The leader of the Catholic organization who said that liberal academics should be “taken out and shot” admitted Friday that he messed up, a day after he was anything but apologetic.
In a statement provided to TPM, Austin Ruse, the head of the the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (or “C-FAM”), expressed regret for his inflammatory comments, which he said were “not intended to be taken literally.”
I deeply regret and apologize for using the expression “taken out and shot” on the Sandy Rios Show this week. It was not intended to be taken literally. I have dedicated my life and career to ending violence. I regret that these poorly chosen words are being used to attack my friends at American Family Radio and American Family Association.
While hosting the radio show earlier this week, Ruse reacted angrily to the news that Duke University freshman Miriam Weeks was performing as a porn star to pay her way through school.
That is the nonsense that they teach in women’s studies at Duke University, this is where she learned this. The toxic stew of the modern university is gender studies, it’s “Sex Week,” they all have “Sex Week” and teaching people how to be sex-positive and overcome the patriarchy. My daughters go to a little private religious school and we pay an arm and a leg for it precisely to keep them away from all of this kind of nonsense. I do hope that they go to a Christian college or university and to keep them so far away from the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities, who should all be taken out and shot.
Audio of Ruse’s remarks, via Right Wing Watch:
The apology is quite a departure from the defiance Ruse showed on Thursday. He took to Twitter to call liberals “dumb” and “stupid” before ultimately deleting his account. Ruse then opened the radio show by taking aim at the critics who he said “have their panties all in a twist” about his comments.
“The pajama boys over at Right Wing Watch have their panties all in a twist about what I said, and I sometimes think that the left is really dumb, these are the low-information voters that make all of these mistakes when they get into the ballot box and all of these mistakes as they go through their lives and one of the reasons is because they are so dumb,” Ruse said.
This post has been updated.
