While chasing links for a religion-in-politics post that may or may not get posted (my opinions on the subject are aggressively moderate, and while I could use the traffic, I don't know that I want the headache), I ran across the swear-to-uphold quote again. PZ cites an unsourced blog post for the story, reproduced in its entirety here:
On Wednesday, March 1st, 2006, in Annapolis at a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to 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: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"
Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
The room erupted into applause.
It's a fantastic line, but it seems a little too good to be true. In particular, the fact that it supposedly occurred on March 1, but didn't get posted to Gather until the 11th made me wonder if it was an urban legend. So I hit Google...
(More after the cut...)
The original source appears to be a Baltimore Sun story that has moved behind a paywall, but can be found either via Google's cache, or reproduced on Raskin's campaign web site. That's got a more definitive version of the story, that's much more believable:
Sen. Nancy Jacobs, a Republican who represents Harford and Cecil counties, engaged in an impassioned debate with Jamie Raskin, a constitutional law professor from American University, over the influence of the Bible on modern law.
"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.
Some in the room applauded, which led committee chairman Sen. Brian E. Frosh, a Democrat from Montgomery County, to call for order. "This isn't a football game," he said.
This is much more like the sort of thing people say. Hollywood aside, people at legislative committee hearings don't usually zing each other quite as dramatically as the originally circulated story. In the real story, the Republican senator is much less smarmily confrontational, and both the attack and the applause line come with some context, and in a less personal form ("people" instead of "you").
It's still a great line, and I applaud both Raskin's principles and his ability to think on his feet (if I were stil in Maryland, I'd vote for him). But as is always the case, the original that seemed too good to be true, was too good to be true.
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Even the true, slightly less snarky version is one of the most brilliant statements on the issue I've ever heard.
It is a variation on a phrase attributed to Pat Robertson (saying the opposite, that Supreme Court Justices *should* swear to uphold the bible), though the only online attribution is a single article- Rev. Rich Lang: 'George Bush and the rise of Christian Fascism' - which has been copied repeatedly throughout the 'net.
Most other sites that use the quote generally credit it to this article, though no copy of the article itself actually cites the Robertson reference. And actually, some versions of the sermon, given on February of 2004, don't even have the paragraph in question; it seems to have shown up in a June 2004 updated version.
However, his website's actual front page still has the zinger version of it.
I also like a snarkier variant coined by my brother:
"Go ahead, display the Ten Commandments in government buildings... as long as I can display the Bill of Rights in your churches."
While Raskin's barb is amusing and well-taken, it exposes an even deeper fault-line in the supposed wall between church and state in this country. Why do we continue to permit and encourage witnesses (along with government officials, both appointed and elected) to swear an oath on the Bible? What kind of wall is it that affirms the most important instrument of our democracy by reference to the most important instrument of the religious majority of this country?
As an atheist the witness oath is of particular concern to me. Were I ever to take the witness stand, I would, of course, choose a non-secular affirmation rather than one of the religious "so help me God" variety. But I would worry very seriously, especially if I were in the unfortunate role of testifying defendant, that my failure to swear an oath to God would prejudice my testimony in the eyes of some jury members. These days our law is supposed to be blind to the religious beliefs of those that come before it. Which begs the question of why we allow, as their first act to the court, witnesses to either affirm not only that they will speak truthfully but also that they subscribe to a fundamentally religious point of view?
http://farragonews.blogspot.com/2006/03/did-you-hear-one-about-bible-an…