YES! Mayor Marcelo Ebrard says what too many politicians in this country, including our President, are unwilling to say.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of Mexico City on Wednesday filed a civil suit claiming defamation against Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara, upping the ante in a high-profile political spat over gay marriage in Mexico that pits emboldened secular institutions against the country’s influential Roman Catholic clergy.

The suit comes after Ebrard demanded that Sandoval retract suggestions made over the weekend that Mexico’s Supreme Court justices were bribed for their recent landmark rulings in favor of gay marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in the Mexican capital.

Church authorities were not backing down. Sandoval said Monday he would not retract his comments, and the archdiocese in Guadalajara later said it had proof of the allegations against the Supreme Court justices (link in Spanish). Statements in support were issued from the archdiocese in Mexico City, while the Bishops’ Conference of Mexico also said it supports Sandoval.

In the secular institutional corner, the Supreme Court censured Sandoval’s statements unanimously, and Ebrard issued a stark warning to the highest-ranking prelate of Mexico’s second-largest city: “We live in a secular state, and here, whether we like it or not, the law rules the land,” Ebrard said, according to La Jornada (links in Spanish). “The cardinal must submit to the law of the land, like all other citizens of this country.”