In a long letter, fraught with hyperbole, from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops - (a bigoted organization that oddly still sits on the board of the Coalition on Human Needs, a high-powered coalition of most of the largest progressive groups in Washington, DC - one wonders if an anti-black or anti-semitic organization would be permitted to sit on their board (actually, we don't wonder, I'm sure CHN has double standards for non-gay bigots) - here's CHN's Facebook page, feel free to say hi - oh yeah, they also have the Catholic Charities bigots on their board too) - really let loose at the President over DOMA and DADT.
A few of the highlights from the Catholic bishops' letter:
I believe therefore that you would agree that every child has the right to be loved by both a mother and a father.
And I believe that every child has the right to not be raped by a Catholic priest who was already known to the church leadership, but about whom the church leadership did nothing for decades. So if they want to talk about the children, let's talk about the children.
That is why it 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.
More from the bishops:
Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizen.
Yes, God forbid the federal government assumed ill intent or moral blindness on the part of its citizens when investigating hate crimes, or racial prejudice, or anti-Semitism. The very rationale behind civil rights is the need to protect the minority from the majority. The majority of Americans had a problem with race, and a lot of them still have a problem with gays (though in varied degrees, with a lot of it improving, such as on DADT where the overwhelming majority of the American public disagreed with the Catholic Church). Maybe someone should tell the Catholic Bishops not to presume that they're speaking on behalf of the majority of Americans, because they're not even close on DADT, and not really there on DOMA either.
And here comes the truly hysterical, over the top, mary moment:
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.
See, the underlying problem here is that the Catholic bishops are imputing their own hatred and bigotry on to the rest of us. They assume that since they wish to destroy our lives, that we will in return destroy theirs once we're fully free.
Yeah, it doesn't really work that way. Unlike Republicans, aka the Catholic Church, Democrats don't do the world domination thing very well. We tend to favor "live and let live" rather than "live my way or die." (In other words, you're not going to find many Galileos in our closet. Can the Catholic Church claim the same? No they can't.)
It's also terribly disturbing to see the Catholic church do the very thing that we were told would never happen if a Catholic ever became president - try to impose its religion on all in the land.
The Catholic bishops are under the mistaken impression that they're my bishops too, and they're not. They represent their own church, and even there, we all know that most Catholics don't agree with much of what the church preaches on these kind of issues. But in any case, they have no right to dictate to an American president that he should make me, a Greek Orthodox, or you a Jew a Muslim or even an atheist live according to their church laws.
That's not a democracy. It's Vatican City (and also Tehran). And last time I checked, things weren't going so well in either capital.
PS I do have to hand it to the Catholic bishops. They wrote one hell of an Obama re-election pamphlet. I can just see the Obama campaign handing copies of this letter, and they will, to ever gay person who dares to suggest that the President hasn't done enough on our issues. I'm sure it wasn't their intent, but the Catholic bishops just made the President's campaign a lot of money and a lot of votes.
