In 2001, I learned that New York City schools allowed menorahs and star and crescents in the classroom, but not nativity scenes (the former were—erroneously—declared secular symbols). A letter from Schools Chancellor Dr. Harold Levy explaining the discriminatory treatment proved to be classic. “The Supreme Court has previously refused to permit erection of a nativity scene on public property,” he said. 43 I quickly corrected him about the high court’s rulings—it never said any such thing—and noted the following irony: New York City allows me to put a crèche on public property every year, namely in Central Park, and that’s because I get a permit from the Parks Department (Orthodox Jews get a permit to put up “the world’s largest menorah” every year, and Muslims occasionally display their symbol).
With the help of the Thomas More Law Center, a suit was filed against New York City. On February 18, 2004, United States District Court Judge Charles Sifton ruled against us. He maintained that the menorah and star and crescent had a secular dimension while the nativity scene was “purely religious.” Best of all was his remarkably revealing comment: he said the holiday displays “must be reviewed as perceived by the children, Christian children in particular, but not one hyper-sensitive Catholic child.” 44
On appeal, the Second Circuit said New York City was wrong to say that the menorah and star and crescent were not religious symbols, but it balked at ordering the crèche to be displayed (as long as some holiday symbol was allowed, it reasoned, there was no discrimination). Importantly, the court did not say the display of a crèche in the schools was unconstitutional. It explicitly said, “We do not here decide whether the City could, consistent with the Constitution, include a crèche in its school holiday displays.” 45
In a stunning rebuke to Christians, the ADL, which was not a litigant in this case, filed an amicus brief arguing that it was okay to have a menorah but not a nativity scene, in the schools. It said “displaying the crèche carries with it the potential risk of an excessively religious message.” 46 When questioned about this, ADL spokeswoman Deborah Lauter said that “A symbol that is pervasively religious gives the appearance that it’s an endorsement by the school of one religion over the other.” 47 She did not say how the government was able to distinguish between a “pervasively religious” symbol and just an ordinary one. No matter, as I have said many times, if nativity scenes were allowed in the schools and menorahs were not, I would demand equal treatment and push for the display of the menorah. The ADL does not speak for many Jews, and that is why Jewish activists like Rabbi Yehuda Levin of Jews for Morality and Beth Gilinsky of the Jewish Action Alliance have been so critical of it over the years.
In 2007, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Because the Second Circuit decision left the door open to the display of a nativity scene, the Catholic League then asked the New York City Council to direct the Department of Education to do so. In 2009, I testified before the Education Committee of the City Council asking for parity: if Jews and Muslims are allowed to display their religious symbols, Christians should be afforded the same treatment. Only one person who testified opposed a resolution by New York City Councilman Tony Avella to do just that, and that was a representative from Americans United for Separation of Church and State. She said, without a trace of evidence, that it was “emotionally disturbing” for children to see some religious symbols in the schools. Interestingly, there’s no evidence that she ever complained all those years that the menorah and star and crescent were permitted—it was only when the nativity scene stood a chance of being included that she got upset.
Some of the assaults on Christmas are right out of the Twilight Zone. For example, in 2003, Central Michigan University and Indiana University went off the deep end with their alleged sensitivity to non-Christians. The affirmative action office at Central Michigan listed a calendar, available online, that mentioned Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Las Posadas as holidays in December. But there was an asterisk next to Christmas that was priceless: It read, “Warning of Holiday Decorations.” By clicking on the “Warning,” it was possible to access a document titled “How to Celebrate Christmas Without Offense.” Since none of the other holidays merited an asterisk or a warning, it must have meant that Jews, African Americans, and Latinos possess an ability that Christians who celebrate Christmas obviously lack—they are able to party without ticking others off. Either that or anti-Christian bigotry was at work.
The instructions found in the document were gems. “It is inappropriate to decorate things with Santa Claus or reindeer or ‘Christmas’ decorations.” Given this cast of mind, it makes one wonder what the multicultural gestapo would do if they stumbled on a nativity scene—smash it with clubs? The document included advice on what to do: “Good ideas for decorations during this time are snowflakes, snowpeople, poinsettias to give people a feeling of the winter.” 48 Yes, snowpeople have a way of doing just that.
At about the same time, Florence Roisman, a professor at Indiana University Law School, was upset about a Christmas tree on campus and succeeded in getting it removed. She said that the 12-foot tree celebrated Christmas, and that as a Jew she found it problematic: “To honor one religion and not honor others is exclusionary.” It is important to note that the tree had no religious ornaments on it. The dean of students, Tony Tarr, acceded to her demands and had the tree replaced by two smaller trees, along with a sleigh stuffed with red and green poinsettia plants. He declared the first tree the “denominational” tree and the new ones “a normal Indiana scene.” Roisman objected to the new display as well. All of this was carried out by men and women who work in higher education. 49
Here’s another example of secular lunacy. In December 2006, Olympic skater Sasha Cohen was skating at a rink in Riverside, California, when a high school choir started singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman.” Immediately, a government employee went into orbit, summoning the police to institute a gag rule. The cop promptly told the choir to knock it off. The offense? Cohen, the bureaucrat advised, was Jewish and would be upset by the Christmas carol. Not that it should matter, but the fact is Cohen was never asked what she thought. When she got the chance to speak, she said it didn’t matter at all what the choir was singing. 50 Such paternalism, as well as bigotry, is a hallmark of the sensitivity police.
The hatred of Christmas is so strong in some quarters that a song doesn’t even have to be religious to get the censors’ juices flowing. In 2008, a woman from North Carolina objected to the song “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Her problem? The words “Santa” and “Christmas” are mentioned. When she failed in her effort to censor the song, she pushed to get Hanukkah songs included in the holiday program. In other words, she really didn’t object to religious songs being sung in the schools—just ones that reminded everyone of Christmas. Even worse that year was Clair Ebel, head of the New Hampshire ACLU. If nativity scenes are allowed in the parks, she instructed, it is permissible to have “a display of satanic ritual.” 51 Perhaps the ACLU has one to loan.
To demonstrate how multicultural madness is truly multicultural, consider what happened in England in 2008. Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary branded Christmas “evil,” causing hardly a stir. Perhaps he was assimilating what he learned from the Brits: his damning of Christmas occurred at the same time it was announced that the words “bishop,” “chapel,” “monk,” “nun,” etc., were to be forever banned from the Oxford Junior Dictionary. 52 All this from those who gave us the King’s English.
The effects of multiculturalism are so deep and wide that they even reach megastores like Wal-Mart, often cited as a bastion of American traditionalism. In 2005, at the start of the Christmas season, a customer relations employee, responding to complaints that Wal-Mart was dumbing down Christmas, sent an e-mail to a woman on the pagan origins of Christmas; the recipient forwarded the note to the Catholic League. When it was brought to the attention of the top person in public relations, he agreed with the mind-boggling statement. It said that Chris
tmas has roots in “Siberian shamanism” and that the colors red and white “are actually a representation of the aminita mascera mushroom.” Similarly, Santa, mistletoe, the Yule log, the tree, etc., have non-Christian roots. 53
That made me curious. After kicking around the Wal-Mart Web site, I discovered that there was a Hanukkah and Kwanzaa section but no Christmas one (there was just a “Holiday” section). Thus, a pattern of discrimination was emerging. That was it. The Catholic League called for a boycott and contacted 126 religious organizations spanning seven faith communities. Within 48 hours, Wal-Mart issued an apology, changed its Web site, and fired the customer relations employee. 54 In 2006, Wal-Mart received many kudos for its totally pro-Christmas promotions. It admitted that it had learned a valuable lesson the year before. 55
What is particularly disturbing about all this is the rank hypocrisy involved. It is said that we should be careful about celebrating Christmas in the schools and at work because not everyone is Christian. But to be excluded is normal. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Veterans Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride parades—they all exclude someone. So, too, do the Olympics: they are a showcase of segregation—men are barred from participating in women’s sports—yet not even radical feminists object. Moreover, if a white student said he felt excluded during Black History Month and wanted it canceled, would we seek to educate the bigot or allow him to veto the celebrations? If the answer is obvious, why do we tolerate different rules when it comes to the bigots who hate Christmas?
Why is it that we are so busy celebrating diversity during December instead of January? Why don’t we give the same amount of attention to the First of Muharram and Ashura as we do to Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday? After all, they fall in January. The reason is obvious: it would have the effect of diluting the overriding significance of Martin Luther King Day. This is exactly what is at work when we seek to hype every holiday that falls in December—the goal of the secular saboteurs is to neuter the significance of Christmas.
While nothing gets the secularists more angry than Christmas, they bring their multicultural agenda to bear against Easter as well. Hardly a year goes by without a major weekly like Time, Newsweek, or U.S. News and World Report running a story that questions the authenticity of New Testament accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. PBS and NPR can similarly be counted on, as can the networks’ magazine shows like 20/20 and Dateline. No other religion is ever submitted to such scrutiny, and indeed the more primitive the religion, the more respect it is shown.
The most absurd attack on Christianity to take place at Eastertime came in 2007 when James Cameron of Titanic fame teamed up with TV director Simcha Jacobovici to offer a Discovery Channel documentary—it was really a docudrama—claiming that they had found the Jesus family tomb.
Israeli archaeologists take great pride in their work and have little patience for charlatans. That is why they were up in arms with the extravagant claims being made. Amos Kloner, for example, was in charge of the 1980 investigation of the tomb that Cameron and Jacobovici seized upon 27 years later when they made their allegations. “The claim that the burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell,” Kloner said. “With all due respect,” he offered, “they are not archaeologists.” Indeed, he said their claims were “impossible” and “nonsense.” What Kloner said was backed up by virtually all the experts, but this did not stop the Titanic fraud from being hawked. However, when even Ted Koppel of the Discovery Channel, who moderated a discussion on the claims, was unpersuaded, the station’s officials backed away from the movie and said they would not rerun it. 56 To top it off, when the book on the subject appeared, it contained not one endnote or citation of any kind. 57 That’s what happens when there is no evidence.
If Lent of 2007 started with Cameron’s scheme, it ended during Holy Week with a Chocolate Jesus being nixed by the Catholic League. The Roger Smith Lab Gallery of the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City was set to display a six-foot-tall anatomically correct sculpture of Jesus in milk chocolate; the figure was depicted as crucified. Artist Cosimo Cavallaro titled his work My Sweet Lord and invited the public to eat his creation of Jesus, genitals and all. This pushed me to challenge the hotel’s president and CEO, James Knowles, to substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan. For some reason, he wasn’t interested. The Catholic League then contacted approximately five hundred allied organizations, asking them to boycott the hotel. 58 It was this kind of public pressure that forced the hotel to cancel the exhibit. When the artist asked me on TV where he should display his work, I answered, “In New Jersey—that’s where New Yorkers put their garbage. There’s a big sanitation dump.” 59
Deference to Muslims
There are those who say that secular saboteurs do not target Christianity more than other religions. But the evidence does not support this. Take Islam, for instance. The deference shown to Muslims is simply not shown to Christians. To wit: in 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 376 to 0 in favor of a resolution giving tribute to Ramadan and Islam, but a similarly worded resolution giving tribute to Christmas and Christianity found 9 members voting against the resolution, 10 who simply voted “present,” and 40 others who didn’t vote at all. 60
Bad as things are in the United States, they are even more insane in Britain. In 2008, a Scottish police force postcard was pulled because it featured a German shepherd puppy advertising a new nonemergency police phone number. The offense? Muslims complained that dogs are regarded as “unclean.” The year before, the kitchen staff at a British hospital was told not to serve hot cross buns to patients at Easter because it might “upset non-Christians.” 61
What is even more amazing is that, after 9/11, there are indications that Muslims are being given preferential treatment. Consider what happened at Sharon High School in Sharon, Massachusetts, a month after the United States was attacked.
At a Halloween costume party, first prize was awarded to three boys: two were dressed as pregnant nuns and a third was dressed as the impregnating priest. It was the faculty that granted the award. Following complaints from Catholic students and the Catholic League, officials at the high school confessed that they were as perplexed about what happened as anyone. They said that they had gone out of their way that year not to offend Muslims. But their sensitivity meter obviously didn’t apply to Catholics. To top it off, instead of inviting someone from the Catholic League to address the student body, a representative from the ADL was invited. He talked to the students about bigotry and chose as his subject the Holocaust. 62
Two years later, an equally appalling thing happened at Princeton University. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs hosted Ricanstructions, an art exhibit by Juan Sanchez. Included in the exhibit was a display called Shackles of the AIDS Virus, a 1996 work by the artist that features such devotional items as scapulars and images of the Virgin Mary arranged in a circle. Another display showed naked female torsos arranged in the shape of a cross; it was labeled Crucifixion No. 2. There was also a display of torn-up images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Dean Ann-Marie Slaughter defended the anti-Christian art for its alleged “educational value.” This was hardly exceptional—it’s what deans are programmed to say. What was surprising was her honesty: she said that a display that offended Islam would not be tolerated on the campus. 63
The Danish cartoon controversy seals the argument being made here: the media show Islam more respect than Christianity.
Whenever the Catholic League criticizes a work of art, cartoon, movie, or TV show, we are told that we’re the intolerant ones; what is offensive is in the eye of the beholder; art is supposed to make people uncomfortable; no one can criticize something unless he’s personally seen it; protests have a “chilling effect” on free speech; it’s not real anyway; get over it. But when an inoffensive depiction of Muhammad is objected to by Muslims, the same rules don’t apply. Their sensibilities are respected, the cartoon is not
shown, and none of the criticisms thrown at the Catholic League are voiced. Worse, the media lie. With the singular exception of the Boston Phoenix, which admitted that it was fear that persuaded the paper not to print the cartoons, the media refused to admit that their unusual act of self-censorship was driven by primordial self-interest. They were afraid of being beheaded.
Why, according to the Washington Post, did European newspapers reprint the cartoons? It was “not their love of freedom but their insensitivity—or hostility—to the growing diversity of their own societies.” The Los Angeles Times said it would not reprint “these insensitive images.” The Miami Herald boasted that it “must take great care not to offend.” The New York Times said it was wrong to publish “gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” The San Francisco Chronicle announced that “insulting or hurting certain groups” is wrong. Both CBS and NBC said it wasn’t necessary to show the cartoons in order to report on them. CNN even went so far as to say that it “has chosen not to show the cartoons out of respect for Islam.” 64
All of these remarks are fabulously ludicrous, but the grand prize goes to the New York Times. In his piece on this subject, Michael Kimmelman recalled how the Catholic League protested the 1999 Sensation exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that featured a “collage of the Virgin Mary with cutouts from pornographic magazines and shellacked clumps of elephant dung.” He further said that in contrast to irate Muslims, “No protester torched the museum or called for beheading anybody.” This was all fine and good, save for one thing: on the same page where it was noted that the New York Times would not reprint the Danish cartoons—out of respect for Muslims—it reprinted the offensive art from the Sensation exhibit. Evidently, some have a hard time connecting the dots at the Old Gray Lady. 65
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