ARTICLES

A Calculated Assault

ANOTHER SF LAW TARGETS CHURCH

By George Neumayr

"Whenever you make compromises with the devil bad things start happening in the short and long run," says Lance Izumi, senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco. "I think the city of San Francisco would have thought twice about imposing this kind of ordinance on the Church if it had put up a fight on the domestic partners ordinance."

The new ordinance to which Izumi refers is the so-called Sunshine Ordinance, passed in June by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. It requires non-profit city contractors like Catholic Charities to hold public meetings periodically. The law contains a revealing exception for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. Not coincidentally, Planned Parenthood, it was widely reported, had a hand in crafting the law.

In June, San Francisco Archbishop William Levada condemned the ordinance, writing to the faithful in his newsletter Sunday to Sunday that the law "provides a platform for individuals to intrude upon the mission of private non-profits," violates the Church's First Amendment rights, is an "affront" to an organization with a "history of service" in the city, and creates an unnecessary adversarial relationship between the city and desperately needed non-profit organizations.

In a July interview with the San Francisco Chronicle's Don Lattin, Levada stepped up his criticism of the city government, blasting Tom Ammiano, the homosexual San Francisco supervisor who pushed the law, for espousing "an agenda that wants to exclude religious activity from the city." The Sunshine Ordinance would give homosexual activists an opportunity to commit "Catholophobia" against the Church, Levada said, adding, "We get soundings that ACT UP [the gay rights group] is going to march on us. That is something we will not tolerate."

Lattin noted that "the archbishop's new hard line against the gay power brokers in City Hall contrasts sharply with the compromise he worked out early last year over San Francisco's controversial domestic partners legislation....While the archbishop's 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' compromise saved the church's partnership with the city, it did not score Levada any points with Catholic conservatives, some of whom saw him as caving in to the gay rights crusade."

Lattin also reported that Levada objected to "an investigation by the city's Human Rights Commission to determine whether any of the 20 faith-based charities doing business with the city discriminates against homosexuals. The Commission's report, though it found no serious discrimination by religious organizations, noted that Levada 'spoke out against the domestic partner ceremony performed by San Francisco city officials in March 1996'."

Said Levada to Lattin, "I have to keep asking myself, 'Am I being paranoid about this?' I was the only person named by name as contributing to homophobic attitudes because of my stand on domestic partners."

Retired Santa Rosa Bishop Mark Hurley joined Levada in protesting the Sunshine Ordinance. Addressing the issue in a June 30th radio address on KVTO-AM 1400, Hurley said that the ordinance "throws open the meetings for anyone to address any problem they wish related to the entire operation of Catholic Social Service, and goes far beyond simply comments on city contracts. It provides a platform for, among others, for the vocal anti-Catholics in the city who hate the Catholic Church."

"In the past few years we have seen our Cathedral defaced with graffiti, its large plate glass window smashed, other churches vandalized. St. Brendan's Church bombed, toppling its tower to the ground. Year after year we have had to witness insults and provocations parading up Market Street with explicit anti-Catholic displays--the most egregious example being the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence."

"Just within the past few weeks at least three parish churches have been trashed. The sanctuaries were invaded, and in a peculiar twist, the invaders have smashed statues, cutting off the hands of the statues of Mary, Joseph, the Sacred Heart and even of the Little Flower." (In July, more vandalism occurred. Seven large panes of glass were destroyed at St. Mary's Cathedral, causing an estimated $125,000 worth of damage. During the past year, the archdiocese has reported 18 acts of vandalism.)

Hurley noted that he had accepted the archbishop's compromise on the domestic partners law because "I judged it to be the greater good that the manifold works of charity not be abandoned." But now Hurley counseled against compromise. "Now it can be seen: that was only the opening gun in a calculated assault on the Catholic Church--with other mainline churches with their charities suffering as well. The Sunshine law should be repealed--even waivers are a bad idea."

At press time, however, the archdiocese still hadn't decided whether to fight the law or comply with it in a compromised form. Maurice Healy, the archbishop's spokesman, said to the Faith in late July that the city might "obviate our concerns." Asked if the archbishop's earlier compromise on the city's domestic partners law was regrettable in light of this new intrusion, Healy said no. "We still believe that the broader issue of health care was a valid one."

Tom Ammiano, speaking to the Faith in late July, also spoke in accomodating terms. "It is unfortunate that there is this sparring in the press. I did write the archbishop a letter concerning my respect for his office, you know regretting that we view this issue differently and he wrote me a nice letter back." But Ammiano, who says he is Catholic, insisted that "when [the Church] is taking the public money that money can't go towards anything that would be counter to our non-discrimination clause. I know a lot of Catholic gay people and, you know, they are working internally to see if there is a possiblity of changing that position [on homosexuality]....If you take the public money, then constitution says separation of church and state. You can't discriminate, at least how the city of San Francisco defines discrimination...."

Meanwhile, in a related development, Congressman Frank Riggs from Windsor has sent a signal to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that bullying Catholic Charities and other religious organizations may cost the city federal money. Beau Phillips, Riggs' spokesman, told the Faith that the congressman's bill to "not allow San Francisco to use federal funding to implement the domestic partners ordinance...has passed the house [214-212] and it is now headed to the senate for a conference committee where differences in the senate bill and house bill will be worked out..."

"The congressman feels that Catholic Charities was browbeaten into doing what it had to do," says Phillips. "Basically the city forced them to knuckle under. To call it a compromise is an overstatement."

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