A California Catholic Daily exclusive by John Reynolds:

The Department of Life, Liberty and Justice, a ministry of the San Bernardino diocese under Bishop Gerald Barnes, has announced a controversial free event — a conference focusing on “Being Salt and Life of the Earth,” on Wednesday, September 28.

The featured speaker is Brian Levin, who teaches criminal justice at Cal State San Bernardino and is director of the university’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Levin will speak on “Emerging Trends in Hate & Extremism.”

Levin was formerly associated with the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center of Morris Dees. The FBI found that the Southern Poverty Law Center was so extreme that it was dropped from the FBI’s list of agencies used as a resource.

Levin filed a friend of the court brief supporting James Obergefell in his successful bid for the legalization of homosexual “marriage” by the U.S. Supreme Court (Obergefell v. Hodges). As an advocate for “gay marriage,” Levin labels any references against gay marriage as “hate speech.”

In 2008 Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, currently president of the lobbying arm of the state’s bishops – the California Catholic Conference – told a national meeting of gay-friendly Catholics: “Sexual relations between people of the same sex can be alluring for homosexuals, but it deviates from the true meaning of the act and distracts them from the true nature of love to which God has called us all. For this reason, it is sinful.”

Bishop Soto also urged Catholics to support Proposition 8, a ballot measure to protect marriage as a sacred covenant between only a man and a woman.

A diocesan website promoting the September 28 event states: “The conference will cover a variety of topics in the breakout workshops such as issues related to social and economic justice, immigration, racism and discrimination, re-entry program, sentencing laws/death penalty, end of life issues, human trafficking, care of the environment and climatic changes, and more.”

Even though the meeting is sponsored by a Catholic diocesan ministry supposedly addressing “Life, Liberty and Justice,” the conference does not mention discussion of essential human rights issues such as the killing of unborn babies, the marketing of human body parts by Planned Parenthood, or the widespread opposition to Catholic morality in regard to human sexuality.

See the website for the Life, Dignity, and Justice Conference.