Last week, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a strongly worded letter (
full text) to President Obama objecting to the Administration's decision earlier this year to no longer defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. (See
prior posting.) Dolan said in part:
[I]t is particularly upsetting, Mr. President, when your Administration, through the various court documents, pronouncements and policies identified in the attached analysis, attributes to those who support DOMA a motivation rooted in prejudice and bias. It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing....
Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizens, millions of whom have gone to the polls to directly support DOMAs in their states and have thereby endorsed marriage as the union of man and woman. Nor should a policy disagreement over the meaning of marriage be treated by federal officials as a federal offense— but this will happen if the Justice Department's latest constitutional theory prevails in court. The Administration's failure to change course on this matter will, as the attached analysis indicates, precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both
institutions.
The Bishops Conference also issued a
press release announcing the letter.
