Here is an update to a story – first a little background.
Early in 2006, Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issued a statement clarifying that Church agencies should not place children for adoption with same-sex couples. The statement had particular significance for Levada’s former Archdiocese of San Francisco, whose Catholic Charities agency had been placing children for adoption with same-sex couples.
In response to Cardinal Levada’s statement, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution denouncing the Vatican’s foreign meddling, demanding Levada retract his “hateful,” “insulting,” “discriminatory,” “callous” and ignorant directive, and urging current San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer and Catholic Charities “to defy all discriminatory directives of Cardinal Levada.” Members of the Board of Supervisors also threatened to remove funding from Catholic Charities’ other programs unless they did defy the Vatican (The City was not funding the adoption program at Catholic Charities).
Always nice to have a city council call your religious beliefs to be hateful. Apparently loving your brother and not wanting them to sin is hateful and calling sin normal is loving.
We would have a different case on our hands had the defendants called upon Cardinal Levada to recant his views on transubstantiation, or had urged Orthodox Jews to abandon the laws of kashrut, or Mormons their taboo of alcohol. Those matters of religious dogma are not within the secular arena in the way that same-sex marriage and adoption are.
Jack Smith at the Catholic Key blog replies to this nonsense succinctly:
Translated, your freedom of religion encompasses all the superstitious voodoo you care to indulge in, but you may not have a religious dogma at variance with something the City cares about – like sex.
Political Correctness is the secular dogma that must be adhered to or you will be banished Now it might sound like no big deal that a silly city council like San Francisco’s would make such a statement, that is almost to be expected. Much worse when the courts turn a blind eye to religious discrimination and bigotry. They of course can not explain why the area of same-sex marriage do not come within the arena of religious thought. Really the opposition to same-sex marriage can be discovered in the natural law and if religion can’t protect marriage the very basis of family life, than really religion becomes only an intellectual hobby with no real-world applications.
This appeal court is not called the Ninth Circus Court for no reason and it is no surprise how often their actions are overturned. This case certainly calls out to be tried in the Supreme Court as an important First Amendment case. If the government gets a pass on religious bigotry and know-nothingism we will certainly get more bigotry of this kind. If the case does make it to SCOTUS it will certainly become a media circus as once again the fact that five justices on the court are Catholic. I wonder if the pundits will say that they must recuse themselves? If only the anti-Catholic bigots would have to recuse themselves.
2 comments
Thanks again for keeping U>S informed even if I am a Canadian Catholic who should not have sat on his lorel in the past thinking that people would have simply just laughed and besides they didn’t need my help just before same-sex-marriage became legal in Canada.
“IT” will be a non violent UP Road to NOW turn “IT” around here in Canada but if that’s God’s Will for me to stay the course, me, myself and I will try to get “IT” done in reality. I just hope that our souls and spirits stay out of “IT” and give U>S enough time to do the JOB, I mean job cause we human flesh would need to step aside if the spiritual world gets involved or we might lose most of our reality cells if you know what I mean? Go Figure!
Keep UP the good work,
God Bless Peace
I am afraid that the prospect of this case going to the Supreme Court is not all that much of a reassurance as it ought to be. If you read the briefs and submissions by the CA attorney general’s office to the federal court, it becomes clear that the attorney general’s office wasn’t trying its hardest to make the best case for the state constitutional amendment. The problem, of course, is that the CA attorney general is Jerry Brown, who simply doesn’t believe in the amendment. I don’t know if CA appealed the result to the 9th Circus, but if it doesn’t, then nobody else can take the case forward. Same with an appeal to the US Supremes – if CA doesn’t appeal, the ruling stands, and nobody else can appeal it. But in either case, nobody can force the attorney general to make a better argument than it did at the district level. We can indeed hope that amicus briefs do a great job, but amicus briefs will automatically be considered of dubitable weight. All in all, we should hope that CA attorney general’s office undergoes some MAJOR changes before the case gets a chance to be appealed to the Supreme Court.