Some African-American religious leaders are calling for U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to be impeached for his support of gay-marriage laws, backed up by a push to have them federally recognized, regardless of state laws, UPI reports.
"The attorney general of the United States should be impeached over his repeated lawlessness in attempting to impose same-sex marriage throughout the nation," the Rev. Bill Owens, president and founder of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, said in a press release. "It's one thing to make a political argument that gay marriage should be the law, but it's quite another to take actions that ignore federal law, Supreme Court rulings and the constitutions of dozens of states that have specifically rejected the redefinition of marriage which the administration is trying to impose."
Owens slammed President Barack Obama and Holder for what he sees as infringing upon the people's democracy.
"As much as President Obama and Attorney General Holder would like it to be otherwise, we live in a democracy—with government of, by, and for the people—not a monarchy ruled by a king issuing decrees from on high," he added. "The citizens of several states who have voted overwhelmingly to preserve marriage have had their votes voided and thrown out by radical federal judges; and the Obama administration—in particular the Justice Department—has been shamefully complicit in this attack on the rights of those voters."
The coalition's stance comes the same day that Holder told state attorneys general that they did not have to defend laws that were "unconstitutional," specifically referring to six state attorneys general who refused to defend bans on same-sex marriage. Holder also equated gay rights to the civil rights struggle throughout the 1960s, saying that the issue is one of the "defining rights challenges of our time."
"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 said in an interview with the New York Times prior to an address at the National Association of Attorneys General, referring to the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court that ended segregation in schools.
Read more at UPI.