Archbishop Dolan Tells Obama to End War Against DOMA

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter to President Barack Obama this week to criticize recent actions of the administration on behalf of LGBT equality, especially the decision to stop defending DOMA.

In the letter sent Tuesday, the archbishop of New York, writing in his capacity as head of the bishops' public policy arm, expressed “grave concerns” about steps that, in his opinion, “escalate the threat to marriage and imperil the religious freedom of those who promote and defend marriage.” He focused on the decision of the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act earlier this year, a move the bishop's conference opposed.

“Now the Justice Department has shifted from not defending DOMA — which is problem enough, given the duty of the executive branch to enforce even laws it disfavors — to actively attacking DOMA’s constitutionality,” wrote Dolan, who seemed largely absent from the marriage equality debate in New York this year. “Unfortunately the only response to date has been the intensification of efforts to undermine DOMA and the institution of marriage.”

His two-page letter was accompanied by a three-page conference staff analysis of the administration’s recent actions around DOMA and related “threats.” The analysis argued that the Justice Department “escalated the level of hostility” against DOMA in July with its brief in Golinski v U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which the analysis said “compares DOMA in effect to racially discriminatory laws.”