By DEXTER DUGGAN
RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. — A large portrait of St. Thomas More, the chancellor of England martyred for his faith in 1535 over the issue of government mandates and marriage, keeps company with attorney Charles LiMandri in his office here.
Centuries have moved past since More’s beheading in London on a July 6, but the issues don’t seem to have changed much for LiMandri, president and chief counsel of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund (conscience
defense.org), headquartered in this town in northern San Diego County.
Once again governments are telling people their faith must submit to powerful secular officials issuing mandates against marriage and religious tradition, or else they face serious punishment.
The Wanderer sat down to interview LiMandri on July 2, just a few days before the 480th anniversary of More’s death because he refused to accept the demands of King Henry VIII regarding those issues.
Only a few days before the interview, the U.S. Supreme Court invented an entirely new right to homosexual “marriage” on June 26, arrogantly overturning millennia of law, tradition, and custom extending much farther back than the 16th-century More.
The narrow 5-4 Supreme Court majority insisted on having its way despite being warned of the seriously negative implications for the free exercise of religious belief.
The Founders of the United States considered this religious protection so vital that they put it in the very First Amendment to the Constitution.
LiMandri told The Wanderer that the majority justices “set themselves up as more knowledgeable” on marriage than anyone else who’s living or ever has lived.
Coincidentally, LiMandri was on the losing side in a New Jersey case in June where the liberal Superior Court judge warned him not to mention the First Amendment.
It was “a gargantuan case. We had to produce over 25,000 documents,” LiMandri said.
The case involved a Jewish organization under assault from the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which has a $340 million endowment, he said.
The SPLC decided to fight tooth-and-nail against conservative and morally traditionalist bodies.
In a separate incident, a homosexual activist was captured in 2013 after he began a violent firearms attack against staff at the conservative Family Research Council at its headquarters in the nation’s capital. The activist had seen the council identified as a “hate group” at the SPLC’s website.
“Everyone who disagrees with their agenda, they’re listed as a hate group,” LiMandri said, adding that under the Obama administration, the SPLC gave advice to the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Pentagon.
In an official presentation to U.S. military personnel, Catholics and evangelicals were included on the same slide as al-Qaeda terrorists, he said.
LiMandri’s conscience organization was asked to come to the aid of a group providing help to people dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction, Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing (JONAH), after the SPLC filed a complaint against it.
Liberal activists generally have taken aggressive stands against what sometimes is called “reparative therapy” because these liberals can’t bear to hear the very idea that someone would want to be freed of same-sex attractions.
SPLC said JONAH violated New Jersey’s liberal Consumer Fraud Act by offering such assistance.
“If we had been given a fair trial, we would have won,” LiMandri told The Wanderer. However, the Jewish defendants “were convicted by their religious belief.”
Superior Court Judge Peter Bariso said homosexuality couldn’t be treated as a mental disorder but had to be regarded as a normal variation of human sexuality, LiMandri said. Given the limitations enforced by the judge, the outcome “was a foregone conclusion,” LiMandri said.
“The judge precluded us from mentioning the First Amendment,” LiMandri said. “. . . At every turn, he was pulling the rug out from under us,” including denying LiMandri the opportunity to present six expert witnesses to testify.
The instructions on how to deliberate that the judge gave to the jury “almost predetermined the verdict,” LiMandri said.
As he presented his closing argument, LiMandri said, the judge interrupted him and said not to mention the First Amendment.
The victorious SPLC “is going to ask for millions [of dollars] in attorneys’ fees from my clients,” LiMandri said, adding that the JONAH representatives “stand to lose their homes and everything” to pay these fees.
He said the options are being reviewed now about whether to appeal the verdict, but it will “probably be several months” before a decision is reached.
“That’s the world we’re in right now . . . to make everyone buckle under,” LiMandri said, with the overwhelming majority of people being dictated to by a small group.
Why do such small numbers wield such power, LiMandri asked, then answered his question: “Because the elites have gotten behind [the homosexual cause],” including corporations, Hollywood, and academia.
Because of the way the issue is inaccurately portrayed by the media, most people “have a false belief that the tide of history is against them,” he said.
Asked by The Wanderer if he thought the judge was looking down upon him, LiMandri replied, “Yes, definitely,” explaining that the judge took words from the SPLC brief and put them in his own opinion, referring to the JONAH side as flat-earthers who “haven’t caught up with modern times.”
Due to this decline in moral truths, “I think we’re within half a generation” of society collapsing, LiMandri said.
However, despite these deceptions in current opinion, LiMandri said, the “truth will resonate in Heaven a thousand years from now. What they’re saying is a lie. It cannot sustain itself.”
Because of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund’s expertise, it usually can keep people from having to go to court, LiMandri said, but it was called to help with JONAH after the complaint already had been served, and SPLC wasn’t interested in stopping the process.
A brochure by the defense fund says it’s unique because of “its focus on trial-level defense. Whereas other public-interest attorneys and nonprofits tend to focus their work at the appellate level, FCDF has seasoned expertise at the trial-court level where these rights most need to be defended at this time.
“Too many cases never get to the appellate level — precisely because harassed, oppressed, intimidated men and women do not have the resources to defend their rights at trial. That is where the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund comes in,” the brochure says. It adds:
“Moreover, FCDF provides much of its specialized work in California, where the push against religious liberty is particularly strong.”
A June 25 article by Austin Ruse at Breitbart News concluded:
“The end result of the verdict may very well be that no one in the state of New Jersey who acts out in a homosexual way may be allowed to seek counseling to stop. This is the goal of the Southern Poverty Law Center and groups like Truth Wins Out, to stand between a patient wanting help with homosexuality and his doctor who is willing to help him. One plaintiff described an organized plan to close down JONAH and other groups offering similar counseling services.”
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