Catholic League president Bill Donohue slammed New York mayor Bill de Blasio Friday for his irrational coronavirus lockdown rules and anti-religious animus.
Dr. Donohue underscored the arbitrary nature of de Blasio’s provisions on what is allowed and not allowed in New York City during coronavirus.
While the mayor has severely curtailed religious practice in the city, he has defended the rights of citizens to form huge gatherings to protest, even violently, and obviously without social distancing or masks (except perhaps antifa masks).
“What if, instead of protesting, a very small group of people want to go to a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple?” Donohue asked. “They don’t want to protest, just pray. They pledge to stay six feet apart. They promise not to engage in violence. Can they do so? No.”
When a reporter for a Jewish newspaper called out the mayor for the irony of allowing throngs to take to the streets in a mass assembly, but denying permission for a small church service, he got indignant, Donohue notes.
“Four hundred years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services,” de Blasio replied.
The upshot, Donohue writes, is that de Blasio has decided to “privilege” protesters, many of whom are well-off white folks, “all because he thinks that protesting racism justifies jettisoning his shutdown.”
The hypocrisy grows even thicker because of the mayor’s own, well-known racism, Donohue notes, since he has adopted racial quotas, repeatedly promoting policies that discriminate against Asian Americans by denying them seats in New York’s public schools.
De Blasio has also denied black and Hispanic parents the advantages of school choice, quashing the opportunities for charter schools and other avenues toward educational advancement.
Perhaps most disturbing, however, is the mayor’s hostility toward religious faith.
“This is a man who raised money for the communists in Nicaragua when he was young, and traveled, illegally, to Castro’s Cuba for his honeymoon, lying to his own children about where it took place,” Donohue writes.
The mayor also boycotted the St. Patrick’s Day Parade for years and recently lashed out at Rev. Franklin Graham “because the minister thinks marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
“This is the profile of an extremist,” Donohue concludes. “He throws the health of New Yorkers overboard to allow for a jammed protest he likes, and then invokes his health edict to ban people of faith from attending their house of worship.”
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