Black pastors group calls for Eric Holder impeachment over gay marriage
FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2014 file photo, Attorney General Eric ... more >
African American Pastors, a group of conservative, black men of the cloth, say Attorney General Eric Holder ought to be impeached for his stance on gay marriage laws.
The group faulted the entire Obama administration for caving to partisan pressures on the issue — and said the White House
has “sold out” American principles for personal agendas — but that
going after the president would prove fruitless, The Hill reported. So CAAP members are turning to Mr. Holder instead.“If Obama was a white man, he would be impeached,” said Rev. William Owens, the group’s founder and president, in The Hill. “Obama has been given a free pass to do what he pleases, but I don’t give him a pass. I’m very black, been black all my life. He doesn’t get a pass. I don’t give him a pass.”
CAAP has kicked off a petition to kick Mr. Holder from office via impeachment.
“He will go down in history as the worst attorney general,” said Mr. Owens, in The Hill.
**FILE** Republican presidential hopeful, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, says goodbye to ... more >
Mr Holder recently advised attorneys general they no longer needed to defend laws in their states — including Pennsylvania, Nevada
, Virginia and Oregon — that ban same-sex marriage, if they found the measures to be discriminatory.His statement, as reported by The Hill: “Any decision — at any level — not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare. They must be reserved only for exceptional circumstances. And they must never stem merely from policy or political disagreements — hinging instead on firm constitutional grounds.”
Mr. Owens said the White House’s use of the civil rights movement to press for same-sex marriage laws was indefensible.
“It’s a disgrace that [Obama] has stood on the shoulders of Rosa Parks and martin Luther King Jr.,” he said, The Hill reported. “I detect them calling this a civil rights movement. It’s not a civil rights movement. It’s a civil wrongs movement.”
Black pastors demand Eric Holder's IMPEACHMENT after he tells state attorneys general that they don't have to defend anti-gay marriage laws
- The U.S. attorney general believes he's found a way to force the gay-marriage issue in states that refuse to recognize them
- Democratic state attorneys general, Holder said, are justified in sitting on their hands when state 'traditional marriage' laws are challenged in court
- A group of black pastors responded by launching an online petition calling for his impeachment and removal from office
- They say Holder swore an oath to protect and defend all laws, not just those he finds morally and ethically acceptable
A group of African-American pastors stunned Washington on Tuesday by calling for the impeachment and removal of Eric Holder, the black lawyer who heads the U.S. Department of Justice.
Attorney General Holder, a longtime friend and ally of President Barack Obama, spoke Tuesday at the winter meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, telling top law enforcers at the state level that laws banning gay marriage can be cast aside if they believe they encourage illegal discrimination.
'In general,' Holder told them, 'I believe that we must be suspicious of legal classifications based solely on sexual orientation.'
'And we must endeavor in all of our efforts to uphold and advance the values that once led our forebears to declare unequivocally that all are created equal and entitled to equal opportunity.'
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
Attorney General Eric Holder spoke at the annual
Attorneys General Winter Meeting in Washington, saying that state-level
law enforcement chiefs can choose to abandon laws banning same-sex
marriages
The Coalition of African American Pastors
demanded the impeachment of Eric Holder on Tuesday, asking 1 million
Americans to sign a petition aimed at giving Congress political cover
Times are changing: Plaintiffs celebrated a
Virginia ruling that struck down the state's same-sex marriage ban after
the state's new attorney general, Mark Herring, chose not to defend it
in court
Holder's speech came just weeks after Holder ordered Justice Department employees to give legal same-sex marriages equal consideration, even in states where such unions are not recognized.
The result of his latest remarks is a new federal government-sanctioned license, covering attorneys general who refuse to defend 'traditional marriage' laws when they are challenged in court.
That has angered the Coalition of African American Pastors, which said it aims to collect 1 million signatures on an impeachment petition that blames Holder for violating his oath of office by picking and choosing which laws to enforce on the basis of his personal beliefs.
'President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have turned their backs on the values the American people hold dear,' the group said, 'values particularly cherished in the black community: values like marriage, which should be strengthened and promoted, rather than weakened and undermined.
Addressing Holder's move to bring state attorneys general along, the group accused him in a statement of trying to 'coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex "marriage" agenda.'
Six hours after the coalition's pres conference, its online petition to Congress had collected fewer than 4,000 signatures.
Rev. Bill Owens (4th from L) said Tuesday that Holder 'will go down in history as the worst attorney general'
The gay marriage debate has divided America, with supporters seeming to have captured the momentum in recent years
Blacks and evangelicals are the two demographic
groups most opposed to same-sex marriages, a fact brought into sharp
relief by Tuesday's launch of a black pastors' movement to impeach
Holder
'Attorney General Holder has attempted to undermine the states’ authority ... specifically with his latest directives to Department of Justice employees to interpret same-sex "marriage" status as broadly as possible even in those states which do not recognize these unions,' the petition reads in part.
'The Attorney General has brazenly overstepped the bounds of his authority and he must be held accountable.'
Newly minted Democratic Virginia Attorney
General Mark Herring believed his state's ban on same-sex marriage was
unconstitutional, so he has chosen not to defend it -- a move Eric
Holder hopes more of Herring's colleagues will embrace
'A state attorney general has a solemn duty to the state and its people to defend state laws and constitutional provisions against challenge under federal law,' Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said in a statement.
'To refuse to do so because of personal policy preferences or political pressure erodes the rule of law on which all of our freedoms are founded. A government that does not enforce the law equally will lead our society to disrespect the rule of law.'
But six Democratic state attorneys general, including Virginia newcomer Mark Herring, have chosen to sit on their hands while gay advocacy groups and individual plaintiffs have sued over state laws that limit the definition of 'marriage' to a union between one man and one woman.
Herring's inaction paved the way for a federal judge to strike down a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriages. The case will be appealed, but only as a procedural matter aimed at hurrying a final disposition.
The American Foundation for Equal Rights, a group supporting the plaintiffs in that case, said Monday that 'loving gay and lesbian couples and their families should not have to live one more day as second-class citizens under unjust laws.'
Adam Umhoefer, the group's executive director, said he hoped that 'soon all Virginians – and hopefully all Americans – will have the freedom to marry the person they love and their rights fully realized.'
Quieting the masses: President Obama, Eric
Holder and advisor Valerie Jarrett met Feb. 18 with leaders from African
American civil rights groups in the Roosevelt Room of the White House,
but reportedly focused health care and his 'income inequality' platform
Fox News reported that Ethics and Public Policy Center president Ed Whelan blasted Holder on Tuesday, saying that 'state attorneys general are obligated to defend state marriage laws.'
Whelan called it 'unfortunate and outrageous that Attorney General Holder doesn't understand that, but it's hardly surprising.'
Coalition of African American Pastors founder Rev. Bill Owens told reporters Tuesday that 'our leaders in Washington are letting [Holder] get away with his illegal conduct.'
'He will go down in history as the worst attorney general,' Owens said.
The petition, he added, is meant to give Republicans in Congress 'the encouragement necessary to remove this dangerous ideologue from public office.'
As gay marriage has gained legal footholds in more and more states, President Obama's usually rock-solid African American community has wavered, consistently polling low approval numbers for the practice.
Americans in black households disapprove of gay marriage in larger numbers than any other ethnic subset of the U.S.
A June 2013 Pew Research Center survey found that just 39 per cent of blacks support gay marriage initiatives, compared with 51 per cent of the larger population.
But 69 per cent of blacks also acknowledge that the legal recognition of same-sex marriages is inevitable, according to Pew.
Twenty-two per cent of self-identified evangelical Christians support gay marriage, while 70 per cent see it as an unstoppable social force.
That combined gulf – between black Christians' desires and their practical predictions – presents a public opinion-shaping opportunity that the pastoral coalition hopes to take advantage of.
Unstoppable: Most blacks and evangelicals
concede that despite their objections, gay marriage rights are likely to
steamroll their way into American history
Owens also said Tuesday that he would move to impeach the president if it were practical to do so.
'If Obama was a white man, he would be impeached,' he told reporters.
'Obama has been given a free pass to do what he pleases, but I don’t give him a pass. I’m very black. Been black all my life. He doesn’t get a pass.'
Owens called it unfortunate that the president has drawn lines of equivalency between the gay rights movement and the earlier Civil Rights movement aimed at correcting historical injustices against blacks in the U.S.
'It's a disgrace that this man has stood on the shoulders of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.," Owens said.
'I detest them calling this a civil rights movement. It's not a civil rights movement; it's a civil wrongs movement.'
But Holder has persisted in treating gay rights as a natural heir to the 1960s movement that relegated ordinary discrimination of African-Americans, now considered shocking and unacceptable, to America's historical dust-heap.
'If I were attorney general in Kansas in 1953, I would not have defended a Kansas statute that put in place separate-but-equal facilities,' Holder told The New York Times.
According to The Washington Times, Holder has told The New Yorker in an interview for a future article that he will likely step down by the end of 2014, but plans on staying "well into" the year.
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
No comments:
Post a Comment