The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and
Freedom to Marry on Tuesday called on Roman Catholic bishops to stop
supporting the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the nation's
most vociferous opponent of gay marriage.
In a letter to Cardinal Timothy Dolan,
president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), the
groups cited NOM's recently revealed strategy to pit minority groups
against gay marriage supporters in their plea.
“Last week, HRC uncovered a series of
documents that shed light on the racially and ethnically divisive
strategies and tactics used by NOM,” the letter reads.
“The documents reveal that NOM's key
goals are to 'drive a wedge between gays and blacks,' and to
manipulate Hispanic communities by 'making support for marriage a key
badge of Latino identity' and 'to make opposition to gay marriage an
identity marker, a badge of youth rebellion to conformist
assimilation to the bad side of 'Anglo' culture.' Perhaps most
shocking, NOM planned 'to identify the children of gay parents
willing to speak on camera,' essentially tricking minors into
publicly criticizing their families.”
“It is hard to believe that the
Catholic Church hierarchy, which professes to 'promote the greater
good which the Church offers humankind,' would continue to funnel
funds into, and align itself with, an organization that explicitly
uses such toxic tactics to pit American against American, minority
against minority, family member against family member.”
“The truth is the great majority of
Catholics support the freedom to marry.”
HRC President Joe Solmonese said in a
statement that Dolan has the “opportunity to denounce race-baiting
and attempts at ethnic division, and in doing so would be
representing the views of fair-minded lay Catholics across the
country, who overwhelmingly support LGBT equality.”
(Related: Maggie
Gallagher defends anti-gay marriage group's race-baiting strategy.)