Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Brother Guy Consolmagno, who serves as the planetary scientist for the Vatican observatory, when asked if he would baptize an extraterrestrial.
Only if she asks!
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Arizona pastor Steven Anderson, calling for the execution of gay people.
Look, we can have an AIDS-free world by Christmas. You know. OK, it wouldn’t be totally AIDS-free. But we’d be like be 90-something percent AIDS-free by Christmas if we follow this.
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Bexar County Clerk Gerard “Gerry” Rickhoff, pledging to keep his office open around the clock if a San Antonio federal judge lifts a stay preventing same-sex couples from marrying.
I think there’s a lot of pent-up demand out there in our society to stop the hypocrisy.
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Barbra Streisand, reacting to a report that Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe singled out Streisand as being part of a group of “Hollywood liberals and extreme environmentalists” that engineered a hoax on climate change.
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so frightening.
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Former Republican senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum, calling church-state separation a Communist idea.
[T]he words ‘separation of church and state’ is not in the U.S. Constitution, but it was in the constitution of the former Soviet Union. That’s where it very, very comfortably sat, not in ours.
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Millie Davis, director of the Intellectual Freedom Center, on the “distressing” book bans seen around the country, as in Highland Park this fall.
It’s a culture war. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. But nearly every day I put myself in the shoes of the teachers there, and I don’t know how they go to work.
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Mohamed Elibiary, former Homeland Security Advisory Council member, on the treatment he receives from fellow Texan conservatives and Republicans.
I defend the American Muslim community. That’s the thing that irritates the right wing about me — it’s that I’m not just a security expert who talks about security issues like an analyst would, I also take those security credentials and push back against Islamophobia. A lot of the people in the right wing are having their own identity crisis, and the only way they can define themselves is vis-a-vis an adversary.
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TFN President Kathy Miller, on proposed legislation that would create a fifth so-called “God license plate” in Texas.
I can put a Christian bumper sticker on my car, and I don’t need the government to endorse that.
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State Board of Education members Marisa Perez, D-San Antonio, and Ruben Cortez, D-Brownsville, respectively, on having to approve over 400 pages of textbook changes that were submitted in the 24 hours before the final textbook vote.
I cannot in good faith support any changes I haven’t seen. We haven’t even had 24 hours to look at what’s coming in. In this stage in the process, I should have a final document I’m going to vote up or down.
