Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values, dismissing California’s efforts to reduce teen birthrate simply because it’s California. California’s teen birthrate has plummeted since 1992.
In Texas, since when did we think it was a good idea to adopt any policy from California?
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Creationist Darek Isaacs’ argument against evolution.
You have to start asking questions: Well, if evolution is true, and it’s just all about the male propagating their DNA, we had to ask hard questions, like, well, is rape wrong?
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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor responding in a dissent to an emergency injunction allowing Wheaton College to not comply with the Hobby Lobby accommodation laid out just a few days before.
I disagree strongly with what the court has done. Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word. Not so today. After expressly relying on the availability of the religious-nonprofit accommodation to hold that the contraceptive coverage requirement violates [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] as applied to closely held for-profit corporations, the Court now, as the dissent in Hobby Lobby feared it might, retreats from that position.
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Dr. David Wiley, on Texas’ teen birthrate and abstinence-only sex education programs.
It’s this mentality that we’re Texas, we do it our way, we ignore science and kind of go with our gut. That Wild West mentality about public policy is not helpful.
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SMU professor and TFN board member Mark Chancey, on the Green family, owners of the Hobby Lobby chain of stores.
I think sometimes it’s hard for them to understand that not everyone accepts their religious views about the Bible as simply fact. Not everyone sees things like they do. I guess that’s an understatement.
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Sarah Palin, likening President Obama’s treatment of the United States to that of an abusive spouse.
Enough is enough of the years of abuse from this president. His unsecured border crisis is the last straw that makes the battered wife say, ‘no mas.’
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Kentucky state Sen. Brandon Smith’s argument against climate change.
I won’t get into the debate about climate change. But I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.
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Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California-Irvine School of Law, predicting that marriage equality could be the law of the land all across the United States within one year.
My prediction, though, is that the Court knows the issue needs to be resolved and will take it.
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Dr. Keith Ablow, the resident psychiatrist at Fox News, asserting that legalized same-sex marriage would lead to bestiality.
There’s no way that the state of California can deny a marriage license to four spouses now, eight spouses. Or, I would say, three human spouses and the canine they absolutely love because if love is the foundation of marriage, they can love their dog, too.
“I won’t get into the debate about climate change. But I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”
Uh? The average temperature on Mars is -67 degrees Fahrenheit. Is this guy nuts?
And oddly enough, the temperature on Mars stays that warm because of the greenhouse effect – the atmosphere there is mostly carbon dioxide.