A powerful group of black preachers have called for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder is the nation’s first black attorney general and was appointed by President Barack Obama. This fact has not stopped the Rev. Bill Owens, leader of the Coalition of African American Pastors (CAAP), from saying that Holder must go because of his stance on gay marriage. Owens states in part that Holder had violated his oath of office and is trying “to coerce states to fall in line with the same-sex ‘marriage’ agenda.”
Owens and CAAP are trying to gather one million signatures on a petition of impeachment which spells out more clearly the group’s position. The petition states that “Our nation calls for the building up of a healthier marriage culture; instead, our elected leaders are bent on destroying marriage, remaking it as a genderless institution and reorienting it to be all about the desires of adults rather than the needs of children.” The group singles out Holder because the U.S. Department of Justice is upholding the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry. The fear is that religious institutions will have to marry these couples against their doctrine of faith or get sued.
Holder addressed a gathering of state attorney generals regarding this same-sex marriage laws and told those officials gathered that they had discretion in upholding bans on same-sex marriage in the states where they serve. He did state however, “Now, any decisions at any level not to defend individual laws must be exceedingly rare….in general, I believe 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.”
The petition is addressed to the members of the U.S. Congress and because the petition is from black preachers, it will be used against the president. Holder had announced he would be stepping down as attorney general at some point, which now means that whoever Obama nominates for replacement is in for a fight.
