Hochul accused of anti-Catholic bigotry over LGBT law that would force nuns to violate beliefs

Republican New York gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman accused Gov. Kathy Hochul of anti-Catholic bigotry for supporting a state law that Dominican nuns say would force them to violate their religious beliefs or risk penalties threatening their ministry to terminally ill cancer patients.

The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne operate Rosary Hill Home, a 42-bed residential hospice and nursing facility in Hawthorne, New York, that provides free care to poor patients with incurable cancer. As Zeale News previously reported, the order filed a federal lawsuit April 6 seeking an exemption from New York’s LGBTQ Long-Term Care Facility Residents’ Bill of Rights, which Hochul signed in November 2023. The law took effect in May 2024. 

The law requires long-term care facilities to use patients’ preferred pronouns and assign rooms and allow restroom access based on residents’ “gender identities.” The sisters say those requirements would force them to violate their Catholic beliefs.

According to the New York Post, Rosary Hill Home assigns patients to rooms based on their sex, placing male patients with other males and female patients with other females. The facility also alternates men’s and women’s floors and maintains sex-separated bathrooms. 

Blakeman sharply criticized Hochul, who is also Catholic, in comments to the Post. 

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

He called the sisters “saints walking among us,” saying they represent “the absolute best of New York,” according to the outlet.

“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,” Blakeman added. 

The sisters have received three letters from the New York State Department of Health informing them of their obligation to comply with the law, as Zeale News previously reported. The complaint says violations could expose Rosary Hill Home and its staff to fines, the loss of the facility’s license, and, under some provisions of the state public health law, possible criminal penalties.

Blakeman said Hochul “would rather leave dying people without care than allow Catholic nuns to practice their faith.”

“Forcing these sisters to destroy the privacy of dying women by putting biological men in their rooms is sick, un-American, and a total war on common sense,” he told the Post.

The New York attorney general’s office has asked the court to dismiss Hochul as a defendant from the suit, arguing that the sisters have not shown she has any direct role in enforcing the law beyond her role in executing state laws, according to the Post. The office also said the law does not offer religious exemptions.

Blakeman vowed that the “radical gender nonsense ends the second I become governor,” saying he plans to “protect the people who protect our most vulnerable” and bring “sanity back to this state.”