DNC v. Catholic League
Journalist Mark Shields is a moderate Catholic Democrat. It was not surprising, then, that when the Democratic National Committee (DNC) established an association with Catholics for a Free Choice (CFFC), he would protest. Instead of engaging in religious outreach, the DNC was reaching out to anti-Catholic bigots. The whole thing read like a suicide pact.
It was in late July 2002 that Shields blasted the DNC for providing a link on its Web site to Frances Kissling’s anti-Catholic front group. “I have written to DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe imploring him to ‘act quickly and decisively by removing Catholics for a Free Choice from the DNC’s links of interest organizations,’” Shields said. On July 31, the Catholic League followed suit. What was particularly galling was the fact that at the time, CFFC was the only Catholic group listed on its Web site. 41
On August 6, the Catholic League warned that “the Democrats are playing with fire” and pledged “to spend considerable resources informing the public of what the DNC considers its Catholic base.” This was not an idle threat. In the September 15–21 edition of the National Catholic Register, the Catholic League launched the first in a series of ads that would be run in Catholic and secular newspapers targeting the DNC. Two Democratic congressmen, Tom Lantos and Tim Roemer, wrote to me expressing their concerns over the damage the DNC was doing; Lantos, who has since passed away, was Jewish and Roemer is Catholic. But most Democrats did nothing. No matter, the DNC was pounded throughout the fall with angry phone calls, faxes, and e-mails, the listings of which were provided by the Catholic League.
Not getting a response from the DNC, the Catholic League ran ads in two other Catholic weeklies, Our Sunday Visitor and the Wanderer. The secular audience was not overlooked, either: an ad was placed in Roll Call, a prominent newspaper in the nation’s capital. Every member of the House and Senate was contacted by mail, as were all of the nation’s bishops. The campaign was starting to have an effect: the DNC was deluged with calls and letters of protest. At the request of the Most Reverend Wilton D. Gregory, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Reverend Monsignor William P. Fay, general counsel to the bishops’ conference, wrote a letter to McAuliffe registering his objections. Fay stressed that the bishops’ conference has publicly maintained on two occasions that CFFC is not a Catholic organization and that indeed it works to undermine Catholicism. He requested that the DNC remove its link to Kissling’s group. McAuliffe’s only response was to pad the “Catholic” section of its Web site with two other Catholic organizations, Call to Action and NETWORK; both are dissident groups, sister organizations to CFFC. 42
It was impossible for McAuliffe not to know that Kissling was not simply pro-abortion—she was decidedly anti-Catholic. That’s because I contacted him prior to Kissling’s interview on October 12 on PBS radio, alerting him to her true status. Kissling did not disappoint. On the show she explicitly said that it was her goal “to neutralize the political power of the Church” and “to defrock the Catholic Church of its massive power.” 43 But even at this, McAuliffe was unmoved. The Democrats had gotten into bed with the Catholic bashers. Worse, most were positively clueless as to why practicing Catholics were abandoning the Democratic Party.
If the DNC had reached out to a dissident Catholic organization, one that was in the abortion-rights camp, that would have been bad enough. But CFFC is not a dissident Catholic group—it is an explicitly anti-Catholic entity founded to sabotage the Catholic Church. It does not work from within the Church, but it does work externally to foment disorder within it. Without doubt, it is the most nihilistic enemy of the Catholic Church in the nation. And this is the group that the DNC was embracing.
October 28, 2002, turned out to be quite a day in the DNC’s relationship with Catholics. When I left work on Friday, October 25, the link with CFFC was still on the DNC’s Web site. But when I returned to work on Monday, October 28, it was gone. The links section had been rearranged over the weekend; a new category, “Religious Affiliated,” listed some legitimate Catholic and Jewish organizations and publications, but nowhere to be seen was CFFC. I immediately put out a news release stating that the Catholic League had led a three-month protest about this issue, spending thousands of dollars on ads in Catholic magazines and secular newspapers. “Finally,” I wrote, “we have won.” 44 As it turned out, I was wrong.
It didn’t take long before someone alerted the DNC to my statement. CFFC was quickly added to the “Religious Affiliated” section, prompting me to say the following: “Someone at the DNC isn’t too bright. Now they’ve really created a hornet’s nest for themselves. First they delete Frances Kissling’s Catholics for a Free Choice from their website and now they put her back up. There’s obviously a fight going on at the DNC over this and for now the Kissling forces have won. But they won’t win in the long run.” 45 Little did I know when I wrote this that I would issue another news release on the DNC’s second blunder of the day. The release was titled “Democratic National Committee Sponsors Hard-Core Teen Porn.”
In the links section of the DNC’s Web site, there was a category called “Hispanic.” On the day that I visited the Web site by clicking on the second-to-last link, a hard-core teen porn site appeared, with pictures of four young women depicted in full frontal nudity with the inscription “FREE, Live Amateur, Teen, Anal, Hardcore Picture SEX site.” In my news release, I said that “The DNC is spinning out of control. Its support for anti-Catholic bigotry is now matched by its support for hard-core pornography. Whoever is operating its Web site should be fired immediately.” I added that “The DNC may have violated federal law by sponsoring a Web site with arguably under-age girls.” I concluded by imploring the DNC to dump both the porn site and CFFC. 46
News of the Catholic League statement hit more than the Internet—it reached the desk of Joseph M. Birkenstock, the DNC’s chief counsel. “This letter is to put you on notice that your press release dated October 28, 2002,” he wrote, “entitled ‘DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE SPONSORS HARD-CORE TEEN PORN’ is false and defamatory.” His letter, written on October 28 and faxed to me the same day, denied that the DNC would ever sponsor porn of any kind. Indeed, he strongly defended the DNC, and blasted my statement. His concluding paragraph was precious:
You are hereby advised not to destroy or alter any documents that in any way refer or relate to the creation or publication of this press release, and to notify the officers and directors of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, as well as anyone involved in the creation or publication of this press release of their potential liability in this matter. 47
Birkenstock’s fatal mistake was his use of the word “potential.” That gave away the store. Either he was going to sue or he wasn’t. He obviously wasn’t and that’s because he had no grounds to do so. After all, it was undeniable that the teen porn link was on the DNC Web site. He called me that same day and we got into a shouting match, resolving nothing. The next day I wrote him a three-sentence response: “Your attempt to intimidate the Catholic League has failed. We will continue our protest against the DNC’s alliance with an anti-Catholic organization, Catholics for a Free Choice. Moreover, we will not be distracted by your inflammatory phone calls.” 48
That was the last I heard from him. I closed this chapter by releasing a comment to the press stating that “It may be that the porn Web site was inadvertently linked to the DNC.” However, I also let the DNC know that the Catholic League was not going away. The next sentence read, “But there is nothing resembling human error regarding the conscious decision of the DNC to provide a link with an anti-Catholic organization.” 49
We did not let up. The Catholic League built a coalition to work against Kissling. We succeeded in getting Father Frank Pavone’s Priest for Life, Deal Hudson’s Crisis magazine, Reverend Thomas Euteneuer’s Human Life International, Ave Maria Law School (headed by Bernard Dobranski), Ken Connor’s Family Research Council, Merlyn Scroggins and the Catholic D
efense League of Minnesota, Bud McFarland’s Mary Foundation, Reverend Louis Sheldon’s Traditional Family Values, and many others to work with us. We also wrote to every member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child contesting Kissling’s attempt to get that body to institute sanctions against the Vatican for allegedly violating a U.N. treaty protecting children. Word was fast getting out that the DNC’s darling was anything but. After Reverend Michael C. McFarland, president of Holy Cross, revoked an invitation by women’s studies professors to have Kissling speak there, she went nuts, saying, “I’m tired of speaking off-campus and in Unitarian churches about issues that are important in my church.” 50
We didn’t give up. On September 16, 2003, I wrote an ad that was published on the op-ed page of the New York Times titled “Why Are the Democrats Insulting Catholics?” It made the same appeal—the DNC should drop its association with CFFC. Finally, on April 13, 2004, just as the presidential campaign was heating up, the DNC did what I always thought it would do: it quietly redid its Web site, dropping the links page altogether. By sleight of hand, then, the DNC-CFFC link was broken. My parting words were: “The DNC deserves no credit for this action. It brazenly offended Catholics for years by embracing a Catholic-bashing organization. But now that its leader, Senator John Kerry, is in trouble with Catholics for a whole host of reasons, prudence dictates that the DNC distance itself from anti-Catholic bigotry.” 51
Kerry’s Idea of Religious Outreach
Secular nihilists are so consumed with power that they find their way into federal, state, and local politics; they have a particular interest in penetrating presidential politics, and they often don’t even bother to conceal their real intentions. One might think that offices which specialize in religious outreach might be off-limits to them, but this is simply not the case. They manage to worm their way into everything.
John Kerry sold himself as a “devout Catholic” during the 2004 presidential campaign, but it was a hard sell given his support for abortion on demand and embryonic stem cell research, as well as his opposition to school vouchers. His public image was that of a secularist, not a “devout Catholic.” Thus it was greeted by many with a sigh of relief when his campaign announced the hiring of a Director of Religious Outreach.
As soon as the Catholic League learned that Mara Vanderslice had been chosen for the post, we sought to find out more about her. What we learned was disturbing. So much so that we shared it with the press, as well as with Protestant and Jewish conservatives.
Vanderslice was raised without any faith and didn’t become an evangelical Christian until she attended Earlham College, a Quaker school known for its adherence to pacifism. When in college, she was active in the Earlham Socialist Alliance, a group that supports the convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and openly embraces Marxism-Leninism. After graduating, she spoke at rallies held by ACT-UP, the anti-Catholic group that disrupted Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989. In 2000, she practiced civil disobedience when she took to the streets of Seattle in a protest against the World Trade Organization. In 2002, she tried to shut down Washington, D.C., in a protest against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. As I said at the time, “Her résumé is that of a person looking for a job working for Fidel Castro, not John Kerry. Just wait until Catholics and Protestants learn who this lady really is.” 52
At first, John Kerry was considered too moderate for Vanderslice, which is why she became Howard Dean’s Religious Outreach Director. She admitted that she was a freak in the Dean campaign: her colleagues dubbed her the “church lady,” informing her that Dean was liked precisely because he didn’t talk about religion. “How in the world did you get hired?” is how one staffer put it. Her experience was not unique. When Democratic activist Eric McFadden volunteered to reach out to Catholics, he was told by his boss, “We don’t do white churches.” 53 All this from the party of inclusion. It is a sure bet that gay activists were never treated as outsiders in either the Dean or Kerry campaigns.
Only four days after I notified Catholics, Protestants, and Jews about Vanderslice’s résumé, Julia Duin of the Washington Times detailed how the Kerry camp reacted to my news release. Vanderslice was silenced—she was no longer allowed to talk to the press. Which raised the question, Why bother to have a director of religious outreach if she is forbidden from reaching out to the religious? As Duin reported, the Kerry campaign was in a “panic mode” over Vanderslice’s role. It didn’t take long before Kerry operatives were blaming me for causing the uproar. “The Kerry campaign hires a 29-year-old ultra-leftist who consorts with anti-Catholic bigots and the Catholic League is supposed to take this lying down,” I responded. “And if Vanderslice is so innocent,” I asked, “why have they gagged her?” 54
Next up at bat was Reverend Brenda Bartella Peterson. On July 23, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe announced that this ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was appointed the DNC’s Senior Advisor for Religious Outreach. Again, the Catholic League did some scratching around to find out more about her, and as with Vanderslice, we were struck by what we found.
As it turned out, Reverend Peterson was one of 32 clergy members to file an amicus brief on behalf of Michael Newdow’s attempt to excise the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. The brief made it clear that Peterson was infinitely more concerned about the sensibilities of atheists like Newdow than she was for the 90 percent of Americans who believe in God. The questions I posed were made public in a news release: “And this is the person the Democrats want to dispatch to meet the heads of religious organizations? Are they out of their minds? Would they hire a gay basher to reach out to homosexuals?” 55
The next day, August 3, I delivered another news release on Reverend Peterson. This time I disclosed how she was chosen as the first executive director of a new group, the Clergy Leadership Network (CLN). Its stated mission was to fight the Religious Right and “get a national leadership change.” The group seemed more at home with politics than religion. For example, when Peterson was asked whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God, she breezily answered, “I would rather you not quote theology.” CLN, we discovered, also took no position on abortion. Not surprisingly, CLN’s office was right across the street from the DNC’s headquarters. Just as unsurprising was the revelation that Peterson believed that “paying taxes is a way of loving thy neighbor.” 56
Keeping the pressure on, the next day I sent out another news release. The CLN’s Web site said a great deal about separation of church and state but virtually nothing about religious liberty (e.g., it was against faith-based initiatives). It also had a love affair with taxes: “Taxes provide a way to look out for our neighbors.… Slashing taxes denies that!” Indeed, it said that slashing taxes is “inevitably an appeal to our greed, not to our generosity or compassion.” In other words, the greedy want to keep the money they’ve earned; those who want to take it from them are the altruists. No wonder Peterson said, “The federal budget is a moral document.” 57 This became a mantra throughout the campaign and was picked up by the Obama campaign in 2008.
Regarding gay marriage, while the CLN Web site said nothing about it, its CEO, Albert Pennybacker, was on record favoring it. William Sloan Coffin, who at one time was among America’s most famous radical men of the cloth, chimed in by saying that most of the other CLN officials “view marriage as a human right, not a reward for being heterosexual.” Incredibly, the CLN Web site also had links to an anti-Catholic site, Chuck Currie’s blog, which featured a piece titled “When Catholic Girls Go Wild,” and to MoveOn.org, a left-wing group that has nothing to do with religion. 58
After being pounded for three days, Reverend Peterson decided to hang it up. She told Religion News Service that “it was no longer possible for me to do my job effectively.” The Washington Post added that her decision was made “after the New York-based Catholic League issued three blistering news releases attacking her positions.” 59
/> Edwards Hires Bigots
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate John Edwards managed to make the Kerry and DNC appointments look good by comparison. Edwards also brought religious conservatives together, one more time.
On February 6, 2007, the Catholic League demanded that Edwards fire Amanda Marcotte as blogmaster and Melissa McEwan as netroots coordinator. He chose to fire them, then rehire them, thus imploding his credibility with Democrats as a man who could be trusted to make tough decisions. They were then pressured to resign. It was their writings penned before they went to work for Edwards that finished them.
On December 26, 2006, Marcotte had written on the Pandagon blog site that “the Catholic church is not about to let something like compassion for girls get in the way of using the state as an instrument to force women to bear more tithing Catholics.” On October 9, 2006, she said that “the Pope’s gotta tell women who give birth to stillborns that their babies are cast into Satan’s maw.” On the same day, she wrote that “it’s going to be bad PR for the church, so you can sort of see why the Pope is dragging ass.” And on June 14, 2006, Marcotte offered the following Q&A: “What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?” To which she offered the reply, “You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.” 60
On November 21, 2006, McEwan wrote on the Web site AlterNet that “some of Christianity’s most prominent leaders—including the Pope—regularly speak out against gay tolerance.” On November 1, 2006, on her blog Shakespeare’s Sister, she referred to President Bush’s “wingnut Christofascist base” when lashing out against religious conservatives. On February 21, 2006, she attacked religious conservatives again, only this time she unloaded with a string of expletives. 61 She even described herself in terms so vulgar that no mainstream media outlet could print or repeat them over the airwaves. 62
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