·        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 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.”

·        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!”

“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.”

·        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.”  On a different show he said, “…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.”

Maher’s anti-Catholic, anti-religion rhetoric is part of his schtick as a comedian.  It has also been given a very public platform, first by ABC and now by Time Warner and HBO.  Offensive material like this is also the cornerstone upon which Maher will build the publicity machine for his upcoming “anti-religion documentary” Religulous, due to be released in theaters in July. 

His agenda in all of this is clear: to tear down religious belief and believers.  In so doing he attacks a clear majority of Americans and a foundation of American society. When confronted by the Catholic League on why it continues to give Maher air time, HBO stated that Maher’s anti-Catholic remarks were a matter of “creative freedom.”  One wonders if HBO would be so sanguine if Maher’s vitriol was regularly aimed at Muslims.