Beware The Anti-Racism Agenda

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

The Catholic Church regards racism to be "intrinsically evil" and supports policies to check it. It must be noted, however, that today there is no shortage of educators, reporters, activists, and lawmakers who claim to oppose racism while harboring an agenda that sometimes promotes it.

They do so mostly for ideological reasons, though those in the diversity and grievance industry also profit from it monetarily. Critical race theory, which is an inherently racist prescription—it judges people on the basis of their skin color, not their individual traits—is a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it.

In my lifetime, never have non-whites been treated more fairly than they are today, yet there is an avalanche of news stories that say just the opposite. While objective conditions have definitely improved, the perception that we are a racist nation is widespread. How can this be?

When Senator Tim Scott, an African American, recently said that "America is not a racist country," he was ridiculed, maligned, and insulted. Why the anger? Because he challenged, to great effect, the raging narrative in elite quarters that America is irredeemably racist.

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to comment on what Scott said. "No, I don't think America is a racist country," she said, but we need to "speak truth about the history of racism." Previously, she went further than that when she declared, "America has a long history of systemic racism." 

President Biden is concerned about racism as well, claiming that "white supremacists" constitute the "most lethal terrorist threat." He took his cues from the FBI which is preoccupied with white supremacists.

Ask most Americans who qualifies as a white supremacist and the likely answer is someone who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan. But the Klan has actually been in decline. So who are these people who pose the "most lethal terrorist threat"?

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is the go-to site that journalists use to access information about white supremacy and hate crimes. It is a left-wing activist organization that claims to monitor such offenses.

Last month it sounded very much like President Biden when its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, said, "We're facing a crisis of far-right extremism and deep threats to our democracy." From whom? She identified the mob storming the Capitol in January as being "led by white supremacists and other far-right extremists."

Huang provided no evidence to support her remarks; she simply asserted that white supremacists were the principal culprits. It apparently never occurred to her that these men and women were mostly angry pro-Trump supporters who felt disabused by electoral politics and political correctness, concerns that have nothing to do with feelings of racial superiority. Veterans and former police officers appear to have been overrepresented. If they are white supremacists, we need to see the empirical evidence.

In fact, the SPLC does a lousy job defining who these white supremacists are. Its lengthy report, "The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020," says an awful lot about white supremacists but is noticeably short on identifying exactly who they are.

For example, it says they track "extremist flyers," reporting that they found 4,900 "flyering incidents." The worst offenders, it said, were those who promoted the "white nationalist ideology," a train of thought it left undefined. It did not say who these white nationalists were or whether they were responsible for any violence. It did say that the Klan is no longer "a significant generator of white supremacist terror," largely because it "saw its count dwindle to 25 groups in 2020." So who are the new Klansmen?

SPLC has racism on the brain. In its report, it expresses dismay over the fact that "only 38 percent of respondents" in a survey believed that "systemic racism" accounts for a disparity in health outcomes between whites and non-whites, "even as COVID-19 ravages communities of color."

It did not say whether white supremacists were to blame for this condition, but it did say that it was unnerved to learn that the majority of Americans thought that Black Lives Matter (BLM) violence in 2020 was a bigger problem than police violence against blacks. With good reason: BLM killed 25 people, assaulted the police, burned down entire neighborhoods, and engaged in widespread looting. In 2019, police shot and killed 999 people: 452 were white and 252 were black; 26 of the whites and 12 of the blacks were unarmed.

For the record, SPLC regards as "far right" extremists anyone who thinks that boys who "transition" to girls should not be allowed to compete against girls in sports and shower with them. Perhaps they are the new Klansmen.

Real racism and extremism, as the Catholic Church understands it, must be opposed and defeated. It does not help this noble cause when prominent Americans and non-profit organizations are bent on finding racism under every rock.

Faith On Trial for this Thursday (5-13-21)

Building faith communities on college campuses – Matt Zerrusan, president of the student housing fund and chief of innovative discipleship at Newman Ministries, and

Identity politics and how they are shaping religious liberty in the U. S. – Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free.

 

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 10 a.m. (Central Time) on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live from IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also find podcasts of earlier programs.

Calling on Moderate Democrats | The Stream

Calling on Moderate Democrats | The Stream: Where are the moderate Democrats as Biden governs as a radical? Where are they when it comes to the border disaster?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Stupidity

 

Biden Declares War On Catholic Hospitals

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

On May 10, the Biden administration announced that it would force doctors who can perform sex transition surgery to do so, regardless of their religious objections. This is a declaration of war on Catholic doctors and hospitals. It will also be contested in the federal courts.

Predictably, the media are billing this Health and Human Services decision, which applies Title IX of civil rights law to the rights of transgender persons, as an anti-discrimination measure, not as an attack on religious liberty. Title IX bars discrimination based on sex, but says nothing about transgender persons.

The Obama administration was the first to argue that Title IX should apply to transgender persons; the Trump administration disagreed; the Biden administration agrees with the Obama administration. In a May 10 news story by the Associated Press (AP) on this subject, it said that the Obama administration "relied on a broad understanding of sex shaped by a person's inner sense of being male, female, neither or a combination."

Paradoxically, this AP interpretation is both accurate and inaccurate at the same time.

It accurately conveys what both the Obama and Biden administrations believe: being male or female is a subjective judgment, one that allows a man or a woman to deny that they are a man or a woman, or any sex at all, for that matter. Which means they could be an acorn. It is inaccurate because it is a fiction: one's "inner sense" of what sex one belongs to may be inaccurate. What matters is reality, not tales from "The Twilight Zone."

This assault on common sense and religious liberty began in 2015 when the Obama administration issued a mandate requiring doctors and hospitals to provide for transgender surgeries. They made no exemption for those who had religious objections.

The Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services announced new regulations that interpreted Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) as meaning that "sex" would be redefined to include such things as "gender identity," thus inventing rights for transgender persons.

According to Ryan T. Anderson and Roger Severino, "Under these guidelines, if a covered physician administers treatments or perform surgeries that can further gender transitions, that physician must provide them for gender transitions on the same terms, and insurance must cover it, regardless of the independent judgment of the physician" (italics in the original). It also denied religious exemptions.

Interestingly, doctors who worked for the Obama administration at the time said, "Based on a thorough review of the clinical evidence...there is not enough evidence to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for [patients] with gender dysphoria."

On President Trump's last full day in office, January 19, a federal court struck down the transgender mandate forcing doctors to perform transgender surgeries. Last month, the Biden administration filed an appeal; it wants to deny religious exemptions. Now it is jumping the gun: Health and Human Services chief Xavier Becerra's policy statement is seeking to do just that.

Pope Francis has observed that "biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated." The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops affirms what the Holy Father has said. It also opposes requiring religious organizations "to cover 'transition' procedures in their employee health insurance plans...."

It must be noted that Catholic hospitals do not deny routine health care to transgender persons. There is a difference between denying transgender persons treatment for Covid and forcing a Catholic doctor to make anatomical changes on the sexually confused.

The Biden administration's war on Catholic hospitals is one of many policies it has promoted that endanger religious liberty. That they are being shoved down on our throats by a man who professes to be a "devout Catholic" is all the more nauseating.

More Nuns Seek Supreme Court Protection

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) - Several orders of nuns, both Catholic and Anglican, as well as a couple of Catholic dioceses, along with several other Christian churches and faith-based social justice ministries, are asking the Supreme Court to protect them from an insidious state rule in New York that will compel them to provide abortion coverage in their employees’ health-care packages.

Shades of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who successfully challenged Obama-era regulations that forced them to provide contraceptive coverage in their health insurance. Three times the court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters holding that the government could not force the Little Sisters to do so.

Ironically, in 2017 after the Little Sisters scored two of their Supreme Court victories, the superintendent of the New York department of financial services, Linda A. Lacewell, promulgated a regulation mandating that employer health-care plans cover abortions. The regulations, as originally proposed, contained a religious exemption. But after public pressure, Lacewell backtracked on the religious protection, limiting the exception only to religious employers whose work is, basically, with only members of their sect and who employ persons who share the religious beliefs of the employer.

Thus numerous religious organizations such as the Carmelite Sisters, who run a nursing home for the elderly and dying, and the First Bible Baptist Church, which serves the community through youth and deaf ministries (just to name two of the plaintiffs), who do not limit their ministry to just members of their own body, nor do they restrict hiring to members of their faith, do not qualify for the rule’s religious exemption.

According to the petition filed with the Supreme Court:

“The Superintendent abandoned the broader exemption after ‘request[s]’ by ‘hundreds of commenters.’ In the Superintendent’s view, ‘[n]either State nor Federal law require[d]’ any exemption. And the exemption she chose was analogous to existing state law.’ The Superintendent stated that she rejected the initially proposed religious exemption because ‘the interests of ensuring access to reproductive care, fostering equality between the sexes, providing women with better health care, and the disproportionate impact of a lack of access to reproductive health services on women in low income families weighs far more heavily than the interest of business corporations to assert religious beliefs’.”

In other words, the abortion lobby got to her. As a result she narrowed the exemption to protect only religious entities whose purpose is to inculcate religious values who primarily serve and hire co-religionists. The regulation imposes fines for employers who fail to provide abortion coverage: $2,700 per employee. In the case of the Carmelite Sisters, with over 200 employees of their nursing homes, those fines would reach over half million dollars a year.

So after losing their case in the New York courts, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and several private law firms, are appealing the matter to the Supreme Court on behalf of the religious plaintiffs.

“Our faith tells us that every life is precious from the moment of conception to the final breath. That’s why we spend our lives praying and serving to lift others’ burdens,” said Mother Miriam of the Sisterhood of Saint Mary, the oldest religious order founded in America in the Anglican tradition.

“New York has told us that if we want to hold our beliefs about the sanctity of life, we have to stop serving non-Anglicans. We cannot compromise on our religious beliefs, or in our service to people of all faiths or no faith at all. That’s why we need relief from the Supreme Court.”

In their petition asking the court to hear the case (Writ of Certiorari), the religious groups, which include the Catholic Dioceses of Albany and Ogdensburg, and Catholic Charities of Brooklyn, write:

“Needless to say, this regulation imposes enormous burdens on the countless religious entities opposed to abortion as a matter of longstanding and deep-seated religious conviction.”

The petition claims that the rulings against them in the lower courts stem from an improper finding in an earlier case which held that applying a neutral law of “general applicability” to a case does not require the reviewing court to subject the matter to “strict scrutiny,” which imposes upon the government the burden to show a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means possible, lest the law be found in violation of the challenging party’s First Amendment protections.

After a short history of how other courts and circuits have interpreted prior cases, the petition makes the claim that since there was a modified exception for certain religious institutions, the law is not, therefore, one of general applicability. Quoting recent case law, plaintiffs argue “that a regulation is not generally applicable if it has ‘any’ exception.”

Further, “That the abortion mandate undermines New York’s interest in ensuring comprehensive coverage by exempting some religious organizations but not others should thus be more than sufficient to trigger strict scrutiny.”

Additionally, petitioners argued, “Exempting only certain religious organizations while imposing burdens on other necessarily triggers strict scrutiny. No state can pass laws that prefer one religion over another. Imposing burdens on some religious entities while exempting others flouts the constitutional prohibition of denominational preferences.”

And they argued, “[T]hat the Abortion Mandate violates the Free Exercise Clause because it substantially burdens and discriminates among and against certain religious entities without justification. The Abortion Mandate was promulgated with the explicit intention of exempting some employers, while, at the same time, excluding other employers from the exemption. And the exemption ‘treats similarly situated individuals and organizations differently based solely on religious viewpoint’.”

“When New York instituted its abortion mandate, the Little Sisters of the Poor were already two Supreme Court victories into their battle against the contraceptive mandate. Now they’ve won for a third time, sending the clear message that the government can’t make nuns do its dirty work,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at Becket.

“New York’s failure to learn from the Little Sisters’ saga that you can’t make nuns pay for abortions is beyond reason. The court needs to step in and teach New York that lesson.”

As I always caution in these cases, the Supreme Court has not agreed to hear this case yet, so the only petition filed at this point is an argument as to why the court should accept it. If it is accepted, the argument will turn on how the court should rule, and that could take a year or more before the case is finally submitted. So stay calm and pray the court accepts the case and grants the relief requested.

(You can contact Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial at IowaCatholicRadio.com.) 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Canada's euthanasia lobby wants more death

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Canada's euthanasia lobby wants more death: Alex Schadenberg Euthanasia Prevention Coalition An article published by Global News Edmonton is essentially promoting the fact that Bill C-...

Why Did Biden Nix God In Prayer Address?

 By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

President Biden raised more than eyebrows when he omitted any mention of God in his National Day of Prayer proclamation. What he did was unprecedented: No previous president has failed to mention God since the day it was created in 1952 by a joint resolution of Congress and signed into law by President Harry Truman.

When asked about Biden's omission, Rev. Franklin Graham was generous in his remarks. "It was probably a staff person that wrote it and maybe not even ran it by him—because I don't think Joe Biden would have approved that one." Maybe.

Even if Graham is right, that doesn't settle the issue. Why would a speechwriter nix God from a presidential speech about prayer?

It is no secret that the Democratic Party is home to secularists. Those who have no religious affiliation, as well as agnostics and atheists, have laid anchor in the Party, many of whom are openly hostile to religion and people of faith. It is not a leap to conclude that this mentality colored Biden's prepared remarks.

Last summer, Secular Democrats of America was welcomed at the Democratic National Convention. They were given three panels to voice their concerns, and they did not hold back in lambasting Christian conservatives. At another session, held on August 18, 2020, hundreds of secular Democrats tuned in to an event hosted by this group. It featured congressmen, state lawmakers and activists: they focused on what they said were constitutional threats made by some Christians.

Last fall, Humanists for Biden was established, an offshoot of Secular Democrats of America. It was headed by a professor who calls himself a chaplain, even though he is an atheist and the term chaplain refers to a clergyman.

In December, Secular Democrats of America submitted a 28-page report to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris outlining their animus against religious liberty. They essentially want to secularize religious institutions, gutting most religious exemptions. Their demonization of white Christians was perhaps the most odious aspect of the report.

Militant secularists have long hated the National Day of Prayer. In 2003, the American Humanist Association established a National Day of Reason; even the secular-minded media ignore it. Cribbing off the National Day of Prayer, which is celebrated on the first Thursday in May, the atheists chose the same day to mark their event. Looks like it didn't accomplish too much this year—there were no events. "There is no specific location where this holiday is celebrated," it said.

In 2010, Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Christian-bashing atheist organization, argued in court that the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional. It won in a district court but lost on appeal. A federal appeals court ruled that the organization lacked standing, adding that it’s "feeling of alienation" was not sufficient grounds to file suit. "Hurt feelings differ from legal injury," the court said.

The National Day of Prayer Task Force organizes this annual event; it is privately funded. Those who are averse to prayer are free to ignore it. But those who choose to participate are expected to pay tribute to God, which is why what President Biden did was inexplicable at best and objectionable at worst.

To the extent that Biden's remarks reflect the sentiments of those who are running the White House, this does not speak well for him or his administration. More important, it doesn't bode well for the country

Kudos to archbishop for challenging fellow Catholics on abortion

Kudos to archbishop for challenging fellow Catholics on abortion: A Catholic pro-life leader is setting the record straight on abortion – and applauding an archbishop for taking a stand that challenges pro-abortion politicians who claim the Catholic faith.

Our program, Faith On Trial May 6

This week we examine the first 100 days of the Biden administration in the areas of live, human dignity, family, and religious liberty with two experts from the Family Research Council, Connor Semelsberger and Mary Beth Waddell.

Action alert from the USCCB

 

On April 15, 2021, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published a proposed rule on the Title X family planning program that would reverse the Trump Administration’s 2019 Title X Rule (also known as the “Protect Life Rule”).  

On May 4th, the USCCB along with the Southern Baptists Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the Catholic Medical Association, the National Association of Catholic Nurses-USA, and The National Catholic Bioethics Center submitted joint comments pointing out several problems, including that the proposed rule would reintegrate abortion into what Congress intended to be a pre-pregnancy family planning program.

HHS needs to hear from us that this proposed rule is terrible policy and must be changed! 

The deadline for submitting your comments is May 17, 2021.

CLICK HERE TO SEND YOUR COMMENTS TO HHS

PLEASE SHARE THIS ALERT WITH ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

Find background information on Title X of the Public Health Service Act here.

California Bill Is Anti-Catholic And Anti-Poor

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

The California State Senate is moving at full speed to pass the Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act. This legislation seeks to break existing partnerships between the University of California and hospitals, particularly Catholic ones, that refuse to provide elective abortions, sex reassignment surgeries and sterilizations.

For all the talk of "inclusive care" and "a full range of healthcare services," in reality this bill would leave tens of thousands without access to the high quality healthcare Catholic hospitals provide.

If the Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act were to become law, UCLA would have to break its contract with Dignity Health that operates several specialty clinics, including a cancer treatment center and a pediatric trauma center. Other partnerships UCLA has with Catholic hospitals including a cleft palate treatment center, a post-transplant care unit, and a pediatric and neonatal surgery facility would also have to come to an end.

Elsewhere in the Golden State, UC Davis would have to terminate its joint run cancer treatment center with Mercy Medical Center in Merced, while St. Mary's Medical Center could no longer administer San Francisco's only inpatient adolescent psychiatry program with UC San Francisco.

Ultimately, all of these would leave patients without access to life-saving treatments. "It's only going to take away [health care] from the poor and vulnerable," said Lori Dangberg, vice-president of the Alliance of Catholic Health Care. To further this point, Dr. Carrie Byington, executive vice-president of UC Health, said that "low-income and rural communities and people of color" would bear the brunt of the reduced access to care that could be "life threatening [in some instances] and exacerbate health disparities."

Regardless of the people that would be left without healthcare, Equality California, NARAL Pro-Choice California and the ACLU of California continue to promote this legislation. So driven by secular madness to force Catholics out of the medical field, these groups do not care how many people lose the service they need.

While it is bad enough to support this perfidious bill knowing that it would prevent tens of thousands of people from accessing treatment, it is even worse to be its author. Considering its adverse impact on so many Californians, a reasonable person wonders about the priorities of someone who could propose legislation that would deny healthcare to those in need. That distinct privilege belongs to California State Senator Scott Wiener.

Wiener is a regular at the Folsom Street Fair. It is a Catholic-bashing gay event where nudity is featured. When he is not tweeting pictures of himself promenading about the Fair barechested in a leather vest and sampling the BDSM paraphernalia, he tweets out personal attacks against Catholics and routinely attacks the teachings of the Church.

In 2019, Wiener commented on the Covington Catholic students, calling them "those jackass MAGA kids." He went on to assert the erroneous claims they were harassing a Native American elder while chanting "build the wall."

Earlier this year, Wiener objected to the Vatican's ruling on blessing same sex unions. He offered his own teachings for the Church saying, "what's 'sinful' is a Church that continues to dehumanize [and] stigmatize an entire community....The Catholic Church leadership needs to enter the modern world."

Another staple for him on Twitter is showing support for the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a protest and street performance organization that insults nuns and that uses drag and Catholic imagery to attack Church teachings. In April, he tweeted out pictures of a mural celebrating their efforts to assault Catholicism.   

Beyond the attacks found on his Twitter page, as a state legislator, Wiener has a platform to act upon his disdain for Catholics, and sponsor bills that undermine the Church.

From his public comments to his public policy, Wiener has a long record of bashing Catholics and promoting policies that work against the Church. The Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act is just another attack on Catholicism from an ardent enemy of the Faith.

It is a sad commentary on our society when those who harbor an animus against Catholicism do not care who they hurt, including the poor. So much for diversity and equity.

This week (5-6) on Faith On Trial

This week we’re going to examine the first 100 days of the Biden administration in the areas of live, human dignity, family, and religious liberty with two experts from the Family Research Council, Connor Semelsberger and Mary Beth Waddell.

This week, sitting in for Gina Noll will be Julie Nelson from Iowa Catholic Radio’s Catholic Women Now.

 

Our program airs Thursdays at 10 a.m. Central Time on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and it streams live on our web page IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also listen to earlier programs. Join us this Thursday for Faith On Trial.

Ethics Of Fetal Research Under Biden

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

Two years ago, a jury awarded $58 million in damages to ten plaintiffs after finding that the Phoenix-based Biological Resource Center had deceived families into donating the body of a deceased family member. The families thought the body would be used for medical research. Instead, the bodies were dismembered and sold for profit.

FBI agents raided the facility in 2014 and found chopped up bodies in buckets, including feet, shoulders, legs, and spines. Freezers were packed with penises. They even found a torso with a different head sewn on, reminiscent of "Frankenstein." The owner of the human chop shop, Stephen Gore, was convicted of deceiving the families who donated the body; he also broke the law by deceiving the buyers who were sold body parts with infectious diseases.

How could something like this happen? It's actually not hard to understand. When we objectify human beings, treating them as inanimate objects, such practices logically follow.

The Catholic Church has a long and proud record of opposing attempts to dehumanize men, women, and children, ranging from denouncing pagan practices such as infanticide to Nazi eugenics. Their latest salvo is a shot at the Biden administration for lifting limits on human fetal research that were placed by the Trump administration.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chairman of the bishops' conference on Pro-Life Activities, released a statement on April 21 that was superb. "The bodies of children killed by abortion deserve the same respect as that of any other person. Our government has no right to treat innocent abortion victims as a commodity that can be scavenged for body parts to be used for research. It is unethical to promote and subsidize research that can lead to legitimizing the violence of abortion."

White House press secretary Jan Psaki was asked about this statement on April 27. She said the White House "respectfully disagrees," explaining that "it's important to invest in science and look for opportunities to cure diseases."

As expected, Psaki never acknowledged the humanity of the unborn child. She can't. If she did, the Biden administration's extreme pro-abortion agenda would implode.

It's easy to ignore the humanity of the unborn if we call fetal tissue "material." That was the choice of words selected by Planned Parenthood in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Newsweek described the dismembered body of an unborn baby extracted in a D&E abortion as "fetal material being pulled from a woman's vagina." In the same decade, Rachel Conrad Wahlberg, an abortion-rights advocate, contended that the unborn do not have an independent existence. Referring to the pregnant woman, she said, "It is hers. It is her possession (italic in the original)."

The same mindset marked the Dred Scott decision that legalized slavery. In the Supreme Court decision of 1857, the court affirmed public opinion by noting that black people were "articles of property and merchandise." Nearly 400 blacks were used as guinea pigs in the infamous Tuskegee experiment that began in 1932. For 40 years, rural sharecroppers who took part in the experiment never knew they had syphilis, nor were treated for it. They were not seen as human beings with rights equal to that of others.

After World War I, prisoners in San Quentin received transplanted sex organs from rams, goats, and boors. Tuberculosis treatments were tested on other prisoners. Inmates of Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois were exposed to malaria in the hope that a cure could be found. The drug companies had a field day experimenting on the incarcerated, and did so without controversy right up until the 1970s.

Not only were prisoners seen as subhuman, so were mentally retarded children. From the mid-1950s to 1970, those housed at Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, New York were infected with hepatitis so that doctors could track the spread of the viral infection. More than 700 children were infected to see how they responded to a drug treatment. 

After what Jews went through at the hands of Nazi physician Josef Mengele—he performed painful and often deadly experiments on twins—it led to the establishment of the Nuremberg Code, a guideline for conducting research on humans. The first stricture insists that the subject must provide consent before the research can begin.

A child in his mother's womb can never give consent.

Archbishop Naumann got it right when he said "it is deeply offensive to millions of Americans for our tax dollars to be used for research that collaborates with an industry built on the taking of innocent lives." Worse, this morally indefensible decision was rendered by our "devout Catholic" president.

 

Does Harvard (And Academia) Discriminate Against Asians?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) - To answer the question above, a lot of Asians not only think so, but also believe that Asians are being discriminated at all levels of education and many put the blame on Critical Race Theory (CRT) and affirmative action, provoking lawsuits against the offending schools. The gist of the litigation is that Harvard, Yale, other colleges, and elite schools have been using illegitimate racial quotas to cap the number of Asians granted entry.

And all of this is leading many to call for an end to affirmative action and Critical Race Theory in academic admissions.

A suit against Harvard, which is now on the Supreme Court pending list, claims the school, by manipulating evaluation criteria for applicants, disfavors Asian students. According to the Harvard suit, back in December of 2012 a report in The New York Times alleged that the school had an Asian student quota. The school responded by asking its Office of Institutional Research (OIR) to investigate. The Internal OIR report found “evidence that Asians are disadvantaged in the admissions process” and placed the blame on Harvard’s use of a personal rating to evaluate a prospective student. It also reported that being an Asian applicant “negatively correlated” with admission.

To place this in perspective, the Harvard admission process uses race at every stage, including recruitment. There, Black and Hispanic high school students with a PSAT score of 1100 and up are invited to apply, but Asian applicants must score 1350 or above, higher than all other racial groups, including whites. There comes a point when those tentatively approved for admission are placed on a “lop list” list to winnow the field.

Those who are placed on that list are then evaluated using four data points: legacy status, recruited athletic status, financial aid eligibility, and race. Race was to be considered by creating a “personal rating” score for each applicant by evaluating them four areas: leadership, self-confidence, likability, and kindness. Black and Hispanic applicants are then awarded racial preferences, but Asian applicants are not. It was in this process that Asians scored the lowest.

In November of 2014, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA), filed a federal suit in Massachusetts on behalf of its members and Asian students who were denied admission. Students for Fair Admissions, according to its webpage, “is a nonprofit membership group of more than 20,000 students, parents, and others who believe that racial classifications and preferences in college admissions are unfair, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. . . . A student’s race and ethnicity should not be factors that either harm or help that student to gain admission to a competitive university.”

According to the SFFA’s Supreme Court appeal, at the district court, “Harvard’s admissions data revealed astonishing racial disparities in admissions rates among similarly qualified applicants.” Yet in September of 2019 the district court ruled Harvard’s use of race was consistent with applicable Supreme Court precedents, the leading one being a 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court, in a case over racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, ruled 5-4 that an admission process that favors “underrepresented minority groups” is constitutional. On appeal the First Circuit affirmed.

The petition for review (writ of certiorari) was filed February 25 and as of this writing 20 amicus briefs have been filed on the issue of certiorari.

In its petition, SFFA asks that the court overturn its ruling Grutter. That holding, “that schools can use race in admissions to pursue student body diversity is plainly wrong,” and “Harvard’s admissions program does not comply with (the) court’s precedents.” At Harvard, the petition states, “race is not ‘plus’ that is always ‘beneficial’; it’s a minus for Asian Americans.”

In arguing that the Grutter decision should be overturned, the certiorari petition argues that it is “grievously wrong” since the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment “contains no exceptions: it protects ‘any person’ from the denials of ‘the equal protection of the laws’” and that “free governments demand the abolition of all distinctions founded on color and race. . . . Grutter’s diversity rationale is not only uncompelling; it flouts basic equal-protection principles.

“If a university wants to admit students with certain experiences (say, overcoming discrimination), then it can evaluate whether individual applicants have that experience. It cannot simply use race as a proxy for certain experiences or views.”

It also argues that Grutter has “spawned significant negative consequences” in that it “sustains admission programs that intentionally discriminate against historically oppressed minorities. Jewish students were the first victims of holistic admissions, and Asian Americans are the main victims today.”

This is not the only suit SFFA has filed. Edward Blum, president of SFFA, said in a press release, “Yale, Harvard, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas, and many dozens of other highly competitive colleges and universities employ admissions practices that are discriminatory, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. Students applying to undergraduate and post-graduate programs should be judged on their individual talents, character, academic skills, extracurricular achievements, and socio-economic background but not the color of their skin.”

Of course, this is not new to the Asian-American community which is facing the bulk of academic discrimination.

In Fairfax County, Va., for example, Asian-American parents are taking action against a local high school. Former Wall Street Journal reporter and parent, Asra Q. Nomani, is part of a movement which is confronting the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology for lowering its rigorist standards for admission to the detriment of Asian students. She writes:

“To understand what’s behind this conflict, look no further than the controversial ideology of critical race theory, which praises or blames members of a particular race solely because they happen to be that race and seeks to interpret all forms of perceived injustice through a racial lens. This ideology has swept through America’s educational system at every level and is erasing our different narratives as Asian-Americans from different backgrounds and — to our shock — marginalizing our children and us.

“The ugly truth about critical race theory is that it inevitably seeks to fight racial hierarchies by instituting new forms of racial hierarchies. And Asian-American parents are increasingly taking notice. . . . County school officials set out to correct the supposedly problematic over-representation of Asian American students at TJ by watering down the strict admission standards.”

And in an echo of the SFFA case against Harvard, she adds, “Although the new process states it will ‘use only race-neutral methods,’ in practice this subjective set of standards allows them to pick and choose the students they prefer to achieve their desired racial balance and keep out too many Asian-American students.”

Similar cases are now proceeding against schools in New York City, Boston, and Washington State. Whether this movement will be able to curb race-based admissions programs is yet to be seen. One of the problems the Asian community faces, according to Nomani, is that as Asians have overcome discrimination and achieved upward mobility, “we are now white by adjacency.” She points to recent Black Lives Matter rioters who assaulted a rally supporting merit-based education.

“Education is the main area where CRT attacked us,” she wrote. “CRT, naturally, demands automatic preferences for blacks in admissions to selective institutions and programs. That is unacceptable to us: Such racial preferences come at the expense of our children, at the expense of academic standards, and at the expense of basic fairness.”

She continued in reference to the Harvard suit: “Despite never having met the applicants, Harvard admissions officers somehow conclude that Asian applicants lack integrity and courage — directly contradicting evaluations from interviewers who met the applicants, and from teachers who’ve known the applicants for months if not years. If smearing Asians this way isn’t hate speech, then what is? Call it diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

If blocking affirmative action in admissions is something in which you are interested, this might be your time. But as I always caution, if you are relying on the legal system, it will take time, and even then, the Supreme Court has not even agreed to review the case, much less overrule the Grutter precedent.

Time will tell.

Update: Just after the above column was submitted, Senate Democrats voted down an amendment from Senate Republicans to a hate crimes bill which would have barred federal funding for any institution of higher education that discriminates against Asian-Americans in recruitment, applicant review, or admissions. The vote was 49 Republicans for and 48 Democrats against. It needed 60 votes to pass.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday morning at 10 CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com).