By way of the Wall of Separation:
On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed amendment to the Maryland state constitution that would prohibit gay marriage, Jamie Raskin, professor of law at AU, was requested to testify.
At the end of his testimony, Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: “As I read Biblical principles, marriage was intended, ordained and started by God – that is my belief,” she said. “For me, this is an issue solely based on religious principals.”
Raskin shot back that the Bible was also used to uphold now-outlawed statutes banning interracial marriage, and that the constitution should instead be lawmakers’ guiding principle. “People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible,” he said.
The room erupted into applause.
Raskin is the author of a great book for high school students titled We the Students: Supreme Court Decisions for and About Students, as well as Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court Versus the American People in which he describes the transgressions of the Supreme Court against the Constitution and the people—and the faulty reasoning behind them—and lays out the plan for the best way to back a more democratic system.
He’s also running in the Democratic primary got Maryland State Senate in September against 20 year incumbent Ida Ruben.
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