The New York Times has rejected a full-page anti-Islam advertisement that mirrored a scathing anti-Catholic advertisement the newspaper published on March 9.
According to The Daily Caller, a March 13 letter sent by the Times to the parody’s sponsor, activist Pamela Geller, said the $39,000 anti-Islam ad was rejected because “the fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, accused the Times of having a double standard and told DC that The Time’s was based on “either [anti-Catholic] bigotry or fear [of Islamic violence], and they’ve painted themselves into that corner.”
DC adds:
Donohue said the frequent claims of intellectual honesty by Times employees would compel them to address the double standard if they weren’t “shameless.”
TheDC asked Robert Christie, the Times’ senior vice-president for corporate communications, if the Times’ decision is a surrender to violence and also an incentive for additional threats of violence.
However, Christie declined to discuss the paper’s decision, and referred TheDC to the letter sent by the Times to Geller and her organization, Stop the Islamization of Nations.
The original ad was created by the controversial, and often radical, Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation. The ad, “It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church” positioned itself as an “open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics.”
“Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages?” it asks. “Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? Whose side are you on?”
“Not a single Catholic who reads this ad will be impelled to leave the Church. That is not the issue,” said Donohue in response to the ad. “The issue is the increase in hate speech directed at Catholics.”
CNA adds more information about the anti-Catholic ad:
The ad claims that the church is “an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys club” and derides Catholic teaching that contraception use is sinful. It also blames the Church for causing misery, poverty, unwanted pregnancies and deaths and attacks Catholic teaching on the ordination of women, parochial schools, and the Church’s response to sex abuse.
The ad, which includes a disparaging cartoon of a Catholic bishop, claims U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference has made a “declaration of war against women’s right to contraception.” The ad is featured below:
