Boy, that claim can generate all sorts of punchlines. Seriously, can this church claim legitimacy of any kind after becoming the world’s premier professional pedophile protection racket? Michael Airhart:

U.S. Catholic bishops and CNSNews.com declared today that they had “refuted” the Ninth Circuit federal ruling on the constitutionality of Californians’ equal access to civil institutions such as marriage.

Cardinal Francis George, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), rejected [Judge Vaughn] Walker’s claims, stating that “no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined.”

The Aug. 4 ruling, which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put an emergency stay on this week, stated that, “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”

And look at this haughty crap – trying to deny the church is homophobic.

Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the bishops, said in an e-mail to CNSNews.com that “Judge Walker, in his decision, backed his bigotry with errors, including the misstatement that the ‘Catholic Church views homosexuality as sinful.’ The fact is, the Catholic Church sees homosexuality as a condition, an inclination in a person, something not intrinsically sinful.”

According to the bishops, Catholic autocrats are unbigoted for imposing their antigay prejudices upon all the civil institutions that couples of all faiths or no faith may require – and meanwhile, the bishops say, courts that defend civil law and constitutional equality are bigoted for rejecting false Catholic claims to authority over civil society and for rejecting Catholic false distinctions between sin and supposedly-unholy-disorders-that-cause-one-to-sin.