Monday, August 29, 2005
More church-property disputes
This article describes a "momentous" church-property ruling involving a dispute over homosexuality and property between an Episcopal church in Newport Beach, California and the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Perhaps it is because the article appears in World magazine -- a publication that is, I believe, Evangelical in orientation -- that the piece appears quite sanguine about the developments it reports: "California courts appear to be the most aggressive in applying the neutral-principles doctrine." Apparently, the local church even filed an "an anti-SLAPP motion against the diocese. In legal jargon, a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) is a suit aimed at intimidating and silencing a critic by making defense so expensive the critic abandons it."
Judge Velasquez agreed with St. James: The diocese had sued only after the parish rejected its pro-homosexual doctrinal positions and the leadership of Bishop J. Jon Bruno. (Bishop Bruno had voted for the consecration of a noncelibate homosexual as bishop and endorsed blessings for same-sex couples.) The judge reasoned this made the case also a free-speech matter for the purposes of a SLAPP ruling.
Even if one is inclined -- as I probably am -- to sympathize with the dissenting, "conservative" parish, it seems to me that the law is reaching awfully far (and many believers are inviting the law awfully far) into internal church matters.
Rick
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2005/08/more_churchprop.html