SACRAMENTO, CA -- It looked like a fight between titans -- an old-fashioned morality play between the forces of good and evil. At the public policy precipice stood two Bay Area giants: hizzoner Willie "Belshazzar" Brown, "Da' Mayor" of San Francisco, and the Most Reverend William Levada, the city's Roman Catholic archbishop. The explosive issue to be contested: could a modern-day Caesar force the Church of St. Peter to accept man's law (in this case, San Francisco's domestic-partnership law which requires employers to give spousal benefits to unmarried heterosexual and homosexual live-in partners) over God's law.

Specifically, Willie Brown and his minions on the San Francisco board of supervisors sought to impose the city's domestic-partnership law on those Catholic charity organizations which held city contracts (e.g., for HIV housing, homeless services, etc.). As Pacific Research Institute fellow Mark Davis described in his February 5th Wall Street Journal article, in the preliminary rounds Archbishop Levada came out swinging. He threatened to sue San Francisco, saying that, based on constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, the church's charitable organizations must be permitted to "maintain their operations (including employee benefit plans) in a manner that is consistent with their religious principles."

Yet, just when it looked like the church had positioned itself for the climactic offensive against the emperor and his forces, all Catholic resistance evaporated. The day after Davis' Wall Street Journal article ran, Archbishop Levada informed the world that he had agreed to a tentative "compromise" whereby the Catholic charities would abide by the following provision: "an employee may designate a legally domiciled member of the employee's household as being eligible for spousal equivalent benefits." In its press release, the archdiocese unbelievably claimed that this agreement was in accord "with the goals of the Catholic social teachings while at the same time ensuring that Church agencies are not required to compromise our Catholic teachings on the unique importance of marriage and family." Trouble is, this was no compromise, but a total capitulation. Regardless of what the archbishop believes, under this language heterosexual and homosexual non-married partners of Catholic charity employees would be eligible for spousal benefits -- exactly what the archbishop earlier said was contrary to church principles. The only difference would be that the church would hand out the benefits while officially shutting its eyes under its own self-deluding "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The San Francisco Chronicle encouraged the compromise saying that even though the new language is "distinction without a difference," the bottom line should be "whatever works." But that is not the real bottom line. The real bottom line is that timeless moral law has been trivialized and discarded for the sake of a few million dollars in city contracts. In the Book of Matthew, Satan tempted Jesus by offering the kingdoms of the world and all their splendor "if you bow down and worship me." Jesus' reply was unambiguous: "Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only." Question: why didn't Archbishop Levada heed his own Lord's advice?

-By Lance T. Izumi