s data!) with the side effect that you are increasing fear and guilt to achieve your end. Would it be worth it?

If you could save Bourdain by erasing part of his character, do you think he would have chosen it? He had the opportunity, after all — his father was Catholic.

Would reducing the suicide rate be worthwhile if, instead, we increased the rate of child rape?

I’ll just leave this here.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has reached a $210 million settlement agreement with 450 victims of clergy sexual abuse as part of a bankruptcy reorganization, officials announced Thursday.

At $210,290,724, it is estimated to be the second-largest payout by the Catholic church in the U.S., according to the Associated Press. It comes after nearly four years of bankruptcy proceedings and negotiations.

Before you ask…

The largest clergy abuse related settlement to date was reached in 2007 by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which paid 508 victims $660 million.

That’s almost a thousand children in just two cases, raped with the collusion of the Catholic church. Is that a fair price to pay? For anything?

We haven’t heard from Bill Donohue for a while

I wonder what he is up to…ah. He’s defending Trump’s savage budget cuts for the arts, because art isn’t reverent enough.

Justice demands that these agencies should be eliminated: Taxpayers should not be forced to pay for assaults on their religion. Christians constitute roughly 75 percent of the population; Catholics are approximately 25 percent of the total. In the name of “art,” these Americans are expected to pay for irreverent exhibits, but depictions that are reverential—such as a nativity scene outside City Hall—are denied a dime. It’s time we stopped giving the arts a privileged position and cut their funding. The same is true for publicly funded radio and TV programming that has a history of insulting the majority of Americans.

I don’t think he understands art. Bye, Bill, sink back into obscurity, ‘k?

Bill Donohue is being awful again

“Again?” you ask. “Isn’t he always awful?” Yes. It’s a permanent state for him.

He’s crowing over the defeat of a bill by the NY legislature that would have extended the statute of limitations on child rape crimes, and as we all know, and as Bill is certainly aware, “End Child Abuse” is code for “Destroy The Catholic Church”.

As The New York Daily News reports, Donohue sent out an email to supporters after the defeat of the Child Victims Act, an act that he said was designed “to rape the Catholic Church.” The bill would have extended the timeframe that victims can bring forward cases by five years and would have opened up a six-month period for victims to revive older cases.

“The bill was sold as justice for the victims of sexual abuse, when, in fact, it was a sham,” Donohue wrote in an email obtained by The New York Daily News. “[It was] a vindictive bill pushed by lawyers and activists out to rape the Catholic Church.”

Oh, no. Really? You just called the prosecution of child rape an act of rape? It’s kind of clear that Donohue has no understanding of what constitutes a violent sexual crime.

The FFRF also has a few things to say.

But the Church’s lobbying and Donohue’s obscene victory dance are admissions of guilt. They are conceding that this problem is far bigger than we know and that, though the new pope talks quite a lot about fixing the problem, the church has no intention of actually fixing it. After more than three years as pope, Francis has done nothing to bring genuine justice to the victims or the rapists to account. Nothing but talk.

Let’s not forget that Bill Donohue is just the easily visible painful boil on the face of a church that continues to protect child rapists.

Grand Inquisitor Bill Donohue leaps into action!

This is what Catholics need: a sense of justice, and a desire to vigorously pursue abuse within the church, rather than covering it up. Transparency and a willingness to change! Investigation and ending the abuse! So in the St Paul diocese there in my backyard, we’ve got a priest, Archbishop John Nienstedt, who has been charged with touching a choir boy inappropriately, and I would expect the church to take the issue seriously and bring in secular investigators to either clear his name or get a dangerous man out of their church. The Catholic League is willing to help and … OH BILL DONOHUE NO!

“Somebody knows who this character is who is making these accusations — I can’t wait to get to the bottom of this,” said Catholic League President Bill Donahue. “Nienstedt has been the subject of a non-stop crusade orchestrated by enemies of the Catholic Church. The time has come when people need to fight back.”

Donohue’s solution to the problem of pedophilia in his beloved church is … to hunt down and expose the names of children who dare to accuse priests. He also accuses the St Paul police of anti-Catholic bias.

Not that the Catholic church needs his help. They’ve got their response down to a ritual.

St. Paul Police has yet to comment. However, St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith accused the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis Tuesday of not fully cooperating with investigations into alleged sex abuse by priests. He said that church officials declined to make clergy available to investigators.

Fox News, Gretchen Carlson, Bill Donohue

There’s nothing in that title to entice you, is there? It was a panel on religion (ugh), and at least Dave Silverman was there to represent the rational side. And right out of the gate, Bill Donohue insults Silverman’s intelligence.

The whole thing was weighted against him, and it was clearly a setup, but I have to give Silverman props for staying cool and bringing the fight right into the heart of hostile territory.

Bill Donohue sticks his foot in his mouth again

He’s such a charming fellow. A rabbi in New York wrote an op-ed in which he defended the right of women to make their own choices about reproduction, and in reply, Donohue called him a “man full of hate” and issued a veiled threat.

Donohue responded with a note to Waskow that launched an email exchange that ended with a warning, forwarded to BuzzFeed by a source close to the rabbi, that "Jews had better not make enemies of their Catholic friends since they have so few of them" (Donohue writes that this is a saying of Ed Koch, the former mayor of New York).

Those Jews. Everyone hates ’em, so they better not cross the few Catholics who are willing to let them live, I guess.

But wait, there’s more!

Donohue also includes a postscript saying, "I do not have a long nose."

Donahue also raised a recent child abuse scandal in Orthodox Jewish communities.

“You need to do something about this epidemic right now,” he told Waskow, who is not Orthodox, suggesting that Jews follow the Catholic Church’s reforms in dealing with clerical abuse.

Wait, what? The Catholic church is now the model in how to handle priestly child-rapers? Please, no, not that…anything but that.

At least Bill Donohue has been poked savagely

The divorced Bill Donohue is in full-blown apoplexy over Obama’s tepid support for gay marriage.

I want the law to discriminate against straight people who live together — I used to call it shacking up, now it’s called cohabitation — I want the law to discriminate against all alternative lifestyles, against gays and unions.

Donohue’s argument against gay marriage is that it would open the door to all kinds of abominations…like brother and sister marriages, for which he cites a case in the courts. He asks the other guest on the show if he approves of that.

You know, if I were asked that question, I’d say…yeah, it ought not to be against the law. My personal squeamishness about how two people relate to one another ought not to be legally enforced; I’m sure there are people who consider what my partner and I do in the bedroom to be utterly disgusting, and I don’t think anyone should have to defend their private, consensual preferences to a team of strangers. I think prospective sibling marriages ought to be confronted with extensive genetic counseling, at the very least, and I might be willing to consider limiting the reproductive rights of such a relationship (because it would bring a third person into it, who does not deserve the potential genetic afflictions that can result from inbreeding) as reasonable, but otherwise…it’s not my place to police what other people do.

That answer would probably turn Donohue purple.

I have a song for you, Bill. Perhaps it will soothe your furrowed brow and bring your blood pressure down a few points.

Bill Donohue finds the proper bait for trolling

Bill Donohue has noticed that there are a lot of atheists running around and getting all up in his face, so the Catholic League is launching a counter-insurgency program, an Adopt An Atheist campaign, which I find kind of sweet and stupid.

Today we are launching our “Adopt An Atheist” campaign, the predicate of which is, “We want atheists to realize that there may be Christians in their community, even if those Christians don’t even know they are Christian.”

Uh, Bill…we know there are Christians in our communities. They’re all over the place, and they’re always rather loud about it. This is a campaign designed to ape what American Atheists do, and it puts Bill Donohue in an unfortunately defensive situation, in which he’s basically reacting to Dave Silverman by doing what Dave Silverman does…and it’s not going to work for him at all.

Here’s what our campaign entails. We are asking everyone to contact the American Atheist affiliate in his area [click here], letting them know of your interest in “adopting” one of them. All it takes is an e-mail. Let them know of your sincere interest in working with them to uncover their inner self. They may be resistant at first, but eventually they may come to understand that they were Christian all along.

If we hurry, these closeted Christians can celebrate Christmas like the rest of us. As an added bonus, they will no longer be looked upon as people who “believe in nothing, stand for nothing and are good for nothing.”

When atheists heard about this deal, they scrambled to beg to be “adopted”. He’s already hooked Cuttlefish, Greg, and JT, and heck, sign me up, too. Why? Because the comedic opportunities are freaking ripe. Donohue’s hooks are improperly baited — all they’re going to snag are happy atheists who’d love to see a fanatical Catholic willingly get in range for a mix of rational discussion, critical evaluation of Christian absurdities, and outright mockery.

Bill Donohue doesn’t seem to realize that he and Dave Silverman are in highly asymmetric situations (which doesn’t surprise me — Donohue is not a particularly insightful fellow). The Catholic church’s problem is not that people are unaware of them; as the largest single Christian denomination, Catholicism has name brand recognition. Their problem is that people know all about the Catholic church, and they run away screaming from it.

Its fusty medievalisms are the stuff of gothic horror novels and Dungeons & Dragons games, not contemporary life. Its most notable claim to fame recently has been raping children, and I think anyone can tell you, getting your brand name associated with child abuse, enslaving women, and providing a cushy old folks home for unrepentant pedophiles is not good marketing.

And along those lines, proposing to “adopt” people, something we usually associate with children…that’s not a good reminder to throw out there, Bill. When I first heard of this misbegotten plan to have a Catholic ‘adopt’ people like me, it wasn’t that they’d teach me to appreciate the true story of Christmas, but that my virginal anus was under threat.

Besides, I already celebrate Christmas the right way: with cephalopods on a fake tree, lefse and krumkake, kissing a pretty girl, and lounging about indolently all day long. We’ve successfully stolen the meaning of “holiday” away from the believers: instead of a day of sacred obligations, it’s now a day of freedom from obligations of all sorts — it’s a day off, when we can just relax and do what makes us and others happy.

And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Bill Donohue and I agree on something?

I know, it’s a sign of the coming apocalypse…but Bill Donohue of the Catholic League opposes faith-based federal programs, just like I do! Well, not quite like I do. It turns out he has a different reason than I do.

When Sen. Obama was running for president three years ago, he pledged support for faith-based programs provided they were emptied of any faith component: he opposed the right of faith-based programs to maintain their integrity by hiring only people of their faith.

…

When faith is gutted from faith-based programs–when Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox Jews can’t hire their own–we are left with a carcass. It would be better to save the money (Obama’s faith-based program received $140 million in stimulus money last year) than to pretend that we are helping religious social agencies. The goal, obviously, is to convert these religious entities into full-blown secular organizations. It would be better not to let them hijack these programs in the name of assisting them, thus it makes sense to shut them down.

Oh. He opposes them because Obama doesn’t think it’s right to use federal money to promote bigotry, while Cranky Bill thinks that bigotry is the precious guts of his faith.

I oppose them because faith doesn’t work.

I guess we won’t be high-fiving each other if ever we meet, then.