After passage of a gay marriage bill in
New York, Timothy Dolan, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York,
said he loves the gay community.
On Friday night, the New York Senate
approved Governor Andrew Cuomo's plan to make New York the sixth –
and most populous – state to legalize gay marriage. Cuomo
quickly signed the bill into law and gay and lesbian couples will be
able to wed in the Empire State starting in 30 days.
Dolan had strongly condemned allowing
gay couples to marry, 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.”
“The definition of marriage is a
given: It is a lifelong union of love and fidelity leading, please
God, to children, between one man and one woman,” Dolan
wrote in a blog posting titled Marriage:
The Core of Every Civilization.
“The definition of marriage is
hardwired into our human reason.”
“To tamper with that definition, or
to engage in some Orwellian social engineering about the nature and
purpose of marriage, is perilous to all of us. If the definition of
marriage is continually being altered, could it not in the future be
morphed again to include multiple spouses or even family members.”
“If big, intrusive government can
re-define the most basic, accepted, revealed truth that marriage
simply means one man + one woman + (hopefully) children, in a loving
family, then I'm afraid Orwell's works will no longer be on the
fiction shelf.”
The Sunday before senators voted on the
bill, Dolan prayed for its defeat. During prayer service at St.
Patrick's cathedral, Dolan said: “Any presumption to redefine that
sacred vocabulary, I'm afraid is at our common peril.”
This Sunday, however, Dolan kept mum
about gay unions, telling NY1 that he did not want any distractions
during a time of worship.
“Well, this is about prayer, and I
sort of needed a good dose of the lord's grace and mercy because I've
been down a little recently, as you might imagine,” Dolan said.
He said the vote did not surprise him,
adding that he loved the gay community.
“To the gay community, I love you
very much. If anything I ever said or did would lead you to believe
that I have anything less than love and respect for you, I
apologize.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)