Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Chair of the Texas State Board of Education Barbara Cargill, R-The Woodlands, testifying before the state Senate Committee on Education.
Our intent, as far as theories with the [curriculum standards], was to teach all sides of scientific explanations…. But when I went on [to the CSCOPE website] last night, I couldn’t see anything that might be seen as another side to the theory of evolution. Every link, every lesson, everything, you know, was taught as ‘this is how the origin of life happened, this is what the fossil record proves,’ and all that’s fine, but that’s only one side.
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President Obama, on whether the Boy Scouts of America should open their organization to openly gay members.
My attitude is that gays and lesbians should have access and opportunity the same way everybody else does, in every institution and walk of life.
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The Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land, on the upcoming decision by the Boy Scouts of America on whether to continue its ban on gays.
This verges on being beyond the realm of the rational, and it’s going to lead to human tragedy. It’s going to lead to human tragedy, and the human tragedy is going to be, sadly, boys and men who are going to end up in relationships that are going to be tragic.
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Sam Rohrer, president of the Pennsylvania Pastors’ Network, arguing there are biblical principles behind gun rights.
There are Christian people in this country who do not understand the underpinnings of our Second Amendment — why it came about, what the Founders’ discussions were surrounding it, and then taking that back is to the biblical positions or biblical principles that undergird the concept of self-defense.
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Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, on a new poll that showed a majority of American voters think the Boy Scouts of America should lift their ban on gay scouts and scoutmasters.
Now that the Armed Forces ban on openly gay service members has been lifted, and polls show increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage, most American voters think it’s time to open up the Boy Scouts too.
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Steve Drain, a spokesman for the far-right Westboro Baptist Church, on the two granddaughters of firebrand Fred Phelps who have split with the Topeka-based congregation.
We can’t control whether or not somebody decides, when they grow up, that they don’t want to be here. Those two girls were kind of straddling the idea that they wanted to be of the world but that they would also miss their family, the only thing they ever knew. If they continue with the position that they have, those two girls, yeah, they’re going to hell.
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President Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast.
I do worry sometimes that as soon as we leave the prayer breakfast, everything we’ve been talking about at the prayer breakfast seems to be forgotten … We’d like to think the shelf life wasn’t so short. I go back to the Oval Office and start watching cable news networks, and it’s like we didn’t pray.
Her statement that “Our intent … was to teach all sides of scientific explanations” is specious on the face of it.
When are the people on the SBOE going to learn that the word “theory” has a specific meaning in science and is not used in that context as it is in ordinary, everyday use?