Melvin Watt: “as an individual I condemn the statements which are the subject of this resolution. There may be no individual in this…”

“as an individual I condemn the statements which are the subject of this resolution. There may be no individual in this body who has spent a greater percentage of his life fighting racism and sexism in this country. I oppose this resolution not because I condone the speech; instead, I oppose it because it opens the door to a resolution of this kind every week, in fact, every day and every minute. We have too much substantive work to do to deal with these kinds of issues on a daily and minute-by-minute basis. We have people who are hungry, illiterate, homeless, and jobless. We have budgets to approve and world conflicts to deal with. In the face of all this, I cannot believe that we are spending time to set a precedent, to take up on a regular basis, resolutions of this kind to condemn every lunatic who expresses views we disagree with, views we happen to feel are protected by the Constitution of this United States of America, the Mother of all democracies.”