The Thomas More Law Center has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to reverse a Ninth Circuit ruling which upheld San Francisco’s hate-filled attack on the Catholic Church. The Ann Arbor-based law firm is representing the Catholic League.
This case began when a resolution was passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that laced into the Catholic Church on March 21, 2006. Simply because the Catholic Church is opposed to homosexual adoption, government officials went on a tear.
They branded the Vatican a “foreign country” that was “meddling” in the affairs of San Francisco. They called the Catholic Church’s teachings on homosexuality “insulting to all San Franciscans,” “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” “defamatory,” “absolutely unacceptable” and “insensitive and ignorant.”
The Thomas More Law Center argues that the anti-Catholic resolution violated the First Amendment, which forbids “an official purpose to disapprove of a particular religion, religious beliefs, or of religion in general.” The government officials even went so far as to urge the Archbishop of San Francisco and Catholic Charities to defy Church directives.
Richard Thompson, who heads the Law Center, notes that the same Ninth Circuit which ruled against us barred a government display of the passive symbol of the war memorial cross on Mt. Soledad! The double standard could not be more plain.
