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Family News in Focus

San Francisco calls the Catholic Church’s teachings hateful, defamatory and insensitive.

The liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether a scathing anti-Catholic resolution from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is unconstitutional.

The resolution, passed unanimously in 2006, accused the Vatican of operating as a “foreign country” and called the Church’s teachings “hateful,” “defamatory,” “insensitive,” “ignorant” and “insulting to all San Franciscans.” It was issued in response to the Church’s requirement that adoptive children be brought up by families with a mom and dad.

“They’re condemning the Catholic Church as ‘hateful’ and ‘harmful,’ and that is clearly a violation of constitutional law, where no government entity is to be hostile to any particular religion,” said Brian Rooney, an attorney with the Thomas More Law Center, who represented the Church in court this week.

Susan Fani, director of communications at the Catholic League, called the resolution a scare tactic that had to be challenged.

“So many times we’re told the Church needs to butt out of the state,” she said, “but here we have a perfect situation of what the First Amendment is addressing.

“Our goal is that they don’t do this again, that they learn to step back and not overstep their authority.”

Around the same time, the San Francisco board also voted to banish 25,000 evangelical teens who had gathered in the city to pray.