Political Quotes

“one thing that both sides of the aisle, I think, can agree on today is that we should not be here today debating this amendment. I was thinking as I was sitting here, if we could go back in time to the days when they were laying the very foundation of this building that we are in today and we could ask the individuals laying that foundation, people walking the streets in D.C., what is the definition in America of marriage, they would have looked at us in bewilderment and they would have said without question, it is the relationship between one man and one woman. Mr. Speaker, if I had dared to tell them that there would come a day when I would stand in this Chamber and people would point their finger at me and they would yell and they would scream and they would call me names because I dared to stand up here to defend that definition of marriage, they would have been just awestruck. Mr. Speaker, our friends on the other side of the aisle always talk about representing the people in this country; but when their definition of marriage was challenged, 78 percent of them in Louisiana stood up and said that they believed that marriage should be between a man and a woman; 71 percent of them stood up in Missouri; 70 percent in Nebraska; 69 percent in Hawaii; 61 percent in California. Mr. Speaker, what we are facing today is an assault by a few individuals on that basic traditional definition of marriage between a man and a woman.”