Contact: Kiera M. McCaffrey, Director of Communications, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 212-371-3191, catalyst@catholicleague.org

NEW YORK, Jan. 11 /Christian Newswire/ -- In the January edition of Esquire, there is a comment by James D. Watson justifying anti-Semitism. Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for his co-discovery of DNA, offers as one of his musings a rhetorical question: "Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark?" To which he says, "Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified."

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

"The ADL's response to Watson's remark is, 'Those are very strange comments coming from an individual like that.' What is 'very strange' is not Watson's comment, but the ADL's puzzlement. Watson is a eugenicist who, like Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, is a racist. Unlike Sanger, who was opposed to abortion, Watson is not only pro-abortion, he is on record recommending that handicapped infants be killed immediately after birth.

"In 2000, Watson told an audience at the University of California at Berkeley that African Americans are genetically prone to laziness, obesity and have more active sex drives than whites. This is the same man who thinks that we should change the legal definition of 'person' to infants older than three days: this way parents would be able to decide if their child should live or die.

"Anyone remotely informed about the 'population control' fanatics knows that they have always pushed for a public-policy filter that would 'weed out' the 'undesirables.' To be specific, those who are below par in cognitive abilities or physical attributes, as well as those who belong to certain racial, religious or ethnic groups, should not enjoy equal rights; at the very least, their numbers should be restricted. Sound familiar?

"Watson gave up his Catholicism at the age of 12 for birdwatching. Despite his scientific heroics, we'd all have been better off if he never took his eyes off the birds."