William Anthony Donohue was born on July 18,1947 and is an American Roman Catholic layman who has been president of the Catholic League in the United States since 1993.
40 Facts About Bill Donohue
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Bill Donohue was born in the borough of Manhattan in New York City.
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Bill Donohue began his teaching career in the 1970s working at St Lucy's School in Spanish Harlem.
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Bill Donohue is divorced and has two adult children from his marriage.
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Bill Donohue became associated with the conservative Heritage Foundation, where he is an adjunct scholar.
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Blum died in 1990; in 1993, Bill Donohue became the organization's director.
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Bill Donohue formerly served on the board of directors of the National Association of Scholars.
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Bill Donohue serves on the board of advisers of the Washington Legal Foundation, the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, Catholics United for the Faith, the Ave Maria Institute, the Christian Film and Television Commission and Catholic War Veterans.
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Bill Donohue received the 2005 St Thomas More Award for Catholic Citizenship from Catholic Citizens of Illinois.
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In 2022, Bill Donohue was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Ave Maria School of Law.
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Bill Donohue gave the commencement address to the graduating class.
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In 2015, Bill Donohue said on Fox News, "Self censorship is the friend of freedom" and that free speech should not permit "obscene portrayal of religious figures".
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Bill Donohue believes marriage is "not about love" or "making people happy" but that one fundamental and inextricable purpose of marriage is to have a family.
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Bill Donohue argued that most offenses occurred before 1970 when "corporal punishment", as Donohue termed it, was not thought unacceptable, and referred to the victims as "miscreants".
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Bill Donohue noted the report's broad definitions of abuse, which included neglect and emotional abuse.
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Bill Donohue blamed the report and the journalists in turn.
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In 1995, Bill Donohue, joined by evangelical leaders, called for a boycott of Disney for distributing the British film Priest, which depicted one priest struggling with his homosexuality and another involved in an affair with a woman.
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Bill Donohue said the film was "designed intentionally to insult the Catholic Church and Catholics nationwide".
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Bill Donohue objected to some dialogue in a November 1998 episode and other material in a January 1999 show that, in his view, made Catholicism the butt of a joke.
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In 1999, before the release of Kevin Smith's film Dogma, Bill Donohue reported that he had read the script and found it objectionable.
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Smith later said that the film proved less offensive than its critics had anticipated and that Bill Donohue "actually invited me out to have a beer after making my life hell for six months".
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In December 2004, Bill Donohue discussed Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ.
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Bill Donohue took the episode in good humor, displaying a still from it in his office depicting him wearing the pope's miter.
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Bill Donohue said that the trilogy of books on which the screenplay was based, His Dark Materials, "denigrate Christianity, thrash the Catholic Church and sell the virtues of atheism".
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In 2010, Frank Rich said that when Bill Donohue extended his criticism of an art exhibit from one work he considered anti-religious and complained that it included "pornographic images of gay men", he "was just using his 'religious' objections as a perfunctory cover for the homophobia actually driving his complaint".
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Catholic League president Bill Donohue sent a letter to commissioner Rob Manfred comparing the group's performances to blackface.
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Bill Donohue has stated he played a critical role in triggering the FBI's investigation of Anthony Weiner's laptop resulting in the discovery of thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails.
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In 2014, in the face of a public pressure campaign calling for the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes and certain related matters in Ireland, Bill Donohue began his own campaign to challenge the prevailing narrative, going so far as to author a special report on the subject.
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Bill Donohue ignored suggestions that he was not helping calm the situation by protesting.
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Bill Donohue called the decision of the University of Notre Dame to award an honorary degree to President Obama in 2009 "a slap in the face to the bishops" of the US "given what the bishops have clearly asked of Catholic institutions".
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Bill Donohue protested against what he considers employment discrimination against Catholics, in the case of a woman required by her supervisor to remove the Ash Wednesday ashes from her forehead in 2005.
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In 2007, when a substitute high school teacher in Georgia wiped the ashes from a student's forehead and berated her, Bill Donohue called for the teacher to be disciplined.
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When school officials reported that the teacher had been "counseled and cautioned", Bill Donohue called the teacher's behavior "morally reprehensible" and asked state education officials to investigate the incident.
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Bill Donohue faulted the owners of the Empire State Building for failing to honor Mother Teresa in 2010 and Cardinal Timothy Dolan in 2012.
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In 1999, Bill Donohue called for people to picket the Brooklyn Museum of Art to protest its display of a painting by Chris Ofili titled The Holy Virgin Mary that, according to The New York Times, depicted "a black Madonna with a clump of elephant dung on one breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background".
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On November 30,2010, Bill Donohue denounced a piece of video art, A Fire in My Belly by David Wojnarowicz, that was included in an exhibition of gay and lesbian portraiture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.
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Bill Donohue called the video "anti-Christian hate speech" and called for its removal, which the Smithsonian did.
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One of the exhibit's curators said that Bill Donohue represented an anti-Semitic hate group that viewed gays and lesbians as "raw meat" in the culture wars.
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Bill Donohue protested at a news conference outside the gallery and was then denied admission.
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Bill Donohue pointed out that the Obama administration had recently criticized a film critical of Islam, Innocence of Muslims, but said nothing about Serrano's work.