04/06/2006 - National Legal News

The lawsuit, brought on behalf of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and two San Francisco Catholic citizens, is in reaction to a gay-sympathetic resolution that the city's board of supervisors unanimously passed on March 21.

The controversy can be traced back to the Vatican’s 2003 statement that “allowing children to be adopted by [same-sex couples] would actually mean doing violence to these children.”

The San Francisco resolution called this directive against same-sex adoptions hateful, discriminatory, insensitive and ignorant. It also called the Vatican’s Cardinal-elect (and former San Francisco archbishop) William Levada “a decidedly unqualified representative of his former home city and of the people of San Francisco and the values they hold dear.”

Taking offense to the nonbinding resolution is the Thomas More Law Center, a firm that describes its mission as the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Referring to the resolution as anti-Catholic bigotry, Thomas More representatives say the statements violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and condemn the church’s moral teachings pertaining to homosexuality.