JD Vance op-ed: Kamala Harris' bigotry and prejudice against Catholics

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/guest-columns/2024/10/24/jd-vance-kamala-harris-prejudice-bigotry-catholics/stories/202410240035

Last Thursday, Ms. Harris became the first presidential candidate since 1984 to skip the annual Al Smith dinner, a fundraising event that benefits Catholic Charities... As a U.S. senator from California, Ms. Harris racked up a record of bigotry toward Catholics and Catholic teachings. In 2018, she attacked Brian Buescher, a federal district court nominee, over his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a 142-year-old Catholic fraternal organization dedicated to public service.

In addition to slandering the Knights, Ms. Harris suggested that Judge Buescher was unfit to serve on the bench because of his Catholic faith. Any first-year law student would tell you that her line of questioning qualifies as an unconstitutional religious test for public office.

That same year, Ms. Harris condemned the Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court decision, in effect arguing that the government should be able to compel Catholics — or believers of any faith — to perform services that violate their sincerely held religious views, or indeed anyone’s conscientious belief she disagrees with.

Ms. Harris’s legislative record as a senator was similarly antagonistic toward Catholics. She was an early cosponsor of the “Equality Act,” a bill that would render the Constitution’s protection of religious liberty effectively null and void.

Among many potential consequences, this legislation would demand that Catholic churches host same-sex weddings, require Catholic schools (and all federally funded education institutions) to allow men to compete in women’s sports and share women’s restroom and locker room facilities, and strip faith-based charities of their tax-exempt status.

In 2019, Ms. Harris also introduced the equally misnamed “Do No Harm Act,” which would force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions and even transgender surgeries. If this bill were to become law, Catholic doctors and medical professionals who refuse to perform late-term abortions or subject minors to dangerous, life-altering surgeries could lose their license and face federal discrimination lawsuits.

It gets worse. In 2016, a whistleblower in California provided evidence that Planned Parenthood was illegally trafficking organs and tissue from aborted babies. Ms. Harris, then the Attorney General of California, ordered a raid on the home of the whistleblower to seize the evidence....

Then there is the case of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist and father of seven who had his home swarmed by more than a dozen heavily armed FBI agents in a 2022 dawn raid that terrorized his wife and young children. Houck’s crime? Shoving an aggressive, expletive-hurling pro-abortion activist away from his young son — charges which a jury unanimously acquitted him of.

But while the Biden-Harris DOJ wanted to throw Mark Houck in jail for more than a decade, they recommended no jail time for an unhinged pro-abortion activist who attacked a church employee, smashed windows, and defaced religious statues in Washington.

It’s an absurd double standard. While this administration has been busy targeting suburban Catholic dads, it has essentially ignored the nearly 300 attacks on Catholic churches since the leak of the Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court decision in 2022...

If politicians can use the power of the government to target Catholics for their faith or force them into compromising their beliefs, they can trample any of the rights we hold dear if those rights get in the way of their agenda.