One of the astounding characteristics of the mainstream press is its dogged willingness to accept with open arms some of the most incendiary and hateful elements of modern-day conservatism. Ann Coulter appears on NBC with stunning regularity, Howard Kurtz wrote a drippy mash note to Michelle Malkin, Time pristinely whitewashed Glenn Beck's colorful record of shocking and false rhetoric -- you get the idea. Yesterday, The Washington Post's On Faith blog featured a guest post from Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, on “America's secular saboteurs.” On Faith markets itself as “A Conversation on Religion and Politics with Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn,” so let's see what Donohue brought to the conversation:

There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom; sexual libertines seek to upend the cultural order by attacking religion; artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity; Hollywood relentlessly insults people of faith; activist left-wing legal groups try to scrub society free of the public expression of religion; elements in the Democratic party demonstrate an animus against Catholicism; and secular-minded malcontents within Catholicism and Protestantism seek to sabotage their religion from the inside.

Yesterday's radicals wanted to tear down the economic structure of capitalism and replace it with socialism, and eventually communism. Today's radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place. In that regard, these moral anarchists are an even bigger menace than the Marxists who came before them.

[...]

Sexual libertines, from the Marquis de Sade to radical gay activists, have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, “Thou Shalt Not.” But they continue with their death-style anyway.

[...]

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State harbor an agenda to smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America. Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution. But there is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions the censorship of religious speech. From banning nativity scenes to punishing little kids for painting a picture of Jesus, the zealots give Fidel a good run for his money.

Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge. Indeed, practicing Catholics are no longer welcome in leadership roles in the Party: the contempt that pro-life Catholics experience is palpable. The fact that Catholics for Choice, a notoriously anti-Catholic front group funded by the Ford Foundation, has a close relationship with the Democrats says it all.

[...]

The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

OK, so let's run it down -- the nameless and faceless “secular saboteurs” are worse than Marxists; “gay activists” are perverts practicing a “death-style;” the ACLU is just like Fidel Castro; Democrats don't put Catholics in “leadership roles” (except for the vice president, the Speaker of the House, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the chairman of the DNC, and just about every Kennedy); and all these Catholicism-hating gay Marxist perverts are aborting themselves into oblivion while “walking their dogs” (which, unless it's a euphemism for something else, doesn't strike me as particularly sinful).

Aside from being false, offensive, and generally unhinged, it's also unoriginal -- Donohue says stuff like this all the time. Donohue makes his living crudely attacking homosexuals and anyone who isn't Catholic.

So, Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn, would you care to explain what exactly Bill Donohue's presence added to your “conversation”?