Religious right group likens S.F. supes to Nazis
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO --
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 10, 2009 SAN FRANCISCO --
Lawyers for a Catholic advocacy group that sued San Francisco for condemning the Vatican's policy on same-sex adoptions are comparing the city's supervisors to Nazis laying the groundwork for the slaughter of Jews.
In a statement responding to last week's ruling by a federal appeals court in the city's favor, Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, used a German term for the Nazi policy of forced conformity to party doctrine and the elimination of opposition groups in the 1930s: (This law center is heavily funded by Tom Monaghan)
In a statement responding to last week's ruling by a federal appeals court in the city's favor, Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, used a German term for the Nazi policy of forced conformity to party doctrine and the elimination of opposition groups in the 1930s: (This law center is heavily funded by Tom Monaghan)
"It is not a stretch to compare the San Francisco board's actions to that of the Nazi Germany policy of Gleichschaltung, vilifying Jews as an auxiliary to and laying the groundwork for more repressive policies, including the final solution of extermination."
He was referring to the supervisors' March 2006 resolution denouncing a Vatican order to Catholic Charities not to place adoptive children with same-sex couples. In the decree, Cardinal William Levada, the former San Francisco archbishop who now heads the church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said allowing gay or lesbian couples to adopt children "would actually mean doing violence to these children." (He should know, given the evidence of the violence the Catholic clergy and religious have done to children.)
The nonbinding board resolution, sponsored by then-Supervisor Tom Ammiano, said the Vatican order contained "hateful and discriminatory rhetoric" and urged local Catholic officials, including Levada's successor as archbishop, George Niederauer, to disregard it. In response, Catholic Charities of San Francisco stopped placing children for adoption with any families.
In the lawsuit, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights accused the city of acting with hostility toward Catholicism in violation of the constitutional requirement of government neutrality. But the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the supervisors had acted for a legal, secular purpose, to protect same-sex couples from discrimination, and not to express disapproval of Catholicism. (This might be too subtle a distinction for Mr. Thompson and his uber Catholic crew.)
The Thomas More Law Center, which represents the plaintiffs, said it would ask the full appeals court for a rehearing and then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the law center's Web page, its mission is "to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square."
"In total disregard for the Constitution, homosexual activists in positions of authority in San Francisco have ... misused the instruments of the government to attack the Catholic Church," said attorney Robert Muise, who argued the case. (One could also say that it's a violation of the Constitution to discriminate against an entire minority when one receives state and federal money.)
"We're not saying that the resolution is going to lead toward extermination of Catholics," Brian Rooney, attorney and spokesman for the law center, said Tuesday. "The problem with having governments vilifying religions and their tenets is that it's a slippery slope to instigate acts of violence." (It more frequently works the other way around.)
Ammiano, a Catholic and now a Democratic state assemblyman, said the law center's comments represent "a very unhealthy hysteria" that "trivializes what the Nazis did." With such statements, he said, "the Catholic hierarchy is ... divorcing the true believers and alienating them from the mother church."
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This sure does seem to be a lot of angst over a non binding resolution. Cardinal Levada started the mud slinging to begin with so it really is "a very unhealthy hysteria" on the part of the Thomas More Law Center. On the other hand it does get them a lot of publicity, so may be it's more a case of cold blooded calculation than hysteria. The truth is the Catholic Church has way bigger problems involving violence to children than the unsupported claims about the violence inflicted on children through gay adoption. Such as the violence inflicted on children in Catholic orphanages.
This would almost be funny if it weren't so sick. If Cardinal Levada or Archbishop Niederauer had an ounce of humility or integrity, they would call for the Thomas More Law Center to drop their suit. However, groups like this follow their own agenda, and this particular law suit is just too juicy to let drop. They fancy themselves St George the dragon slayer going after that Mecca of gay evil-- San Francisco. This will be a fight to the finish, assuming any other court agrees to deal with it. In the meantime it's more publicity for these culture warriors.
It's the rhetoric that gets to me. How can a non binding resolution dealing with equal rights be equated with any policy of Nazi Germany? What kind of mind could possibly imply that Catholicism in San Francisco is experiencing anything remotely like Judaism under Hitler? That mind can if it's all projection. Meaning that mind wants to retain the right to marginalize gays the way Hitler did Germany's homosexuals. The way Prop 8 has in California. The way Roman Catholicism has been trying to do all over the globe.
Michael Bayley has linked to an interesting article on his Wild Reed blog. In it the author, Mark Jordan, makes a very strong case that Catholicism has to deal with it's conflicted internal history with male homosexuality. It has to deal with the gay elephant in it's own culture before it can hope to deal with homosexuality in the wider culture.
"Catholicism has been one of the most homoerotic of widely available modern cultures, offering encouragement, instruction, and relatively safe haven to many homosexuals. You will not understand modern homosexuality unless you understand Catholic homosexuality, and you cannot understand Catholic homosexuality unless you begin with the clergy."
Further along in the article Jordan makes this following observation, which he defines as the gay paradox with in Christianity:
Christian churches are at once the most homophobic and the most homoerotic of institutions. They seem cunningly designed to condemn same-sex desire and to elicit it, to persecute it and to instruct it. I sometimes call this is paradox of the “Beloved Disciple”: “Come recline beside me and put your head on my chest, but don’t dare conceive of what we do as erotic.” Perhaps it is more clearly seen as the paradox of the Catholic Jesus, the paradox created by an officially homophobic religion in which an all-male clergy sacrifices male flesh before images of God as an almost naked man. How could such a religion be officially homophobic - and also intensely homoerotic? (Or woman friendly?)
I frankly believe what makes Roman Catholicism particularly Roman is this homoerotic flavor that came from directly from Roman culture. Church culture, theologically, clerically, and artistically, has been caught up in this paradox for 1700 hundred years. Condemning gays in the secular world, banning them from the priesthood, calling them disordered and intrinsically evil is pure clerical projection. It has zero effect on the spiritual and psychological pollution with in the clerical structure itself. It preaches gay hate because it both attracts and breeds self hating gays. It's pretty simple and pretty straight forward.
The consequences of priests and religious acting from that self hate are all over the world's media. I've written time and again that there needs to be a balance between the feminine and masculine in the spiritual life. Systems, both organic and social, will naturally strive for balance. It seems to me Catholicism has attempted this balancing of gender energy with a rather overt appeal to feminine men, completely excluding women. A real balance in male and female energy can not be accomplished this way.
Deep down many fine priests know this and they are uncomfortable with it. More of them need to speak out. More of them need to begin working on an entirely different sexual morality which is based in relationship and not biology. If not, there will only be more and more abuses and a larger disconnect from a secular culture which is way ahead of the existing theological curve.
