Bill Donohue, head of an outfit called the Catholic League and who is more Catholic than the pope, seems to make a good living and gains publicity by protesting loudly at anything that can be interpreted as a slight on Catholicism. He was predictably outraged (his outrage meter is always at 11) at the attempts by LGBT groups to march in the St. Patrick’s day parades in New York and Boston. When they were rebuffed, Donohue was again outraged that beer companies Sam Adams, Heineken, and Guinness withdrew their sponsorship and vowed not to drink their beer.
Donohue said that Catholics had every right to reject groups that did not follow their doctrines and said that he would show up the hypocrisy of gay rights supporters by demanding that he be allowed to take part in New York’s Pride Parade under the banner “Straight is Great”.
“Are they going to let me do it or not? I’m waiting to see what they want to say,” Donohue said, explaining the pride parade organizers require participants to carry LGBT signs. “All right, you can disagree with their rules, but that’s their parade. Why don’t they respect us when it comes to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade?”
But the parade organizers have said that Donohue is welcome to march with them.
“Mr. Donohue and his group are free to participate in the 2014 March,” said David Studinski, march director at NYC Pride, in a statement. “His group’s presence affirms the need for this year’s Pride theme, ‘We Have Won When We’re One.’ Straight is great – as long as there’s no hate.”
Chris Frederick, managing director of the organization, said “straight allies are great,” including the thousands that participate in the parade every year like Catholic groups that support LGBT equality.
I for one would love to see Donohue march in the Pride Parade and be shown a lot of love by the other marchers and supporters lining the streets. But he may be regretting his offer because as of yet parade organizers have not received a formal application from him.
Having second thoughts, Bill?
I’ll be buying stock in Orville Redenbacher (but we know Donohue is too cowardly to actually show up now that his bluff has been called).
Of course Mr. Donohue hasn’t submitted the application to join the parade! As we’ve recently learned, filling out forms is a grave moral offense that all good catholics should resist.
@ justsome,
It’s sad how they reject that wonderful teaching in the Bible
“Render unto Caesar the forms that are Caesar’s and unto God …whatever”
Ah! such noble sentiments…
It’s nice of the organizers of the Pride Parade to allow Donahue’s hate group to take part, but there wouldn’t be any hypocrisy if they wouldn’t.
The St. Pat’s Day parade is meant, among other things, to acknowledge Americans of Irish descent, and presumably there are gay Americans with Irish ancestry. To show one more group and organization with members with Irish ancestry is pretty much within the purpose of this event.
The Pride Parade is meant, among other things, to demonstrate that gay people exist and are in every part of society and to promote equality (hence allowing heterosexuals to take part). It’s not out of line to rule that a hate group has no part in this.
I imagine it’s tough for Donohue to claim he’s being persecuted when he’s obviously the asshole in the room.
The Pride organizers’ acceptance of his “Straight is Great” message also totally undercuts the idea of a secret gay agenda to turn everyone gay, which I imagine is a narrative he’s at least partly built his career on.
If the Catholic League plays such an important part in organising St Patrick’s Day events, it looks as if they aren’t actually acknowledging Americans of nonCatholic Irish descent either.
sc_aphanumeric jumble @6
Actually the Catholic League has absolutely nothing to do with organizing St. Patrick’s Day events. Donahue is a bystander whining about some companies not supporting his bigotry.
He’s already weasled out of it.
Joe Jervis has blogged about it:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2014/03/bill-donohue-weasels-out-of-nyc-pride-i.html
I am Joe’s complete lack of surprise.
@fwtbc: Did you read the whole article? Actually, Bill’s got a pretty good excuse. They were going to make him attend a “gay training session” which included some pretty shocking homosexual propaganda. Here’s an example from the Gay Training Powerpoint:
Yikes. I mean, I’m all for gay rights, but not when they shove it down our throats like that! And that’s not even the worst of it. A few slides later:
Ick. So yeah, you can see why Donohue dropped out. I’m sure he had every intention of participating, but you can’t expect him to sit there while radical gay activists spew graphic depictions of gross homosexual acts like “Formation Area”, “March Route”, and “Dispersal”. (I hadn’t even heard of that last one, I had to look it up on Urban Dictionary. Nasty!)
Dammit, I forgot to close my blockquotes… don’t suppose you could fix that, Mano?
@jamesweet,
Done!