Right-wingers are once again attacking Democrats -- and Republicans who deviate from conservatively correct thinking -- as anti-Catholic bigots. And they're doing it by lying about Catholic belief:

Nearly a year after conservative critics accused Senate Democrats of anti-Catholic bias because of their opposition to federal circuit-court nominee William Pryor, many are leveling the same charge against a handful of Senate Republicans because of their suspected opposition to J. Leon Holmes, a district court nominee....

The Senate will vote today on Holmes’s nomination to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas....

Holmes is ... controversial ... because of a 1997 article on the roles of men and women in Christian marriage that he co-wrote with his wife for a Catholic magazine....

In the article on gender roles for the Arkansas Catholic Register, Holmes wrote, “The husband is to love his wife as Christ loves the Church/and as the Church subordinates herself to Christ, in that manner the wife is to subordinate herself to Christ.”

The conservative Family Research Council asserted in a statement that “incredibly, there are senators, including some Republicans, who have indicated they will not support Mr. Holmes because of an article he and his wife wrote for the local Catholic newspaper offering reflections on Ephesians 5.”

“It would be a great act of injustice if the religious bigotry leveled against Mr. Holmes should keep him from confirmation,” the group warned....

--The Hill

But here's what what America's Catholic bishops actually say about the roles of men and women in marriage:

Marriage must never become a struggle for control.

For, unlike other relationships, marriage is a vowed covenant with unique dimensions. In. this partnership, mutual submission — not dominance by either partner — is the key to genuine joy.

That's the real Catholic doctrine: "mutual submission" -- each spouse submitting to the other.

So groups such as the Protestant-dominated Family Research Council have the nerve to tell us what does and does not constitute anti-Catholic bigotry -- and don't even know (or choose not to acknowledge) what the Catholic Church actually teaches.

Apparently it's working: The two Democratic senators from heavily Catholic Louisiana, Mary Landrieu and John Breaux, plan to vote for Holmes, The Hill reports.

Nevertheless, most Democrats plan to vote against Holmes (for fervent anti-abortion views as well as sexism). The swing votes will come from the GOP side, which is why Arlen Specter and Kay Bailey Hutchison are particular targets of this jihad, Specter because he's said to be lobbying against Holmes, Hutchison because she may sway other Republican votes if she votes no.