JOHN LEO'S BLOG

The new anti-Catholic resolution of the Board of Supervisors reads like an invitation for all Roman Catholics to leave the city. It denounces the church's moral teaching on homosexuality as "hateful," "insulting and callous," "defamatory," "absolutely unacceptable," not to mention insensitive and ignorant. It also depicts Catholics as representatives of a foreign government, just as earlier Know-Nothings and Klansmen did. The resolution says, "It is an insult to all San Franciscans when a foreign country, like the Vatican, meddles with and attempts to negatively influence this great city's existing and established customs and traditions, such as the right of same-sex couples to adopt and care for children in need."

First of all, the church has made no effort to challenge the gay lobby or the practice of homosexual adoption. It simply said that Catholic agencies would not participate in gay adoptions in the city. As in Massachusetts, where there are some 50 agencies placing children with gay parents and one agency choosing not to do so–Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Boston–nothing practical is at stake. No official is trying to challenge gay adoption or even making negative comments about it.

In Boston, the totalitarian principle won out. Confronted by a state antidiscrimination law perhaps engineered to bring the Catholic agencies to heel, Catholic Charities retired from the adoption field, leaving its large caseload of "special needs" children (31 percent of the Massachusetts total) in the hands of the state. This proved nothing except that the gay lobby doesn't just want to win. It wants to crush all resistance.

The principle at issue is a simple one: Is a voluntary religious agency allowed to pursue its social mission in terms of its own core principles, or will the state step in and tell the agency which social principles it is entitled to have? It is particuarly stupid for the Board of Supervisors to deny that Catholics might be acting on principle–they are viewed as sheeplike agents of a foreign state.

The resolution denounces Cardinal William Levada, former archbishop of San Francisco, now working at the Vatican, as "a decidedly unqualified representative of his former home city and of the people of San Francisco and the values they hold dear."

The Thomas More Center is suing the Board of Supervisors on behalf of the Catholic League and two Catholic residents of the city. Robert Muise, the law center attorney handling the case, says the U.S. Constitution forbids hostility toward any religion. Actually, it doesn't. All the Constitution forbids is the establishment of a church. There is no language in there against hostility or benevolence to any faith.

The Board of Supervisors is entitled to be as deranged as it wishes about any religion, and if the voters share that derangement, as they tend to do in San Francisco, well, that's democratic politics. If the board moves to penalize Catholics, that's a different matter, but making some people feel bad is not yet unconstitutional. It is a serious matter when a city goes off the rails like this, but this is San Francisco, so why should anyone be surprised?