Kamala Harris is a bigot.
Forgive the blunt delivery, but there isn’t really any nuance to offer: The Democrats’ presidential nominee has long since stripped it away with her blatant discrimination against people of faith, particularly Catholics.
Witness her stunning attack on the venerable Knights of Columbus in 2018, during Brian Buescher’s nomination hearing for a federal judgeship.
Then-Sen. Harris subtly criticized the charitable and fraternal organization for being an “all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men,” then not-so-subtly slammed it for adhering to his faith’s core — or “extremist,” to use her word — beliefs about life and family.
She implied that Buescher’s membership in the group basically made him unfit for the bench, setting up Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii to ask if the nominee would, if confirmed, “end [his] membership with this organization to avoid any appearance of bias.”
That’s what they call a religious test for office, and it’s illegal. See the US Constitution, Article VI, for more on that.
In short, Kamala Harris doesn’t think Catholics, or any person whose religion conflicts with her political ideology, should hold public office.
Even shorter: Kamala Harris does not believe in the Constitution.
Instead, Harris is well-steeped in the left’s newfound understanding of religion, which is that it should stay within the four walls of a home or a house of worship and must be disavowed in order to participate in society.
Look no further than her Senate sponsorship of the Orwellianly titled Do No Harm Act, which would have required health-care workers to perform procedures like abortion, even in violation of their deeply held religious beliefs.
And it would have closed down charitable organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor, the left’s favorite punching bag, for refusing to violate Catholic teachings on human sexuality (of all things, for an order of celibate nuns).
“The Do No Harm Act would ensure that no one can use the law to discriminate against someone because of race, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity,” Harris said of the bill at the time.
In Harris’ view, apparently, use of the law to discriminate against someone because of religion is perfectly acceptable.
That’s a view the Supreme Court has rejected repeatedly in the past decade as Harris and her colleagues on the left have only intensified their push to make Americans keep their faith in a lockbox at home.
She was a supporter, for example, of the Equality Act — a bill that would require religious institutions of all stripes, including churches themselves, to violate their core beliefs in the name of “gender ideology.”
That measure would have stripped faith-based institutions like schools, charities and adoption agencies of their religious rights by enabling the government to prosecute them for discrimination for refusing to hire people who openly opposed their religious teachings.
The Equality Act would have undone the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a broadly bipartisan law that even then-Sen. Joe Biden supported, which ensures that the government cannot infringe on the religious rights of Americans.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, not known for fiery political language, didn’t mince words when it said the Equality Act would “run roughshod over religious liberty.”
But there’s more: As California attorney general, Harris was an advocate of the FACT Act, which would have forced pregnancy centers — many of which are explicitly Catholic or Christian — to refer women to abortion clinics, undercutting their faith-based mission.
And she joined 13 other attorneys general who asked the Supreme Court in 2013 to force Hobby Lobby and other religious employers to cover things like abortion pills in their health-care plans.
Both cases were casualties at the Supreme Court, which stepped in to defend the conscience rights of religious Americans.
Kamala Harris does not think you can be both a Knight of Columbus and a federal employee.
She thinks Christian doctors should be forced to perform abortions.
She thinks Catholic-school teachers should be forced to teach gender ideology.
But if you’re a practicing Catholic or a faithful Christian, Kamala Harris thinks you’re the extremist.
Kamala Harris thinks like a bigot, because she is one.
Ashley McGuire is a senior fellow with the Catholic Association and author of “Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female.”