The Democrat Party has been taken over by leaders who think religion and morality should not be a factor in how you vote, who seek to drive Christians out of government, and who disparage traditional Christianity in general-and Catholics and Catholicism specifically, who even seek to omit any passing mention of God!

Shocking, I know. But here are the facts:

• The Democrats' presidential candidate last year, Hillary Clinton, was easily the most taxpayer-funded abortion presidential candidate in our history. She even opposes restrictions on late-term ("partial-birth") abortions. At a world forum she declared that "deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed." She wants to eliminate the Hyde amendment, which protects taxpayer dollars being used for abortions. And she is an ardent supporter of Planned Parenthood.

In the first presidential debate in 2016, Hillary Clinton asked, "What kind of rights will Americans have?" The rights she wants to curtail, such as religious liberty, are all enumerated in the Constitution's Bill of Rights. The "rights" she supports, such as the "right" to an abortion are not enumerated in the Constitution, but have been established by judicial fiat.

A Clinton presidency would have declared open war on Christian values. And as its last presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton is still the spokesperson of the mainstream (leftist) Democrat Party.

• The leader of the Democrats' other wing, the "progressive" wing, is Bernie Sanders, who is even further to the left than Clinton. In fact, he is not formally a Democrat but openly a Socialist who votes with the Democrats. As the top Democrat-voting member of the Senate Budget Committee, he grilled and opposed President Trump's nominee to be Deputy Secretary of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Voigt. Voigt's major offense? He had publicly defended his alma mater, a private Christian college, for firing a professor who had declared that Muslims and Christians "worship the same God." Voight had written that Muslims "do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son. . ." Sanders said Voigt's views were "hateful."

In other words, he was to be rejected because of his personal religious beliefs, defending a private college's action, delivered as a private citizen long before becoming a nominee for a federal office. That shows how far Bernie Sanders, still the leader of the Democrats' other wing, will go to keep professing Christians out of government service.

• Clinton and Sanders are hardly alone in trying to drive professing Christians out of public service. For example, Sanders was joined by 11 other Democrat Senators in opposing the nomination of Roger Severino, a practicing Catholic, to be President Trump's Assistant Secretary of Human Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Severino's offenses? He is against same-sex marriages, and supported the Kentucky clerk who instituted a "no licenses" policy in her office (Severino's views are entirely consistent with Catholic doctrine).

• There are countless other examples, and a recent one that got national attention was when Senator Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, attacked Trump judicial nominee Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor. Feinstein found it "of concern" that Barrett's past speeches revealed how Catholic "dogma lives loudly" within her. In other words, if you want to get a federal nomination from Democrats, you had better not believe in Catholic "dogma" or at least not express such heretical beliefs.

• But perhaps most revealing of current Democrat dogma (let's call it what it is) was the action taken at the 2016 Democrat convention, behind closed doors, to delete any mention of God from the Democrat platform. When that leaked out, the convention chair tried to pass a public relations ploy by inserting a passing reference to "God-given rights." For that he was booed by convention delegates.

But what does this have to do with the Virginia governor's race?

Plenty. The Democrats have "nationalized" this campaign. They have made it a litmus test to show support for national Democrat anti-religious liberty, anti-Catholic policies. The Democrat candidate, Ralph Northam is now a surrogate for national Democrats.

Well, the positions of the Republicans are pro-religion and pro-Christian in stark contrast to the positions of the Democrats. One example is President Trump's appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The choice, then, is clear: Clinton-Sanders-Feinstein and their anti-religious views versus the Republican Party's pro-religious actions.

Sign our petition to demand anti-Catholic Democrats including Ralph Northam, Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate in Virginia, respect my right to practice my deeply held Catholic beliefs: