Bill Maher's Career of Hate Speech & Bigotry Quotes

Although Maher admits he is biased against religion in general, William A. Donohue, president of Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has noted that Maher "has consistently been listed in the Catholic League's Annual Report on Anti-Catholicism" for acts of bigotry. Donohue says that among his offensive acts, Maher has a habit of "slandering all priests as molesters and mocking the Eucharist". In the League's 2003 report, it claimed "no one insulted Catholics more than Bill Maher".

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The following statements, all but one of which were made on television, are additional examples of Bill Maher's anti-Catholic hate speech and continued bigotry. There are hundreds of these instances throughout his career.

November 1999:

"Catholics practice what they want to practice. They go to see the pope 'cause he's a big celebrity, but they go home and they masturbate ..."

August 2000:

"Priests, a lot of times, molest boys, OK? They are celibate and it's a magnet for homosexual pedophiles." Actor William McNamara, a guest on the same show, opined that the Catholic Church should allow priests to marry and "give the altar boys' rectums a break."

March 2002:

"Before puberty, I would say nobody caused me more pain than the Catholics... I apparently was not attractive enough to be hit on [by priests]."

May 2002:

"I have hated the Church way before anyone else. I have been pounding religion for nine years on this show."
"... I offer this modest proposal that the Catholic Church just drop the pretense and just go gay. Just come out of the confessional. Preach the sermon on the mountain. Embrace it. Let the straight people be Baptists. It's high time you gay Catholics stood up and announced to the world, 'We're here, we're queer, get Eucharist.'"

June 2002:

"'Politically Incorrect' was politically annihilated," host Bill Maher said after taping the final episode of his ABC talk show. Although the program had suffered declining ratings in recent years, Maher said it would still be on the air if he had not made a remark a week after the Sept. 11 attacks that characterized previous U.S. military actions as "cowardly."

May 2003:

Maher had a limited run on Broadway with a show titled "Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home." In it he included these pieces of scripted "humor":
"The problem is they drill religion into your head when you are very young. Well, when you are four years old, you believe in Santa Claus, too. Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, the Virgin Birth, sure! When you're a priest everyday spewing this bulls--- about the apple and the snake, etc., you can see him just saying, 'Ah, f--- it, just blow me, kid!'"
"Come on, it's so gay, the Church! With the robes and the smoke and kneeling in front of the priest with your mouth open eating God."

November 2004:

Maher was slapped with a $9 million palimony suit by an ex-girlfriend who alleges that the HBO star subjected her to physical and verbal abuse, including "insulting, humiliating and degrading racial comments" in the Los Angeles Superior Court complaint. Nancy Johnson, a black centerfold model and former flight attendant also known as Coco Johnsen, charges that Maher pulled her arm and shook her at a party, causing "injuries to her back and neck," and later that evening warned he'd hit her on the head with a hammer if she was unfaithful. Maher claims that the girlfriend is a con-artist and is lying. The couple was together for 17 months.[see court papers here]

February 2005:

"We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion. I do believe that. I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it's something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child. It certainly was drilled into mine at that age. And you really can't be responsible when you are a kid for what adults put into your head."
"When you look at beliefs in such things as, do you go to heaven, is there a devil, we have more in common with Turkey and Iran and Syria than we do with European nations and Canada and nations that, yes, I would consider more enlightened than us."-MSNBC's Scarborough Country interview with Maher

April 2005:

"For those who did not make the funeral, the Vatican has asked that in lieu of flowers, just stop touching your d---."
"People waited in line for 24 hours to see the pope's body and when they got to see the pope, they smelled worse than he did."

May 2007:

"And it's easy to start a religion! Watch, I'll do it for you: I had a vision last night! A vision! The Blessed Virgin Mary came to me - I don't know how she got past the guards - and she told me it's high time to take the high ground from the Seventh Day Adventists and give it to the 24-hour party people. And what happens in the confessional stays in the confessional. Gay men, don't say you're life partners; say you're a nunnery of two. 'We weren't having sex, officer, I was performing a very private Mass, here in my car. I was letting my rod and staff comfort him. Take this and eat of it, for this is my roommate Barry. And for all those who believe, there is a special place for you in Kevin.'"

January 2008:

"You can't be a rational person six days of the week and put on a suit and make rational decisions and go to work and, on one day of the week, go to a building and think you're drinking the blood of a 2,000-year-old space god. That doesn't make you a person of faith ... that makes you a schizophrenic."
"...UFOs are a lot more likely than a space god [that] flew down bodily and you know who was the Son of God and you know had sex with a Palestinian woman..."

April 11, 2008:

Transcript from HBO show Real Time: "New Rule: Whenever you combine a secretive compound, religion and weirdos in pioneer outfits, there's going to be some child-f**king going on. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] In fact, whenever a cult leader sets himself up as "God's infallible wing man" here on earth, lock away the kids.
Which is why I'd like to tip off law enforcement to an even larger child-abusing religious cult. Its leader also has a compound. And this guy not only operates outside the bounds of the law, but he used to be a Nazi and he wears funny hats. [photo of the Pope shown] [mixture of laughter, shock, scattered applause]
That's right. The Pope is coming to America this week, and, ladies, he's single! [laughter] Now, I know what you're thinking: "Bill, you can't be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy Texas cult! For one thing, altar boys can't even get pregnant." [mixture of laughter and other reactions]
But, really, what tripped up the "little cult on the prairie"--[laughter]--was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided. Religions get parades. How does the Catholic Church get away with all of their buggery? VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME! [laughter] [applause]
If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you "Pope."
It's like if you can't pay your mortgage, you're a deadbeat, but if you can't pay a million mortgages, you're Bear Stearns, and we bail you out. [laughter] [applause] [cheers] And that's who the Catholic Church is, the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia. [laughter] Too big to fail.
When the - when the current Pope was in his previous Vatican job as John Paul's Dick Cheney--[laughter]--he wrote a letter instructing every Catholic bishop to keep the sex abuse of minors secret until the statute of limitations ran out. And that's the Church's attitude: "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." [applause]
Which is fine. Far be it from me to criticize religion. [laughter] But, just remember one thing: if the Pope was, instead of a religious figure, merely the CEO of a nationwide chain of daycare centers where thousands of employees had been caught molesting kids and then covering it up, he'd be arrested faster than you can say, "Who wants to touch Mister Wiggle?" [laughter]
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you, panel. [applause] [cheers] That's our show."

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