Catholic League

Apparently, the right-wing talking point of the day is that the lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 is really an attempt to put Christianity on trial.

So says Maggie Gallagher:

What do Olson and Boies think they are doing? Watching accounts of this trial unfold this week I had a big “aha” moment. It’s now clear: Ted and David think they are conducting the Scopes trial!

When this trial began I told you: gay marriage activists were putting 7 million Californians on trial. (Ed Whelan over at National Review has a brilliant series “Judge Walker’s Witch Hunt“ . . . explaining how intellectually absurd it is to conduct a “trial” into the subjective motivations of 7 million voters, constitutionally speaking.). But this week it got worse: They are clearly putting Christianity itself on trial. Why else have an expert read statements of Catholic and Southern Baptist doctrines into the record?

And why put a Stanford Prof. named Gary Segura on the stand to testify “”religion is the chief obstacle for gays’ and lesbians’ political progress.”

Could the zero-sum nature of the game be any clear? Rights for gays and lesbians, in their minds, depends on invalidating the voting rights of religious people when it comes to gay marriage, because their votes are influenced by their religion–i.e. bigotry.

Here’s their brilliant legal strategy: Ted and David want the Supreme Court to rule that Catholicism and Southern Baptism and related Christian denominations are bigotry.

So does Bill Donohue:

Yesterday, the judge allowed Boies and Olsen to submit e-mails they obtained between the director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the bishops. Allowing such communication in a trial is unusual enough, but the purpose was even more invidious: to show that Catholics played a major role in passing Proposition 8. The lawyers did the same thing to Mormons, offering more e-mail “proof” of their involvement.

...

Their goal is not to contest the First Amendment rights of Catholics and others—their goal is to put religion on trial. What they are saying is that religious-based reasons for rejecting gay marriage are irrational, and thus do not meet the test of promoting a legitimate state interest. That is why they have trotted out professors like Gary Segura of Stanford and George Chauncey of Yale to testify to the irrationality of the pro-Proposition 8 side. Chauncey was even given the opportunity to read from a Vatican document that rejects homosexual marriage.

Society cannot exist without families; families cannot exist without reproduction; reproduction cannot exist without a sexual union between a man and a woman; and every society in the history of the world has created an institution called marriage to provide for this end. In short, it is nothing but irrational to challenge such a timeless verity. No matter, what is going on in the courtroom smacks of an animus against religion.

Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the Liberty Counsel freaking out over this ad campaign from the American Humanist Association:

Liberty called the campaign a "temper tantrum" ... but the only ones throwing a temper tantrum are those on the Right, as the Texas Freedom Network points out by highlighting this statement from In God We Trust:

The national advocacy group In God We Trust today condemned efforts of national atheist organizations and left-wing legal groups aimed at terrorizing Americans into not celebrating Christmas.

“Americans have become accustomed to the whining and calls for censorship of anti-religion activists during the Christmas season,” says In God We Trust’s Chairman Bishop Council Nedd. “However, this year opponents of the holiday are escalating their ‘War on Christmas’ to a whole new level. Their goal is harass, mock and scare people into censoring themselves and hiding their Christmas celebrations.”

“Americans are being terrorized into banishing Christmas from public life,” Nedd warns. “The hate and venom spewing from some of these anti-religious groups is so great that some jurisdictions are tearing down even secular Christmas displays as fast as they can.”

And of course, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League is weighing in as well, blaming mean-spirited secular elitists for ruining Christmas ... and urging people to sue: 

Disputes about Christmas displays, he charged, are “contrived by elitists of a secular mindset.” They are “bringing forth every possible secular holiday that might fall in December and trying to give it equal billing with Christmas.”

According to Donohue, many Jews will acknowledge that Hanukkah is a minor holiday. He added that the Hindus he knows celebrate Christmas as part of being Americans.

“Now in the workplace, in the schools, we have to be ever-conscious of offending people who are not Christians,” he charged.

Donohue blamed this situation on the “language police” and diversity consultants, whom he claimed to be part of a $1 billion industry active in the private and public workplace.

“These people are the ones selling the propaganda that non-Christians are offended by Christian symbols in December. There is no evidence to this,” he said, reporting that about 96 percent of Americans do not object to Christmas displays or greetings.

He blamed Christmas disputes on “a very small percentage of mean-spirited people year after year.”

He suggested Catholics respond to the suppression of Christmas displays by filing lawsuits or showing up at town hall meetings and school board meetings when the displays become an issue.

For the most part, right-wing and Religious Right groups have been silent on the news that President Obama has been awarded the Noble Peace Prize, but a few have issued predictably inanely incoherent statements.

Such as the Catholic League proclaiming that "Abortion Haunts Peace Prize Winner":

Unlike another Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Mother Teresa, who said abortion was “the greatest destroyer of peace,” Obama has never indicated that abortion undermines the cause of peace. Indeed, he champions abortion as if it were a sacred right. If he wants to pivot at this juncture, Catholics will welcome it. If he doesn’t, he will have to live with the consequences.

And then there is Concerned Women for America's "Dumbing Down The Nobel Peace Prize":

According to the Associated Press, there were rumors consideration was being given to “…Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator and a Chinese dissident, along with an Afghan woman’s rights activist.” Wow – that’s tough competition. It’s amazing that the president of the United States would be considered amidst such an august group of candidates.

When Alfred Nobel wrote his will in 1895 he insisted that the peace prize should go “…to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses.” One wonders if Nobel ever considered there could have been a year where the crop of candidates was so bad that the award would be given to someone who had accomplished none of the things stipulated in his will. Apparently when there is a year where the prospects are so bleak, the lowest common denominator wins. That doesn’t say much for the world’s prospects for peace.

Not to be outdone is Richard Viguerie, whose press release claims that the award just goes to prove that Obama and everyone else is a Communist:

"The announcement from the Nobel Peace Prize Committee says as much about the Norwegian voters and their parliament as it does President Obama. All involved should be embarrassed and ashamed for using this Prize to advance a radical, leftist agenda.

"It's clear that the Marxist leaders in Europe know what most Americans don't know--that the American president is a kindred spirit who they recognize as one of their own.

"Freedom-loving people should no longer respect or take seriously the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, as they have become an arm of the worldwide Marxist cause, evidenced by their previous selections of Yassar Arafat and Le Duc Tho and now Barack Obama.

"The award has been cheapened beyond repair and the Nobel Committee has insulted all who labor and sacrifice for true peace and freedom under God's laws."

As far back as 2007, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League had been calling John Hagee a "veteran bigot" for statements he had made about the Catholic Church, calling it, among other things ""The Great Whore," an "apostate church," the "anti-Christ," and a "false cult system."

When John McCain received Hagee's endorsement last year, Donohue was livid and demanded that McCain reject the endorsement, which McCain eventually did. But in the months in between, something odd happened: Hagee and Donohue became friends.

Hagee apologized to Donohue and Donohue was quite pleased with himself with how he had managed to make Hagee grovel:

It’s been going on for weeks. A lot of Catholic activist friends of mine and some evangelicals have been powwowing with [Hagee] in Washington. They asked me to meet with Hagee and I said no several times. I’m not interested in meeting with him until I get what I want, a public statement and apology that’s complete and speaks specifically to these black legends about Catholics-Jewish relations, and the Holocaust in particular. And once that’s accomplished, I’ll be glad to meet with him. Now that’s going to happen on Thursday.

Quite frankly, I didn’t think that I would get something this complete. What I did not want to get was this “If you’ve been offended, I’m sorry.” I wanted something more specific. There’s no substitute for personal interaction, when you have people sitting down with you and explaining how you’ve been hurtful. Now we can bury this hatchet. It’s rather dramatic….

What really got me offended was the idea of “I’m the purist Christian on the block” when he’s talking to Jews—“I’m not out there persecuting the Jews like all these Catholics.” I’m sure we’ve seen the last of that.

But once Donohue had been placated, the two became fast friends and alies.  And now Dan Gilgoff reports that Hagee is working closely with Donohue to expand the scope of his Christians United for Israel:

CUFI has recently stepped up outreach to Catholics. What precipitated that , and how is the effort going so far? What are your goals for that outreach?

Yes, we are reaching out to Catholics. These efforts started last year, during the presidential campaign, when Bill Donahue of the Catholic League claimed that I had slighted the Catholic Church while teaching from the Book of Revelation. He was mistaken on this point. But he and I handled this disagreement the way that Christians should. We met. We had fellowship. We learned from one another. A few months after the controversy, he came to our Washington, D.C., Summit as my guest. When I recognized him during my keynote address, he received a rousing ovation from our CUFI audience. I consider him a friend.

Bill and I decided that we should turn our personal reconciliation into a broader reconciliation. We decided to try to bring Catholics and Protestants together on behalf of Israel. Some of Israel's best friends and strongest defenders are devout Catholics. They should be a part of this movement.

Interestingly, Hagee insists that he and Donohue buried the hatchet after he explained that Donohue was "mistaken" about what he had said about the Catholic Church, whereas Donohue insisted that they did so after Hagee had abjectly apologized for his past statements. 

So which was it?  I'd like to know.

Not that I'll ever find out, mind you, because I am undoubtedly among those whom Hagee insists "believe some of the lies that were told about me during the campaign [who were] probably not my friends to begin with."