George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, and the shooting of Breonna Taylor. In this podcast interview, he attempted to speak to both protesters and police. He argued that police were mostly good people, even comparing them to priests. He also said that the protesters had an important message. He said that black lives matter, bracketing the statement before and after with "all lives matter" and "police lives matter." In a June 28, 2020 Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Dolan argued against removing statues of historical figures, even if they had a history of upholding slavery and white supremacy. This followed weeks of protests in which monuments commemorating figures associated with racism, white supremacy, and colonialism had been removed by protestors and civic leaders. In an opinion piece for the New York Post published on July 1, 2020, Dolan called for an end to the demonization of the New York City Police Department. He said that "the most stinging rebuke" of the murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis "comes fromguess who? The cops I chat with on the sidewalks of New York." He wrote that "in a recent meeting with community activists, one black leader reminded us, 'Don't give me this "get-rid-of-the-cops" rant! You on Madison Avenue or Park Avenue might not need the police. We up in The Bronx sure do!'" Abortion and LGBT issues In November 2009, Dolan signed an ecumenical statement known as the Manhattan Declaration, calling on evangelicals, Roman Catholics and Orthodox not to comply with rules and laws permitting abortion, same-sex marriage and other matters that go against their religious consciences. It calls for civil disobedience from Christian officials and laymen on these issues. In October 2017, Auxiliary Bishop John O'Hara intervened on behalf of Dolan to prohibit a New York parish church from hosting the International Human Rights Art Festival because of its gay and transgender content. The director of the festival declined to remove the two performances that the Archdiocese specifically objected to, and instead moved the entire show to an Episcopal church in Brooklyn. War and capital punishment While noting that the "Church has weighed in" against the war in Iraq and capital punishment, Dolan defended his silence regarding President George W. Bush's 2001 appearance at Notre Dame by saying, "Where President Bush would have taken positions on those two hot-button issues that I'd be uncomfortable with, namely the war and