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Cardinal Dolan Rewrites History: Catholic Church Leaders Were ‘Burned’ In New York Marriage Vote

Cardinal Timothy Dolan is still bitter that marriage equality passed in New York last year, telling the New York Daily News that Catholic leaders “got burned” by Senate Republicans they were convinced would oppose the law:

DOLAN: We got burned last year when we were told the redefinition of marriage didn’t have much of a chance — and of course it did. Our Senate leaders, we highly appreciated them being with us all along. When they kind of assured us it didn’t have much of a chance — not that we let up, but we probably would have been much more vigorous and even more physically present if we knew there was a chance. We got a little stung, and it could be as much our fault as anyone else’s.

This is an incredibly smug attitude for Dolan to have, but it reflects the amount of influence the Catholic Church hierarchy expects to have over political discourse. Even though a majority of New York Catholics supported the marriage equality bill months before it came to a vote and continued to afterward, Dolan believes that the bishops could still have changed the outcome if they’d just applied more pressure. But this is a blatant rewriting of history, because Dolan admitted after the law passed that he saw it coming and was “not surprised” that it was successful. Considering the number of anti-gay screeds he published while the legislature was still debating the bill, one wonders what more he would have done had he been “much more vigorous.”

Fortunately, the New York legislature chose to represent all constituents when it decided to expand LGBT equality instead of catering to a select group of Church leaders who refuse to exist in the same universe as married same-sex couples.

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