Two bloggers
hired recently by Democratic presidential candidate John
Edwards were criticized Tuesday by a Catholic group for
posts they had written elsewhere on the Internet. Bill
Donohue, president of the Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights, demanded that Edwards fire
Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan.
''John Edwards is a decent man who has had his
campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic, vulgar,
trash-talking bigots,'' Donohue wrote in a statement.
''He has no choice but to fire them immediately.''
The Edwards campaign declined to comment. McEwan
and Marcotte did not respond to e-mails requesting a response.
Donohue cited posts that the women made on blogs
in the past several months in which they criticized
the pope and the church for Catholicism's opposition
to homosexuality, abortion, and contraception, sometimes
using profanity.
''The Catholic church is not about to let
something like compassion for girls get in the way of
using the state as an instrument to force women to
bear more tithing Catholics,'' Marcotte wrote on the blog
Pandagon on December 26, in an excerpt cited by Donohue.
Among the McEwan posts that Donohue listed was
one she posted on February 21, 2006, on her site,
Shakespeare's Sister. She questioned what religious
conservatives don't understand about ''keeping your noses
out of our britches, our beds, and our families?''
Edwards put both bloggers on his payroll last
week as part of his outreach to liberal voters and
activists on the Internet. Their decision to work for
Edwards is part of a broader move among prominent bloggers
to jobs with political campaigns and progressive organizations.
The Catholic League counts its membership at
nearly 350,000. (Nedra Pickler, AP)
