Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent speeches exhorting black men to be responsible fathers stem from a little-noticed  policy initiative of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Eric Holder and his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone. (Getty Images)

On Sunday, the nation’s top law enforcement officer told worshipers at a Queens, N.Y., church that it was “unacceptable” for men to be absent from their children’s lives. On Tuesday at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, he told a town hall meeting that  ”real” men own up to their responsibilities as parents, and that strong family ties reduce crime.

“If we are truly to call ourselves ‘men,’ we must recognize that a defining characteristic of that word is the care and nurturing of those we bring into this world,” Holder said in Atlanta, according to his prepared remarks.”You simply cannot be a real man if you don’t do all that you can to care for those who have the greatest right to depend on you.”

He added: “People sometimes make bad choices. As a result, they end up in prison or jail. But we can’t permit incarceration of a parent to punish an entire family.”

The Atlanta town hall meeting was part of a series of Barack Obama administration-sponsored forums on fatherhood, beginning with an event at the White House this past Father’s Day.

The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (FBNP) has also co-sponsored forums in Chicago and Manchester, N.H. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, FBNP Director Joshua DuBois and Michael Strautmanis, chief of staff to Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, participated in the events, along with several members of Congress and state and local community leaders.

Obama said in June that the initiative was meant to launch a national conversation “about fatherhood and personal responsibility — about how fathers across America are meeting the challenges in their families and communities, and what government can do to support those who are having a difficult time.”

The discussion about black fathers has a long political and social history. In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Lyndon Johnson administration, published a report on the social consequences of unwed black mothers called “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” The statistic-heavy report by the future Democratic senator from New York fueled an often polarizing debate about poverty, race and government assistance that lasted decades.

President Bill Clinton, who campaigned for president as a limited government “New Democrat,” enacted welfare reform legislation in 1996 over the objections of many liberals in his party. In 2004, comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech on fatherhood before the NAACP in 2004 that, in sometimes harsh language, criticized black parents who aren’t involved in their children’s lives or set bad personal examples.

Now the country’s first black president and first black attorney general are both striking the same themes, but to little public controversy or even notice.

The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel is mulling a Bush-era memo that carved out an exemption for faith-based groups seeking government contracts, The Washington Post reported today.

The 2007 memo carved out an exemption in employment discrimination law that allows religious groups to receive federal money, even if they hire only members of their faith, according to The Post’s Carrie Johnson. A “legal source” told the newspaper the exception allowed DOJ to award $1.5 million to a Christian charity for a gang-prevention program.

President Obama promised on the campaign trail he would cut off government funds to groups that proselytized, or employed only members of their religion. President George W. Bush expanded government contracts to religious groups through the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which was established in 2001.

“Before the Bush years, religious organizations that got money just assumed they had to hire the most qualified person and couldn’t proselytize,” Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, told The Post.

Lynn told the newspaper that he wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to ask for action. He said the letter “presents the golden opportunity to the Department of Justice to reverse clearly erroneous past policy and to start looking at a new, constitutionally based framework.”

A “Justice Department source” told The Post that the review of the 2007 memo is not on the OLC front burner. The office is focusing on more urgent legislative and national security right now, according to the Post’s source.

Dawn Johnsen (Indiana University)

But that could change if OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen is confirmed by the Senate.

Johnsen, who has waited more than five months for the full Senate to move on her nomination, has expressed skepticism over the legality of the memo, according to The Post. Martin Lederman, an OLC deputy since January, also has his doubts about the memo, the newspaper said.

Obama’s OLC nominee has criticized many of the Bush-era OLC memos, including opinions that authorized the harsh interrogation methods for terrorism suspects.

She has written that the broad reading of presidential authority was “outlandish,” and the constitutional arguments were “shockingly flawed,” according to The New York Times.

Republicans have jumped on Johnsen for these remarks and have questioned her ability to lead OLC.

Read our previous report on Johnsen here.