Fox News pundit rages against gay parents on air
Fox News
Fox News invited the head of the Catholic League to attack gay parents on air last night.
The right-wing media outlet invited Bill Donohue, an anti-LGBT lobbyist and President of the Catholic League, to discuss a lawsuit against the Trump administration from a lesbian couple who were seeking to foster a child.
Fox News show The Ingraham Angle, hosted by Laura Ingraham, invited Donohue on air to criticise Fort Worth lesbian couple who were denied permission to foster a refugee child through a government-funded scheme based on their sexual orientation.
Donohue fumed: “This is a pattern all across the country.
“You have gay couples trying to crash Catholic institutions, foster care, whatever it is.
“It’s a matter of gay bullying and harassment, if you want to know the truth.”
Speaking about the couple, he said: “These are gay activists. They try to act as if they’re not but they’re gay activists. They are trying to shove their secular values down our throats.
“The reason we have religious protection laws is, secular militants trying to shove their way in and basically neuter Catholic institutions.
“The intent here is to intimidate, to bully, and to get to capitulate.”
The couple, Fatma Marouf and Bryn Esplin, had filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration after a federal taxpayer-funded adoption programme run by the Catholic Charities of Fort Worth (CCFW) denied them the opportunity to foster a refugee child based on their sexual orientation.
Jamie Gliksberg, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, said: “The U.S. government is endorsing one set of religious beliefs over another in violation of the constitution and is unlawfully discriminating against LGBT people.
Esplin said: “Being denied the opportunity to foster a child because we don’t “mirror the Holy Family’ – clearly code for being a same-sex couple – was hurtful and insulting to us.
“More than that, though, insisting on such a narrow, religious view of what a family must look like deprives these children of a nurturing, supportive home.”
Marouf said: “Refugee children have been through enough trauma to last a lifetime. They need love, stability, and support, which Bryn and I have in abundance. But in discriminating against us, the agency put their religious views of LGBT people above what is best for the kids in their care.”
Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Kenneth D. Upton said: “The federal government was on notice when it funded USCCB that this organization refuses to provide services to same-sex spouses at taxpayer expense.
“Our government should not be favoring certain religious beliefs over others—to the tune of millions of dollars—and turning people away from government services based on their failure to conform to the dictates of a particular religious belief.
“This type of government-funded discrimination is not just coercive—it’s heartbreaking to Fatma and Bryn, and other loving couples denied their dream of bringing a child into their home, and hurts children in federal foster care programs denied loving families,” Upton added. “USCCB’s sole criterion for placing the children in its care should be the best interests of the children.”
Donohue is a notorious opponent of basic LGBT rights – calling for boycotts of businesses that support equality and encouraging churches to purge volunteers who are gay.
He previously waged a campaign to censor ABC TV show The Real O’Neals because it featured a Catholic teen coming out as gay.
Donohue compared the show’s co-creator Dan Savage to the former leader of the KKK.
Celebrating the show’s cancellation, he said: “We’ve got great news, The Real O’Neals has been axed. They would have dropped it after one season except for the fact that the Catholic League has been fighting against it.
“It’s not the anti-Catholic content of The Real O’Neals that bothered us so much, most of it was just plain stupid. It was the fact that it was based on the life of Dan Savage. He’s a sick sex columnist… he’s a filthy-mouthed bigot against Catholics.
“They would never allow [white supremacist] David Duke to produce a show on ABC owned by Disney, but yet they allowed Savage to be a co-producer.
“They finally dumped it after the second season… if they had any guts they’d have dumped it as soon as they’d seen the script.
“At least today, I can say it’s over. The Catholic League has finally won, albeit regrettably late. We went after advertisers, we dropped a few of them, we gave them some bad PR, and hopefully blackened up that snow-white image of Disney. It’s a good day.”
