Morally Bankrupt Catholic Church Continues to Meddle in Mexico's Politics

Despite having proved itself to be one of the most corrupt and shameless institutions on the planet where the enabling and cover up of the sexual molestation of children was official policy, the Roman Catholic Church has the gall to try to meddle in Mexican politics in terms to the rights afforded citizens. Indeed, Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iniguez of Guadalajara, has accused the mayor of Mexico City of bribing the nations Supreme Court justices who recently upheld Mexico City's gay law and gay adoption. It would seem that the cardinal's time would be better served cleaning up the moral cesspool within his own institution as opposed to trying to influence the CIVIL laws. But then, like many in the Catholic hierarchy, he's probably trying to distract the sheeple within the laity from focusing on just how corrupt and immoral the Church has become. The mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard (pictured above), isn't taking the abuse quietly. Indeed, on Wednesday he filed a civil suit claiming defamation against the pompous cardinal. As for paying bribes, one has to wonder how many bribes the Church paid to avoid prosecution for its crimes against minors. Here are highlights from the Los Angeles Times :
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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.
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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.
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Sandoval made the allegations on Sunday during an event in Aguascalientes state. He also used a slur against gays while decrying the recent high court decisions that were called victories for the gay-rights community, as L.A. Times correspondent Tracy Wilkinson analyzes in this story.
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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. "The cardinal must submit to the law of the land, like all other citizens of this country."
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By wide majorities, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of gay marriages in Mexico City, ruled that those marriages must be recognized in Mexico's 31 states, and upheld a portion of the Mexico City gay-marriage law that permits same-sex couples to adopt children.
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The court hewed to Mexico's strict separation of church and state and said the constitution did not indicate that marriage had to be defined as the union of a man and woman. To deny gay couples the right to adopt, the court said, would amount to discrimination. "There is nothing that indicates that homosexual couples are less apt parents than heterosexual ones," Justice Arturo Zaldivar said in televised proceedings this week.
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Candidly, it is long past time that religious institutions that attempt to meddle in secular politics need to be stripped of their special privileges and - in the USA - stripped of their tax exempt status. Were the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and Mormon Church to name a few to be taxed like other citizens, it would be a well deserved punishment for their efforts to subvert the separation of church and state. It would also be a boon to the U.S. Treasury.