Blakeman accuses Hochul of anti-Catholic bigotry over LBGTQ law that would force hospice nuns to violate their beliefs

By Carl Campanile
Published July 8, 2026, 5:08 p.m. ET


Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is accusing Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul of religious bigotry for enforcing a transgender rights law she approved that is forcing Catholic nuns who run a hospice program to choose between their beliefs or caring for indigent, terminally ill patients.

The controversy concerns the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne in Westchester County who run Rosary Hill Home — a Catholic hospice for the poor.

The order filed a federal lawsuit accusing the state of violating their constitutional rights with a 2024 law that requires the facility to affirm patients’ gender identity in regard to pronouns, room assignments and restroom usage.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman accused Gov. Kathy Hochul of anti-Catholic bigotry over a state law that forces Catholic nuns to affirm patients gender identity at their hospice pogram.Dennis A. Clark for NY Post

A nun with the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne feeding a patient at Rosary Hill Home in Westchester County.Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne


The law bars nursing or long-term care facilities from discriminating against any resident based on the resident’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or HIV status.

But the Trump Justice Department recently intervened in the case on behalf of the Dominican Sisters, claiming New York is engaged in religious discrimination at the 42-bed hospice care facility.

“What Kathy Hochul is doing to the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne is an absolute disgrace. For over 120 years, these incredible women have done God’s work, providing unconditional love, comfort, and dignity to people in their final days,” Blakeman told The Post.

“They are saints walking among us, and they represent the absolute best of New York. Yet, Kathy Hochul is actually willing to shut them down, strip away their license, and throw terminal cancer patients out on the street—all to enforce her woke garbage.”

Christian family kicked out of their home for refusing to convert

Story by Jordan King 

File photo of St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Henryville, Ind., Saturday, taken on March 3, 2012.© AP

A Christian family has been barred from their village in India after refusing to convert to Hinduism, an international Christian human rights organization has reported.

A man identified only as Vikram, his wife and their five children had lived in their Hindu-majority village in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh for years before villagers stormed their home and kicked them out on June 16, the International Christian Concern (ICC) said.

Christians are facing persecution in India, according to the ICC and other organizations, amid a push for India to become a Hindu nation.

Newsweek has contacted India's Ministry of Minority Affairs for comment via email.
The Context

This expulsion highlights intensifying religious pressures in India, where Hindu nationalist groups and politicians increasingly advocate for a Hindu-majority identity and stricter legal boundaries for religious minorities.

Forced conversions, social boycotts, and anti-conversion laws have contributed to a climate of fear among Christian communities—particularly in states such as Chhattisgarh, where such policies are most aggressively enforced.

There were 160 reports of violent attacks against Christians in India last year, the European Centre for Law and Justice reported in March, including attacks on church and prayer meetings and physical assaults.

The Catholic Supreme Court’s War on Women

Jamie Stiehm


By Jamie Stiehm January 7, 2014



Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor just dropped the ball on American women and girls.


Et tu, Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Really, we can't trust you on women's health and human rights? The lady from the Bronx just dropped the ball on American women and girls as surely as she did the sparkling ball at midnight on New Year's Eve in Times Square. Or maybe she's just a good Catholic girl.

The Supreme Court is now best understood as the Extreme Court. One big reason why is that six out of nine Justices are Catholic. Let's be forthright about that. (The other three are Jewish.) Sotomayor, appointed by President Obama, is a Catholic who put her religion ahead of her jurisprudence. What a surprise, but that is no small thing.

In a stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act's sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don't believe in contraception?

[See a collection of political cartoons on the Catholic contraception controversy.]

Sotomayor's blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if "you" are female. This is not true of all Catholics – just look at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. But right now, the climate is so cold when it comes to defending our settled legal ground that Sotomayor's stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood. And sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies.

Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I've noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can't know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women's rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.

The seemingly innocent Little Sisters likely were likely not acting alone in their trouble-making. Their big brothers, the meddlesome American Roman Catholic Archbishops are bound to be involved. They seek and wield tremendous power and influence in the political sphere. Big city mayors know their penchant for control all too well. Their principal target for years on end has been squelching women and girls – even when they should have focused on their own men and boys.

[Check out 2013: The Year in Cartoons.]

In one stroke with ominous implications, there's no such thing as Catholic justice or mercy for women on the Supreme Court, not even from a woman. The rock of Rome refuses to budge on women's reproductive rights and the Supreme Court is getting good and ready to strike down Roe v. Wade, which became the law of the land 40 years ago. President Clinton had it exactly right in his formulation: abortion should be safe, legal and rare.

Meanwhile, the forces arrayed against women's right to self-determination have been busy taking their campaign to the statehouses. In roughly half of them, women's human rights have been eroded. On the airwaves, the anti-woman conspiracy goes on, with Rush Limbaugh leading the pack of thousands of men. He uses the Obamacare contraception mandate to say, just about every workaday, that young women are just using the government to get sex, or some such thing. He wins the prize for virulently infecting the public dis-coarse.

With friends like Sonia, we don't need opponents like Rush.


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Gay marriage fight now becomes a religious liberty fight

BY TIMOTHY P. CARNEY | JUNE 29, 2013 AT 3:40 PM

Kim, at right, and Rachel Hadley exchange wedding vows as they hold their twins Sidney, center...

Today's talk of tolerance and acceptance of gay marriage will soon give way to intolerance and rejection of those who hold a traditional view of marriage.

The next offensive in this culture war will involve wielding government to force individuals to accept the new definition of marriage, falsely invoking analogies to civil rights.

As a prototype, consider the assault on the liberty of Elaine Huguenin, the wedding photographer in New Mexico. In 2006, a couple asked her to photograph their wedding. When she learned the couple were lesbians, she declined, explaining that pursuant to her faith, she only photographed man-woman weddings.

The couple got a different photographer, but they sued Huguenin. In New Mexico, there is no gay marriage. In a recent poll, most New Mexicans said they oppose gay marriage. But the state outlaws discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission found Huguenin had broken the law, and ordered her to pay $7,000. Huguenin, with the aide of the pro-bono civil liberties law firm Alliance Defense Fund, has sued and the case is now before state Supreme Court.

Try to live your own life according to traditional values, and the state will come after you, and compel you live according to its values.

Florist Barronelle Stutzman owns Arlene's Flowers in Richland, Wash. A gay man, who was a long-time customer of Arlene's, asked Stutzman to arrange flowers for his wedding. She declined, citing her belief that marriage is a union between a man and woman. Now Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is coming after Stutzman, saying, in effect, she must participate in this gay wedding.

How does Ferguson justify using the power of the state to impose his morality? "If Ms. Stutzman sells flowers to heterosexual couples," the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes Ferguson saying, "she must sell them to same-sex couples."

But obviously Stutzman did sell flowers to same-sex couples, happily - that's why this particular client was a long-time customer. What she refuses to do is participate in a ceremony that the state calls marriage, but which she doesn't consider to be marriage.

This is why the civil rights analogy doesn't work. Hugeinin's case and the Stutzman's case aren't about small businesswomen refusing to serve gay people. They are about businesswomen refusing to endorse the novel definition of marriage.

Now a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has asserted that the only reason to object to gay marriage is to "demean" gay people, expect this offensive in the culture war to escalate.

President Obama promised that he won't try to force churches to administer gay weddings. That's very kind of him. But Obama's contraception mandate has shown us how narrowly he views religious liberty.

Maybe Obama or his successor won't use an executive order to rewrite the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, but government will go after churches all the same. The Cardinal O'Boyle Hall that your parish occasionally rents to outside groups? Better allow gay wedding receptions there or face the wrath of the state.

You're allowed to be religious, of course, but only on the Sabbath. If you dare step into the world of commerce or public service, the government will impose its morality on you.

You see it in Obama's rhetoric: he talks of "freedom of worship" rather than freedom of religion. It's a push to bring to heel all rivals of government. Liberal writer Kevin Drum made it pretty explicit during the contraception mandate debate:

"I'm tired of religious groups operating secular enterprises (hospitals, schools)," he wrote, "hiring people of multiple faiths, serving the general public, taking taxpayer dollars -- and then claiming that deeply held religious beliefs should exempt them from public policy."

The thrust: religious groups should only do religion--they shouldn't feed the poor, clothe the naked, educate the young.

And individuals who adhere to religions? Leave your faith at the church door. The Obama administration has argued in the contraception mandate cases that we lose our freedom of conscience the second we enter into commerce with other people.

The Left has long been the aggressor in the culture war. The crushing power of government has long been their weapon.

Many politically involved writers and advocates concerned with liberty and equality fought to open marriage to gay couples. Now that they've won, here's hoping that those who care about liberty will defend the liberty of cultural conservatives to live their lives according to their faith.

Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner's senior political columnist, can be contacted attcarney@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears Sunday and Wednesday on washingtonexaminer.com.

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The time is just upon us when the difference will be apparent

In summer there is no noticeable difference between evergreens and other trees; but when the blasts of winter come, the evergreens remain unchanged, while other trees are stripped of their foliage. So the falsehearted professor may not now be distinguished from the real Christian, but the time is just upon us when the difference will be apparent. Let opposition arise, let bigotry and intolerance again bear sway, let persecution be kindled, and the halfhearted and hypocritical will waver and yield the faith; but the true Christian will stand firm as a rock, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, than in days of prosperity.

The Great Controversy, E. G. W. , p.602.
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Terror or something else? 11 Christian churches torched

Friday, February 12, 2010

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WorldNetDaily
Terror or something else? 11 Christian churches torched
Police now offer $25,000 reward to catch blaze starters

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Posted: February 09, 2010
9:08 pm Eastern

By Drew Zahn

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WorldNetDaily

Dover Baptist Church following fire (Photo: KRIV-TV, Houston, Texas)

Residents of eastern Texas are on edge, worried in the wake of what may be a serial arsonist on the loose with an appetite for burning churches to the ground.

At various intervals since New Year's Day, 11 churches in the state have gone up in flames, and authorities have ruled nearly all of them arson. A $25,000 reward is offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the fire starter.

"The disturbing part is it changes everyone's lifestyle," said Neal Franklin, fire chief in Tyler, where two churches have been destroyed. "It changes our attitude."

Franklin told the Dallas Morning News that when the second fire broke out in Tyler, "it suddenly hit everyone, 'Oh, my goodness, this could continue every day potentially.' … That's the tension."

So far, the saga has continued nearly every day, just as Franklin feared.

The nightmare began New Year's Day, when Faith Church in Athens, Texas, was torched. Eleven days later, on Jan. 12, the arsonist struck again, this time lighting up both Lake Athens Baptist Church and Grace Community Church of Athens.

Get "The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised as Freedom" today!

The culprit or culprits then began spreading the fires around, hitting churches in a variety of towns, including another double blaze yesterday that reduced the rural Clear Springs Missionary Baptist church to ashes on the same night Dover Baptist Church was lit aflame.


The Dallas Morning News reports that during the first double arson, firefighters were forced to leave the scene of the first church to attend to the second.

"Our people were like, 'What's going on here?'" said Brian Brandt, a pastor at Grace Community Church in Athens. "It was because they got another call – another church was burning three to five miles away."

And even as the smoke clears, it has left a cloud lingering over Texas churchgoers.

"It was just devastating. We didn't think it would happen to our church," Albert Valadez, a trustee at the torched Dover Baptist Church told KLTV-TV in Tyler. "Used a lot of methods to try to secure the doors ... we had security cameras on there."

"Disbelief and shock," said Carl Samples, pastor at Dover Baptist. "I can't comprehend how anyone would do the Lord's house this way."

Jeff Palmer, who was married in the church, told KLTV he had been afraid for the church, since the first arson made headlines over a month ago.

"When I've driven home, I've looked in the parking lot before I go to my house, or I look down the little farm road that goes off to the left," Palmer said. "I've been looking to make sure if I see any trucks or vehicles, that I'd maybe spot them and be able to call somebody."

But Dover Baptist was broken into and lit on fire yesterday despite Palmer's efforts, the 11th church to burn since the start of the year. Authorities are also looking into a few church fires that struck Texas late last year to see if there are any connections.

According to the Dallas Morning News, the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms lists 90 houses of worship set on fire last year nationwide, with an average loss of about $250,000 per fire.

No deaths or injuries have yet been reported in the eastern Texas string of fires.

Churches burned since Jan. 1 in the area about 50 miles southeast of Dallas include:

Little Hope Baptist Church in Canton, which, ironically, burned after a New Year's Eve showing of the film "Fireproof." It is one of the few fires in the string that is not believed to be linked to arson

Faith Church, Athens, Jan. 1

Grace Community Church of Athens, Jan. 12

Lake Athens Baptist Church, Jan. 12

Tyland Baptist Church, Tyler, Jan. 16

First Church of Christ Scientist, Tyler, Jan. 17

Prairie Creek Fellowship, Lindale, Jan. 20

Russell Memorial United Methodist Church, Wills Point, Feb. 4

Dover Baptist Church, Carroll, Feb. 8

Clear Springs Missionary Baptist Church, Lindale, Feb. 8.

In central Texas, closer to Austin, a fire that gutted the historic sanctuary of First Baptist Church of Temple on Jan. 19 has also been determined to be arson, but authorities do not suspect it was the work of the same fire starter.

Anyone with information about the fires is encouraged to call 1-888-ATF-FIRE, or 1-888-283-3473. A Facebook page has also been established with resources and updates on the fires.

"The building is burned but the church lives on in our hearts," said Emily Becker, a member of the Christian Science church that burned in Tyler.

"We want them to be brought to justice," Becker told the Dallas Morning News. "But we're trying to forgive them as taught in the Lord's Prayer."

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Source: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=124615

Street Preachers Killed In United States

NEWS ALERT: Street Preachers Killed In United States
Saturday, February 6, 2010 (8:55 am)
By BosNewsLife News Center

WASHINGTON, USA (BosNewsLife)-- A religious liberty group warned Saturday, February 6, that "Anti-Christian hostility is getting increasingly deadly" in the United States after two street preachers were shot and killed by a teenager who apparently opposed their message.

"The increasing demonization of Christians in our culture makes some feel its open season on Christians," said Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission.

Tite Sufra, 24, (pictured above) and Stephen Ocean (pictured below), 23, were shot to death late Saturday, January 30, in Boynton Beach in the U.S. State of Florida, where they evangelized, after meeting 18-year-old Jeriah Woody, local police said.

"They witnessed to Woody for fifteen minutes, when he got a phone call and told the preachers he 'had to go'," added the Commission, which closely monitored the case.


CHRISTIANS EXECUTED

"As they walked away, Woody suddenly started walking back toward them. Sufra walked up to greet him and was killed with a shot gun blast at point blank range. When Ocean ran, he was shot in the back. After he fell, Woody shot him in the head execution style."

Woody was detained Wednesday, February 3, and is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Bail was reportedly denied to him.

Cass complained about a lack of interest in national media. "As of today, there are no national news organizations reporting this vicious murder of two innocent Christian men. Why?"

Cass said, "I'll ask this: If two Muslims, or two feminists or two homosexuals were murdered, wouldn't the media be all over it? These were two fine young black Christian men shot by another black man for their Christian faith, yet the media does not seem to care."


"OMINOUS SIGN"

He described the case as "an ominous sign" of times "that Christians are being shot on the streets and in our churches."

Last year, Jim Pullion was killed while holding pro-life signs in front of his granddaughter's Owasso Michigan high school. Reverend Fred Winters was murdered while preaching in his pulpit in Maryville, Illinois.

"Increasingly we see Christian ministers threatened and churches terrorized and vandalized for their stand on marriage. Now when Christians gather for worship they must have armed security."

He said, "Anti-Christian defamation and bigotry has helped to create this violent climate and it must stop."

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Source:http://www.bosnewslife.com/11425-news-alert-street-peachers-killed-in-united-states

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