Archbishop Dolan's remarks about being "deceived" by politicians that marriage equality wouldn't pass have garnered some attention in the LGBT blogosphere. What Dolan said after that segment timothy-dolan.jpgis what should be highlighted though if we want to win full equality nationwide. (emphasis mine)
"Not only are we...upset with the bill, we're upset with the way it was done," [Archbishop Timothy Dolan] said. "This was hardly democracy in action."
"If you were so convinced that this was the will of the people, why didn't we have a referendum, and why did you literally have to lock the doors and not face any public, because you knew it really wasn't going to go over, right?"
Dolan's latter statement appeared to be a reference to the fact that the public had reportedly been barred from committee meetings on the bill.
Dolan also said that the bishops were deceived on the question of the protection of religious freedom in the final bill.
"We said the next thing will be we'll be sued if we don't do marriage, we're going to be harassed if we don't do receptions, we're going to be penalized if we don't allow adoption, we're going to be booed if we don't hire these people," Dolan told Arroyo.
Take a moment and digest what the good Bishop is actually saying in that last paragraph.
My thoughts and the video of Dolan's appearance after the break.Really quickly, let's look at Bishop Dolan's obvious lie in the second paragraph that the article tries to explain away. New York legislators didn't "lock the doors and not face any public." The vote was live-streamed, televised, and we posted several videos from inside of the Statehouse. It's just blatantly untrue.