STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- On Dec. Dec 8, 1922, H. W. Evans, the newly elected Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, delivered a blistering attack against his organization's usual targets.
He claimed, for example, that giving the vote to "negroes" was the "greatest crime ever committed against his race or our race," and that the "The Jew produces nothing anywhere on the face of the earth."
The bigoted blowhard also zeroed in on Catholicism, asserting that, by undertaking "to make the United States of America a province of Rome," it had "challenged the white, native-born Protestant Christian of America to defend this Republic against invasion or else surrender the Republic to the domination of the foreign ecclesiastical potentate."
While vestiges of this kind of raw prejudice still exist in this country, Evans' attack on blacks and Jews would be met today with swift condemnation by government officials across the board, regardless of political affiliation. Not so, however, when it comes to his disgustingly stupid rant about Catholicism.
This became crystal clear when, on March 21, 2006, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors overwhelmingly adopted a shocking resolution that viciously attacked the Catholic Church and condemned the Vatican as a "foreign country" bent on interfering with the city's government. Though sensationally unprecedented, this official action generated no protests from the politically correct crowd that holds itself out as guardians of our civil liberties.
Properly alarmed and deeply offended, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights filed suit seeking a declaration that the resolution was unconstitutional. Last Wednesday, oral arguments were heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
The controversy began when Cardinal William Joseph Levada, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, noted that placing children for adoption with same-sex couples violates Catholic teaching on homosexuality. In accordance with that pronouncement, Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco directed that the local Catholic charities bring its adoption policy in line with the church's teaching on marriage and the family.
Niederauer's mandate had little practical effect on San Francisco's efforts to find suitable adoptive homes for its children. This because homosexual couples rarely sought to adopt through Catholic agencies. Moreover, what little impact the directive did have was addressed by a stepped-up effort to find appropriate heterosexual adoptive parents.
In explaining his obligation to comply with church teaching, Niederauer acknowledged that others held contrary points of view and declared that "we recognize and respect that fact." However, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors could not muster an iota of reciprocal tolerance for the sincerely-held, doctrinal beliefs of the Catholic Church.
UNMITIGATED GALL
Instead, speaking as public officials, they vilified Catholic teaching as "hateful," "callous," "insulting" and "ignorant." Then, while demanding that the "foreign country" stay out of San Francisco's business, they had the unmitigated gall to tell the Vatican to rescind its enunciation of Catholic doctrine regarding adoption by same-sex couples.
The First Amendment to the federal constitution provides in relevant part that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Though the "establishment clause" and the "free exercise clause" have generated an imposing and at times contradictory body of case law, they are widely understood to mandate that government remain neutral in matters of religion.
Most controversies involve what complainants maintain are unlawful efforts by the government to aid or advance religious causes. Arguing that the Constitution mandates a strict separation of church and state, plaintiffs have successfully invalidated a succession of innocuous activities including a non-denominational, student-initiated prayer that nobody be injured during a football game.
An essential element in striking down a challenged activity under the First Amendment is the existence of some form of government involvement. In the case of the nondenominational prayer, the mere fact that it was a public high school game was deemed sufficient.
The oft-overlooked corollary to these First Amendment cases is that government-mandated neutrality also precludes government hostility to religion. By passing a resolution attacking the Catholic Church in the vilest of terms, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors not only engaged in a flagrant, unprecedented violation of the First Amendment but stigmatized themselves as a rogue band of pretentious hypocrites.
Equally disgraceful, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Hall Patel, a Carter appointee and former attorney for the National Organization of Women, dismissed the Catholic League's lawsuit, brazenly declaring that the Vatican had "provoked this debate." Hence, the appeal heard last week.
The colossal irony here is that its Board of Supervisors has proclaimed San Francisco "America's most tolerant and progressive city." Intoxicated by the ambitions of the far left, they're obviously unaware that, if H. W. Evans were alive today, he'd be handing out flowing white sheets and masks to every one of them.
Daniel Leddy's On The Law column appears each Tuesday on the Advance Op-Ed Page. His e-mail address is JudgeLeddy@si.rr.com.
Source: http://www.silive.com/columnists/ledd/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1216728937186870.xml&coll=1&thispage=1