Tag: doma

On
Trudi Jenny

Knowing difference between just and unjust laws

To the editor:

What is a just law? In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had passed in the Senate by a vote of 85-14 and in the House of Representatives by a vote of 342-67.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, struck down a major portion of DOMA, which has led to an onslaught of federal judges striking down DOMA laws in many states, including Wisconsin. Which action was just?

In 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a letter from his Birmingham jail cell in which he talked about just and unjust laws. The great civil rights leader quoted from St. Augustine, “an unjust law is no law at all.”

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On
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Statement from U.S. Bishops on Supreme Court marriage decisions

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court decisions June 26 striking down part of the Defense of Marriage Act and refusing to rule on the merits of a challenge to California’s Proposition 8 mark a “tragic day for marriage and our nation,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage.

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On
George Weigel

It’s not just an issue in Pakistan and China

The Catholic Difference by George Weigel

Thirty-some years ago, I spent a fair amount of time on religious freedom issues: which meant, in those simpler days, trying to pry Lithuanian priests and nuns out of Perm Camp 36 and other GULAG islands.

Had you told me in 1982 that one of my “clients,” the Jesuit Sigitas Tamkevicius, would be archbishop of Kaunas in a free Lithuania in 2012, I would have thought you a bit optimistic.

If you had also told me, back then, that there would eventually be serious religious freedom problems in the United States, I would have thought you a bit mad.

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On
Patrick Hardyman

We must stand up against efforts to weaken morality

To the editor:

Earlier this year President Barack Obama instructed his Attorney General and the Justice Department not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which recognized marriage as between one man and one woman. This piece of legislation was overwhelmingly passed in the House and Senate and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Last month the New York State legislature passed a law legalizing same-sex marriage which was immediately signed into law by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a professed Catholic. As the push for same-sex marriage escalates in the weeks, months, and years ahead with the help of the media, Hollywood movie stars and musicians, the courts, and the intellectual elites of our country, with the blessing of many so-called Catholic and other Christian politicians, I wonder as we celebrate our “independence” as a country what God thinks of this nation as it continues its moral decay.

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