The failure of the Obama administration to support the Defense of
Marriage Act and similar actions in California and the District of
Columbia violates the constitution and takes the issue “away from the
people,” Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of Oakland, Calif. warned in his
newspaper column.
President Barack Obama’s order that the Department of Justice not
defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was “an egregious violation”
of the federal government’s separation of powers because it is not the
role of the executive branch to decide which laws are unconstitutional.
The act in question defines marriage for federal purposes and
preserves the right of U.S. states not to recognize same-sex “marriages”
contracted in other states. It had passed by an “overwhelmingly
majority,” Bishop Cordileone said in the March 7 issue of The Catholic
Voice.
He criticized the claim that the act should not be defended because
it discriminates against a sexual minority and is unconstitutional.
“The affirmation of marriage does not discriminate against anyone and
casts no judgments on how people work out their intimate relationships,
but rather affirms the most fundamental good in any healthy society,”
said the bishop, who heads the U.S. bishops’ Committee for the Defense
of Marriage.
The Oakland bishop further charged that the U.S. Department of
Justice had submitted an “apparently deliberately weak defense” of the
legislation which will make it likely to be overturned.
The defense
omitted the one compelling factor which has convinced every court: the
connection between marriage and the good of children, he said.
This failure was similar to California officials’ refusal to defend
Proposition 8, the successful 2008 ballot measure which affirmed
marriage as a union of a man and a woman.
Then-Attorney General Jerry
Brown, who is now the state’s governor, refused to defend the law on the
grounds he is personally opposed to it.
Bishop Cordileone called this “an explicit denial of his public
duty.”
He noted the irony that legislators have said they could not
impose their personal views on issues like abortion but “we now have the
chief law enforcer in the state doing exactly that.”
“(T)hese and so many other moves by our public officials should give
cause for concern about the fate of democracy in our country,” he said.
“The fact of the matter is, wherever ‘gay marriage’ has become the
law of the land, it has happened in a way that avoids the democratic
process, and sometimes even goes directly against it,” he wrote. “On the
other hand, whenever the people have had the chance to vote on
marriage, they have consistently affirmed it.”
These successes came despite advocates of traditional marriage being outspent and facing “strong” media bias, he explained.
Bishop Cordileone also took issue with reporters who have depicted
these election decisions as votes on “gay marriage,” even though such
unions have never been put on the ballot.
They also downplay the
unanimous successes of these votes: when the traditional definition of
marriage has been on the ballot it has won “every time” in all 31
states, he said.
Legislative action to recognize same-sex “marriage” has also failed
to show concern for democratic rule, the bishop contended.
In
Washington, D.C. the City Council approved recognition of these unions
and obstructed efforts for a popular vote on marriage “every step of the
way” in a city with a very large black population.
In the bishop’s view, it was ironic that “a small group of political
elites” claimed to expand rights by denying the right to vote to the
masses of black citizens.
These trends show that the present cultural conflict puts “the future
prospects of our democracy at stake,” Bishop Cordileone concluded.