In an otherwise cogent and incisive article (“The Last Respectable Bias,” December), William A. Donohue somehow manages to dance all around, but never quite name, the one faction in our society that would go a long way toward answering his rhetorical question, “Why the cheap shots against Catholicism?” That faction, of course, is the militant and highly organized homosexual rights movement.

Does Mr. Donohue think that his example of the gay night club in Chicago called the “Convent,” where the bartenders dress as priests, the waitresses as Catholic schoolgirls, and drinks named “Holy Water” are served in a “Hell Room,” is just another case of garden variety bigotry? Or that the gay-led vilification campaign against New York City’s John Cardinal O’Connor and the blatantly open desecration of Catholic churches there is not also part of a longterm strategy unique to gays? Other recent examples in this vein are legion. Using their favorite mantra, “Stop the Hate!” as cover, gay activists and their p.c. sympathizers across the country pursue a genuinely hate-driven vendetta against Catholics and Protestant evangelicals. Again, the reason is obvious: while our major institutions—public schools, big media, Hollywood, and big government —have been supinely susceptible to blandishments and threats, only those of a strong, biblically based faith have remained immune to all the feigned moral outrage and propaganda trumpeting the line that homosexuality is a perfectly normal and wholesome “alternative lifestyle” deserving of equal standing with heterosexuality. Realizing that this is the one segment of society that can’t be coerced into cooperating, gay activists are bending every effort to cheapen and marginalize traditional religion to the fullest extent possible.

Though not a Roman Catholic, I have long been an admirer of Mr. Donohue’s dual talents of great investigative journalism and lucid expositor}’ writing. While not accusing Mr. Donohue of “gaining in maturity” (liberal speak for caving), I do think that writing a lengthy article about anti-Catholic bigotry with nary a reference to homosexual activism is like writing about the perpetrators of the holocaust without mentioning Adolf Eichmann.

        —O.M. Ostlund Jr.
State College, PA