Citing New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan's response to a gay homeless shelter, Joseph Amodeo has resigned from the junior board of the city's Catholic Charities.

The Associated Press reported that Amodeo quit on Saturday over the cardinal's attitude.

Carl Siciliano, who heads the Ali Forney Center, a homeless shelter dedicated to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youth, started the conflict when he sent a letter to Dolan, a vocal opponent of the state's gay marriage law, in which he stated that Dolan's “loud and strident voice against the acceptance of LGBT people” creates “a climate where parents turn on their own children.”

“As youths find the courage and integrity to be honest about who they are at younger ages, hundreds of thousands are being turned out of their homes and forced to survive alone on the streets by parents who cannot accept having a gay child,” Siciliano wrote.

Dolan denied the claims in a letter dated March 28.

“For you to make the allegations and insinuations you do in your letter based on my adherence to the clear teachings of the Church is not only unfair and unjust, but inflammatory,” Dolan wrote in his letter. “Neither I nor anyone in the Church would ever tolerate hatred of or prejudice towards any of the Lord's children.”

The action led Amodeo to quit his seat on the executive committee of the junior board of the New York branch of Catholic Charities.

“The comments that His Eminence has made regarding same-sex couples, the LGBT community in general, and his recent in-action in response to the Ali Forney's plea for pastoral assistance, has left me with no other choice but to resign,” Amodeo wrote in his resignation letter.

“Mr. Siciliano's comments were not inflammatory, they were truth; they were a call for help; and they were expressive of the cry in the wilderness that LGBT people have been making for far too long.”

“As a gay Catholic who teaches religious education, is active in parish life and supports Catholic organizations, I'm afraid that the Archbishop has caused my heart to ache and my soul to feel pierced.”

Dolan strongly opposed passage of New York's gay marriage law, calling it an “ominous threat” to society and “a violation of what we consider the natural law that's embedded in every man and woman.”