Political Quotes

“I rise in opposition to the conference report on S. 636, the FACE bill. Mr. Speaker, the conference agreement adopts the Senate position on two key issues: First, it extends the bill's provisions to places of religious worship, and second, it changes the penalties with respect to non-violent physical obstruction. However, even with these provisions the legislation is still fundamentally flawed. Many serious problems remain. First, FACE still violates equal protection by penalizing people for their beliefs. The Senate committee report on this bill says, Thus, for example, if an environmental group blocked passage to a hospital where abortions happen to be performed, but did so as part of a demonstration over harmful emissions produced by the facility, the demonstrators would not violate this Act. Therefore, if two people are engaging in identical conduct--i.e., peaceful, non-violent civil disobedience--outside an abortion clinic but for different reasons, only the pro-life person has committed a Federal crime under FACE, and it is only a Federal crime because of the person's belief that abortion is wrong. This clearly constitutes government disfavor of a viewpoint, not of conduct.”