There's been a big media splash about a meeting at the White House between leaders of freethought groups such as American Atheists and Obama administration officials. President Obama didn't show. The meeting is a small positive step for an administration that discriminates against freethinkers in a variety of ways, including expanding Hate Based Initiatives which divert federal funding from inclusive nonprofits to religious ones.

It may be a very small step, but that didn't keep the religious nuts from throwing fits. An example is provided by Bill Donohue, the wingnut who runs the "Catholic League" a tiny heterosexist, misogynist, racist, and Roman Catholic supremacist hate group. (Raw Story 2/26/10)

"People of faith, especially Christians, have good reason to wonder exactly where their interests lie with the Obama administration," Donohue said in a statement. "Now we have the definitive answer. In an unprecedented move, leaders of a presidential administration are hosting some of the biggest anti-religious zealots in the nation."

If you aren't giggling about Donohue accusing other people of being "zealots," you probably don't know much about him.

As comical as Donohue can be, there is a sinister side to this religious extremist. He has attacked a group representing survivors of the rampant molestation of Roman Catholic children by their priests on numerous occasions. Here's a particularly vile example in one of Donohue's press releases of demonizing the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

Any minor who has been sexually molested deserves our compassion. But what SNAP is doing, aided and abetted by angry Catholics and ex-Catholics, deserves not our understanding, but contempt. This is a group which has a deep ideological and financial investment in painting the Catholic Church as a villain.

“SNAP’s ideological bias stems from the fact that it positively refuses to recognize the incredible progress that has been made—exactly five priests out of more than 40,000 had accusations made against them for abusing a minor in 2007—yet for SNAP it’s never enough. Financially, it derives much of its funding from the steeple-chasing lawyers who have fleeced the ‘deep pocket’ Catholic Church. It’s time we dismissed these professional victims’ advocates for what they are—activists whose goal is to discredit the Church.

This is sick, sick, sick.

Given the enormous amount of child molestation that still goes on in the Roman Catholic priesthood, the claim that only five priests have had accusations made against them in public during 2007 is truly frightening. It strongly suggests that the RCC clergy is still pressuring victims and their parents to keep quiet.

Learn More About SNAP!