From one of the diarists at DailyKos comes this quote from Jamie Raskin, a law professor at American University. He was testifying in front of a Maryland legislative committee on an anti-gay marriage amendment and one of the legislators used the Bible to support her arguments against gay marriage. Raskin replied:
Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You didn't place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.
Bravissimo.
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While chasing links for a religion-in-politics post that may or may not get posted (my opinions on the subject are aggressively moderate, and while I could use the traffic, I don't know that I want the headache), I ran across the swear-to-uphold quote again. PZ cites an unsourced blog post for the…
It's a battle between the Bible and a secular Constitution.
On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.
At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator…
In the creation/evolution debate, the religious right loves to argue about missing links; in the debate over gay marriage, they seem to specialize in arguments with missing links. In column after column, we see the same argument repeated - gay marriage will "destroy" marriage - without any of them…
My thanks to Ed Darrell for pointing me to an article by Peter Gomes in the Boston Globe. Gomes is the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and minister of the Memorial Church at Harvard. Of the recent court cases involving gay marriage, he writes:
We have seen this before. When the courts…
When I read that piece, I immediately thought of Lloyd Bentsen's famous retort to Dan Quayle during their 1988 VP debate:
Another quotation for the ages.
Hmm, looks like there's a couple of different versions of that quote on Raskin's own web page.
http://www.raskin06.com/news/06-03-02.baltsun.php
http://www.raskin06.com/
Also some bloggers are saying that the room erupted into applause, however the Baltimore Sun article says, "Some in the room applauded."
By the way, I wonder if we can expect to be hearing yet another Pat Robertson apology soon. I wonder if he does that crap on purpose. Maybe he's just completely bonkers. Maybe both!
As a freshman at AU, I would like to state that this quote is TOTALLY AWESOME. YEAH!
That is all.
As a freshman at AU, I would like to state that this quote is TOTALLY AWESOME. YEAH!
Here's a cool quote: "I have so much money I don't know what to do with it... I think I'll cure world hunger and banish all disease with my magic wand! The whole room breaks out into a roaring applause!"
Awesome!
Bravo to Senator Nancy Jacobs, too, for lobbing that slow pitch. It's a refreshing change from the debate in my state legislature's discussion of the issue. Legislators are refusing to engage the actual question of whether gays deserve marriage, instead using clinical arguments about the public's right to vote on the issue. If only they could be forced to answer the question, Why?
Bumper sticker: "You swear on the Bible to uphold the Consitution, not vice versa".
Well, the lob might not have been *quite* that easy:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/raskin.asp
Looks like the story has grown just a bit in the telling.