Quotes from Rev. Barry W. Lynn

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in religious institutions almost every day of his adult life but never once told a congregation or gathering there for whom to vote.

We all should know what the Right's agenda is here: privatize education, kill public schools, and transfer the teaching of the young to private entities.

Even a first-year law student knows that you can't curtail the right of one person to speak because other people get disorderly.

From cradle to grave, the Religious Right is concerned about every choice you make.

On December 20, 2005, Judge John E. Jones III, appointed by President George W. Bush, with the strong endorsement of Pennsylvania's staunch conservative senator Rick Santorum, ruled for our plaintiffs in a superbly written 139-page opinion that shocked many observers.

I have a basic rule of thumb that about 2 percent of any large group will believe literally anything, no matter how preposterous it seems to the rest of us.

What "value" is taught when school administrators thumb their noses at the highest court in the land and continue illegal practices?

prohibiting use of state tax dollars "directly or indirectly in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.

The US Treasury is simply not a church building fund.

governments and their official representatives will be strictly neutral on matters of religion: not hostile, not promotional, simply neutral.

The Supreme Court got it right in a 1973 case, PEARL v. Nyquist, when it said bluntly: "If the State may not erect buildings in which religious activities are to take place, it may not maintain such buildings or renovate them when they fall into disrepair.

chaplains are here to serve the needs of servicemembers who ask for assistance—persons struggling with personal, professional, or philosophical problems they want addressed from a religious viewpoint. They are not hired to be roving missionaries to all persons with whom they come in contact.

work by George Grant called Legislating Immorality, which called for the execution of all gay people, but was kind enough to qualify it in a footnote by saying that in our judicial system we would have to give them a trial first.

The real enemy of the Christian Right is not Americans United or the ACLU; it is themselves.

religion and the wars against other faiths it engenders should teach us all that we have a pretty good thing going here. In fact, the separation of church and state is probably the single best idea that our two-hundred-year experiment in democracy has engendered.

For decades I've been told by my adversaries in the Religious Right that they only seek a "place at the table" for their Christian worldview—well, their version of Christianity, that is. But evidence has mounted recently that what they really want is something else entirely: to own the table, determine what goes on it, and force-feed everyone the same gruel they consume.

one of my press comments may have been literally true: "This may be the biggest collection of theocrats in one

Under the claim of "religious freedom"—the cover for a gigantic new fictional creature called "corporate conscience"—the rights of workers could be given short shrift once again. [More on this in chapter 8.]

The Constitution—the Bill of Rights in particular—was filled with "majestic generalities" precisely so that federal courts could breathe life into them as the reality of America changed.

The promise of anyone seeking to be on the federal bench, the Supreme Court in particular, must again be—not to serve as Chief Justice Roberts's "referee" but to do what is necessary to serve that one great overarching value of American democracy: to serve as a constraint on the otherwise overarching tyranny of the majority (and their political allies) for us and future generations.

When asked by the New York Times why she altered her position, she quoted the great economist John Maynard Keynes: "when the facts change, I change my mind.

Those five members of the Supreme Court found a nonsensical distinction; that doesn't mean that Florida state legislators or state supreme court judges are required to play the semantic games that Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia did to reach the result they desired.

And some materials also claim that condoms are ineffective because students who can't "exercise self-control to remain abstinent" are not likely to "exercise self-control" and use a condom. That's like saying we shouldn't teach our kids safe drinking techniques because those who choose to drink underage can't control themselves anyway—so we should just let them binge drink without any guidance at all.

Liberty does not mean being given state sanction to force your own ideas—religious or otherwise—on other people. It does not mean being given a free pass from laws you don't like.