Tag Bill Donohue

Does BillDo Even Realize When He’s Lying?

In his latest eructation, about opposition to the pope’s visit to England, BillDo writes:

The Catholic League does not exist to fend off legitimate criticism of the Catholic Church.

That’s rich, coming from the guy who defended pedophile priests several times, including claiming that since most of their victims had already reached puberty by the time they were abused, those were normal homosexual relationships.

He goes on to complain about the people criticizing the pope:

much of the criticism about the papal trip emanating from the other side of the Atlantic crosses the line.

The most organized attempt to smear the pope comes from the Protest the Pope campaign. Some two dozen organizations, ranging from Atheism UK and the Gay & Lesbian Association to the National Secular Society, have launched an all-out attack on the pope and the Catholic Church. To read a sample of the commentary, click here. Some clergymen have joined the chorus, including long-time anti-Catholic bigot Rev. Ian Paisley.

Wow! The pope’s critics must really be something, frothing at the mouth, shopping around for sniper rifles and building IEDs, right? Let’s see BillDo’s list of the worst of their comments:

Bernard Wynne, a spokesman for Catholic Voices for Reform, Telegraph, 9/8/2010:

“The church, I think, is deeply misogynist and we have to change that.”

“There is a whole series of issues … about the equality of women, but also there is also an issue of sexual orientation and how in fairness to what the church suggests, one could only say that it is intolerant of people of a different sexual orientation.”

Hm. That sounds like forthright criticism, but I don’t see any calls for papal blood.

Well, I’m sure “long-time anti-Catholic bigot” Ian Paisley will have something properly fire-breathing:

Reverend Ian Paisley, Sky News 9/9/2010:

“When the Roman Catholic people are torn asunder because of this matter that the Pope has in many ways closed an eye to, it is time for the Protestant people also to support them.”

Oh, no he di’int! How dare he say that… um… that Protestants should help Catholics. That seems, um, charitable or something. Some might even say Christian.

BillDo goes on to write:

When militant atheists like Richard Dawkins threaten to make a citizen’s arrest of the pope, and when gay activists like Peter Tatchell make a “documentary” about the pope to be shown on TV, then there is cause for concern.

Oh, no! Documentaries on TV! We can’t have that! As for Dawkins’s “citizen’s arrest”, what really happened, according to Dawkins, is that after a suggestion by Christopher Hithchens, he started looking for lawyers to mount a legal case against the pope, within the British legal system.

I think BillDo has had his head up his own ass for so long that he can’t even tell when he’s lying. Either that, or he doesn’t care.

BillDo Doth Protest

Back on February 23, 1997, the Hartford Courant published an article about Father Maciel, accused of abusing nine children:

The men, in interviews in the United States and Mexico, said the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, molested them in Spain and Italy during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Several said Maciel told them he had permission from Pope Pius XII to seek them out sexually for relief of physical pain.

(Emphasis added.)

Bill Donohue wrote a letter to the Courant, saying

To think any priest would tell some other priest that the pope gave him the thumbs up to have sex with another priest–all for the purpose of relieving the poor fellow of some malady–is the kind of balderdash that wouldn’t convince the most unscrupulous editor at any of the weekly tabloids. It is a wonder why The Courant found merit enough to print it.”

(I haven’t been able to find this letter in the Courant. The quoted part above comes from BillDo’s article published on Monday.)

As I understand BillDo’s argument, he’s saying “It’s ridiculous to think a priest (including the pope) would give another priest permission to molest boys. Therefore, it didn’t happen. The people who said that Maciel told them that are lying or mistaken, and Father Maciel is innocent.”

At least, that’s all I can make of it. What’s odd is that BillDo is quoting this in a post entitled “DONOHUE NEVER DEFENDED Fr. MACIEL” (shouty title in the original, as befits his character).

Anyone who’s familiar with BillDo knows that he reflexively leaps to defend the Catholic church against any slight, perceived or real. So all I can figure is that he’s now trying to distance himself from his earlier words through Clintonian parsing (“it depends what the meaning of defend is”).

I Fail to See BillDo’s Problem

In a characteristically spittle-flecked post, BillDo rails against the people suing to repeal Proposition 8. For those who’ve forgotten, that’s when a group of Californians turned to another group of Californians and said, “The right to get married is so precious and fundamental that we’re going to take it away from you.”

BillDo writes:

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.

So what are the rational reasons for taking away gays’ right to get married?

Society cannot exist without families;

This isn’t obvious to me, but I won’t argue the point.

families cannot exist without reproduction;

Agreed.

reproduction cannot exist without a sexual union between a man and a woman;

Well, duh.

and every society in the history of the world has created an institution called marriage to provide for this end.

Again, this might not be 100% true, but it’s close enough for jazz.

In short, it is nothing but irrational to challenge such a timeless verity.

Who’s challenging any of this? How will allowing gays to marry affect straight couples who want to get married and/or have children?

Unless he’s arguing that the institution of marriage will become so polluted by Teh Gay that people like him won’t want anything to do with it. Kind of like saying “I won’t go into that store; they allow homos to shop there.”

In short, BillDo’s problem seems to be with his head. Fortunately, it’s nothing a good laxative can’t fix.

PS: I just realized that I managed to write an entire post about BillDo without using the words “fucknugget” or “twatwaffle”. I take this as a sign that I’ve grown as a writer.

BillDo Doesn’t Like Blasphemy Day

PZ has already pointed out BillDo’s bit of anticipatory apoplexy over Blasphemy Day.

But I want to draw attention to a specific bit of BillDo’s hypocrisy:

The Center for Inquiry is factually incorrect to say that “Free speech is the foundation on which other liberties rest.” Freedom of conscience is the first liberty, and it is inextricably linked to freedom of religion.

BillDo may have a point, though because of his annoying habit of not providing links, it’s hard to check what CfI actually said. But what are the Catholic church’s thoughts on the matter of freedom of conscience or freedom of thought?

The Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on heresy says:

Freedom of thought extending to the essential beliefs of a Church is in itself a contradiction; for, by accepting membership, the members accept the essential beliefs and renounce their freedom of thought so far as these are concerned.

So if you’re Catholic, you don’t have the freedom to question the Catholic church’s unquestionable dogma.

Okay, that’s not too bad. If you define a member of sect X as someone who believes A, B, and C, but someone doesn’t believe C, then that person doesn’t fit the definition of a member of X. Fair enough.

The entry for blasphemy, however, says:

blasphemy is set down as a word, for ordinarily it is expressed in speech, though it may be committed in thought or in act.

(emphasis added). In other words, there are things that you’re not even allowed to think. That’s the very definition of thoughtcrime.

The entry on sin has a whole entry on “Internal sins”, convering crimethink, starting with “thou shalt not covet”.

Three kinds of internal sin are usually distinguished:

  • delectatio morosa, i.e. the pleasure taken in a sinful thought or imagination even without desiring it;
  • gaudium, i.e. dwelling with complacency on sins already committed; and
  • desiderium, i.e. the desire for what is sinful.

(italics in the original).

In other words, Billy pays lip service to freedom of thought, but pimps for a religion that doesn’t hold it in very high esteem. He adds:

In other words, atheists have the right to mock religion because our Christian Founding Fathers afforded them human rights.

I may have to withdraw my charge of hypocrisy: I thought he was in favor of freedom of thought when it suited him, but I get the distinct impression from this sentence that he thinks the founding fathers made a mistake, granting freedoms to people who think the wrong way.

PS: For the benefit of anyone who, like Billy, thinks that Blasphemy Day unjustly favors Muslims, let me just say that there are no gods, not even Allah, and Muhammad was not a prophet. Buddha would have killed for a cheeseburger. Mary cheated on Joseph, and Christians have believed her spur-of-the-moment bullshit story ever since. Oh, and Chuck Darwin only stopped fucking his horse long enough to steal all of Wallace’s ideas. That should just about cover it.

BillDo Teaches Us About Moral Absolutes

BillDo in his
1998 annual report:

March 25

Comedy Central’s “South Park” continued its notorious Christian-bashing, with an episode that linked Christians to Nazis as oppressors of homosexuals. In a segment describing homosexuality throughout history, the character “Big Gay Al” interrupted his commentary to say, “Uh-oh, look out, it’s the oppressors—Christians and Nazis and Republicans.” The scene showed Hitler with a Catholic priest to the right and a Republican on the left—the priest waving a cross, the Republican an American flag.

BillDo in 2004:

George Soros, the billionaire left-wing Bush-hater who funds the website (MoveOn.org has compared Bush to Hitler)

BillDo in 2006:

Want a sample of his politics? In 2005, McCourt took part in a rally, ‘The Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime,’ that compared the Bush administration to Hitler’s regime.

BillDo in his
2008 annual report:

Bill Maher continued his non-stop assault on Catholicism in 2008 by lashing out several times on TV and in movies. After he mocked Transubstantiation early in the year, I said on TV that I would love to step into the ring with him in Madison Square Garden so I could “floor him.” The comment was made in jest, but he kept repeating it all year, feigning victim status. His rant against the pope, made just before the Holy Father visited the U.S. in April, included a comment calling Pope Benedict XVI a Nazi. He apologized (sort of) after we went after him.

So I think the lesson is clear: comparing people to Hitler or Nazis is
unacceptable, and rightfully causes outrage. Right?

BillDo yesterday:

CBS/SHOWTIME AIRS NAZI-LIKE ASSAULT

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on last night’s edition of Penn & Teller’s show. The program aired on Showtime which is owned by CBS:

The Nazis couldn’t have done better.

Ah, but that’s different, isn’t it? Behavior that’s completely
unacceptable in one set of circumstances may be okay in another.
Right, Bill?

BillDo in 2002:

Moral relativism is not only an intellectually bankrupt idea, its real-life consequences can be deadly.
…

Not until our society comes to accept
what the Catholic Church teaches—that there are moral absolutes and that all
life is sacred—will we turn the corner.

BillDo in 2004:

What I’m a little bit tired of is the same kind of cruel caricature. And I love the way the movie ends. You know, here we have this idea that moral absolutes are bad. We need gray areas. Oh, really? Let me tell you something, Brian, you made this movie. Millions of people have lost their lives in the last century because of selling the idea that there are no moral absolutes. If there are no moral absolutes, we are back to different strokes for different people. We put pizzas into ovens in this country, they put Jews into ovens in Nazi Germany. Yet, that may not have been your intention, sir, but you’re selling an idea which is toxic.

BillDo in 2005:

Pope Benedict XVI knows that a society absent moral absolutes is capable of great evil. His homily on the "dictatorship of relativism" owes much to John Paul II’s encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, one of the most brilliant statements ever written on the relation between morality and liberty.

Hm. Maybe BillDo should learn how to delete embarrassing archives from
his site.

Or maybe the lesson to be learned is that pointing out Billy-boy’s
hypocrisy is like walking up to a barrel filled with slow-moving fish,
with a rocket launcher bolted to the side and aimed straight into the
barrel, and only someone with too much time on his hands, like me,
would bother to actually pull the trigger.

I Am the Very Model of a Single-Issue Demagogue

On Monday, in a post entitled
“Surgeon General Pick Is Excellent“,
BillDo wrote:

President Obama picked the right person to be the new Surgeon General. Dr. Benjamin is a hero to all those victimized by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Her tireless and selfless efforts are a model for all physicians.

Dr. Benjamin is an African-American Catholic public servant who has been recognized by Pope Benedict XVI: the Holy Father awarded her the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice medal for distinguished service. When the pope celebrated Mass in Washington, D.C. in 2008, Dr. Benjamin was there to receive his blessing. Moreover, she has also received the National Caring Award, an honor which was inspired by Mother Teresa. “Church was always a very important part of my life,” she told Catholic Digest. “I believe I am carrying on the healing ministry of Christ. I feel obligated to help continue his works.”

Kudos to President Obama and congratulations to Dr. Benjamin. She should sail through the Senate.

Of course, that was then, before he knew what evil roiled in the
depths of her damned soul. The very next day, he
posted:

at the same news conference that the
president used to announce his choice of Dr. Benjamin, he pushed hard
for a new health reform bill. […] A central issue is whether
abortion services will be mandated as part of the plan.

[…] a new Advisory Committee will decide which services will be covered. And who is in charge of the Health Benefits Advisory Committee? The Surgeon General.

Dr. Benjamin should not wait until the Senate considers her
appointment to let the public know where she stands. As a practicing
Catholic, she cannot chair a committee that would support mandated
abortion coverage in employer insurance plans. There is no “common
ground” on this issue.

Don’t quote me regulations. I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation to revise the color of the book that regulation’s in.

So there you have it. BillDo is explicitly mixing religion and
politics. And telling Dr. Benjamin what she needs to believe, and how
she’s supposed to practice her religion. Not only won’t he allow her
to have an abortion, or support the right of others to decide whether
they should get one, he also can’t allow her to serve on a committee
that regulates the rules for paying for abortions that other people
might or might not choose to have. Have we reached six degrees of
separation from the real issue yet?

Dance, Monkeys! Dance for My Enjoyment!

Today seems to be the day when a bunch of right-wing fundies all decided to make themselves look ridiculous in public, seemingly only to entertain me.

For a while now, Ray Comfort’s weblog wasn’t accepting new comments, because he had been hired by Examiner.com as their Creationism Examiner, and he wanted comments to be posted there.

This morning, however, I found a post on his old site, with a bunch of comments. I can only surmise that the Examiner decided that Ray was too kooky for them, and booted him back to blogspot.com.

Then there was the kook fight: according to this WND story (sorry, I couldn’t find a reliable source), Ray basically accused Catholics of not being True Christians™

But the Vatican has chosen to officially believe Darwin rather than Jesus

BillDo, recognizing in Comfort one of the rare people who could make him look reasonable and measured by comparison, responded by saying that the Catholic church’s position is that it’s okay to accept evolution, as long as you still believe in a magic man in the sky.

Ray’s response to that basically boils down to “is not!”

(HT PZ.)

But the one who had me laughing out loud all morning was Brannon Howse, who has a show on Christian Worldview Radio.

Howse recently put in an appearance at a church in Ft. Worth. Bud Kennedy, a reporter for the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, wrote an article about it, under the title “Who knew that yoga is a tool of Satan?”, talking about Howse’s superstition, ignorance, and paranoia.

I wasn’t at the event in Texas, but Kennedy’s account is pretty much in line with what Howse has talked about on his radio show: ZOMG teh gays, the Earth is 6000 years old, Obama == Hitler, and so forth.

So Brannon Howse spent an entire episode whining about how the article made him and other True Christians™ look foolish and extreme, at one point asking, “is there anything extreme about saying that there’s nothing Christian about yoga?” (Yes, Mr. Howse. Yes, there is.)

What had me laughing out loud was that Howse’s “corrections” of Kennedy’s librul yellow journalism just made Howse look as bad as before, if not worse. For instance, he claims that he never said yoga is a tool of Satan. It is, however, an Indian occult practice, and anti-christian.

On other topics, like the notion that the stimulus package is a way of achieving a worldwide monetary system and a one-world government, his response was basically, “Well, yes, I said that, because it’s true. But when Kennedy puts it in the paper, it makes us look foolish.”

Yes, it does, Brannon. As the saying goes, people who don’t want their beliefs ridiculed shouldn’t hold such ridiculous beliefs.

And finally, to cap off a perfectly wonderful day, here’s Richard Dawkins’s response to Ray Comfort’s challenge to debate him for $10,000.

Go read the whole thing. It’s wonderful.

$10,000 is less than the typical fee that I am ordinarily offered for lecturing to a serious audience (I often don’t accept it, especially in the case of a student audience, because I am a dedicated teacher). It is not, therefore, a worthwhile inducement for me to travel all the way across the Atlantic to debate with an ignorant fool. You can tell him that if he donates $100,000 to the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (it’s a charitable donation, tax deductible) I’ll do it. A further condition is that it will be filmed by Josh Timonen for my website, RichardDawkins.net, and distributed by Josh as a DVD, if he thinks it is funny enough. To this end, it would be nice if Mr Comfort would reprise the ever popular Banana Sketch.

Richard Dawkins

(HT Shelley.)

Merry War on Christmas Eve!

I can only assume that BillDo took heed of my strategy paper on the War on Christmas™, because here‘s what he’s moaning about now:

“The latest gambit by the anti-Christmas Czars is to flood public parks with a vast array of cultural symbols. For example, at the Fort Collins Museum in Colorado, in addition to a nativity scene and a menorah, they are displaying the Indian Diwali Festival of Lights, the Thailand Buddhist celebration of Loy Krathong, the Chinese Lantern Festival, African-American Kwanzaa, Muslim Ramadan, and the Scottish Hogmanay festival.

“It is insulting to Christians and Jews to dilute their long-standing holidays in a country founded on Judeo-Christian principles by turning public areas into a junk-yard clutter of cultural artifacts, and that is why only the nativity scene and the menorah should be allowed in the same place at this time of the year. The real goal of the cultural fascists is to water down the meaning of Christmas (and to a much lesser extent Hanukkah) via contrived competition. Let the others find another spot or another time to display their symbols.”

In other words, “it’s our country, and our holiday. We’ll share with the Jews, but the rest of you can just fuck off.”

No word from the Indian, Thai, Chinese, African-American, Muslim, or Scottish communities on how they feel about their culture being dismissed as “junk-yard clutter”. (Besides, I thought Scotland was Christian, and celebrated Christmas. Maybe BillDo resents them because they’re mostly Protestant. And besides, Hogmanay is a new year celebration. Is Bill going to lay claim to New Year’s Day now as well?)

At any rate, as I sit here admiring the Christmas tree and listening to Bing Crosby, with a Christmas LOLcat on my lap helping me type (and, incidentally, preventing me from getting up and getting the glass of egg nog that I want), yes, I am diluting the True Meaning of Christmas™.

If you didn’t want other people enjoying the secular stuff that’s been glommed onto your religious holiday over the centuries, you shouldn’t have made it so much fun. So now all the kids are playing in your sandbox. Whatcha gonna do about it?

I know what I’m going to do about it: pick the cat off of my lap, get a glass of Christmas cheer, and use it to dilute Christmas some more. And maybe water the tree with Bill’s tears.

BillDo Misrepresents Prop 8

Once more, BillDo
forgot to keep his noise-hole closed:

[In an anti-Proposition 8 TV ad] Two young men, who identify themselves as being from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, knock on the door of two lesbian women announcing that “We are here to take away your rights.”
…

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“Radical homosexuals have a long history of anti-religious bigotry, so it is not surprising that with a pro-marriage initiative on the ballot in California (Proposition 8 would secure marriage as a right between a man and a woman only), they would resort to gutter tactics.

Unfortunately, Shrill Bill missed the big difference between Prop 8
and anti-gay-marriage laws passed in other states these past few
elections. Those other laws were preemptive: they were intended to
shore up the “one man, one woman” side in advance of possible court
challenges.

In California, on the other hand, gays did have the right to
marry (until Prop 8 passed, at least), and many took advantage of
that, gaining all the rights, privileges, and obligations that come
with it. Now Prop 8 is taking away those rights, rights that people
already have.

Choke on a bag of cocks, Bill.

The Adorable Bill Donohue

Thanks to Fez for pointing out this
video
of Bill Donohue complaining about eucharist desecration, and YouTube
not pulling videos of people doing same:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLP2fHGHX7c&hl=en&fs=1]

Isn’t he adorable? Don’t you just want to pinch his chubby little
cheeks?

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