Left-wing judge endorses anti-Catholic bigotry

No Establishment here, move along:

Was the San Francisco Board of Supervisors constitutionally justified in passing an explicitly anti-Catholic resolution, adopted March 21, 2006, which labeled the Vatican a “foreign country” whose moral teachings are “hateful,” “insulting and callous,” and “insulting to all San Franciscans”?

In December, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said it was. Last week, the Thomas More Law Center filed a brief with the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and two Catholic residents of San Francisco appealing Patel’s ruling.

The 2006 resolution, which called on the archbishop to “defy” the Church’s teachings and described Cardinal William Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, as “unqualified” to lead, was a reaction to the Church’s opposition to adoptions by homosexual couples.

Judge Patel, appointed to the federal bench in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter and former counsel for the National Organization for Women, ruled that the Board of Supervisors’ resolution urging the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco to ignore his Church’s teachings, did not violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Establishment Clause, found in the First Amendment, prohibits the government from interfering with the free practice of religion – or favoring one religion over another.

The Thomas More Law Center says the Supervisors’ resolution sends a clear message that Catholics are not welcome as members of the San Francisco political community.

This is one of the most egregious examples of state-sponsored religion bashing and it gets a full endorsement from a Carter appointed Judge. The mainstream media's reaction to this outrage? Chirping crickets.