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  • 2005-03-15 (xsd:date)
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  • The Difference Between the Bible and the Constitution (en)
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  • In February 2006, Baltimore Circuit Court Judge M. Brooke Murdock ruled that a Maryland state law banning same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. In response to that decision, state lawmakers opposed to same-sex marriage introduced a resolution to impeach Judge Murdock (a move that was defeated in the Judiciary Committee) and a bill calling for the amendment of Maryland's constitution to prohibit all same-sex marriages. Although the bill failed to garner sufficient support for passage, it was reintroduced in a version that would have defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman only but would still have allowed for same-sex civil unions. The latter bill was being debated by a Senate committee on 1 March 2006, when, according to the Baltimore Sun, Clergy, constitutional law experts and children of gay parents were among those who packed the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee room to speak out on the issue. Part of that debate featured some give-and-take between Nancy Jacobs, a Republican state senator, and Jamin Raskin, a professor of constitutional law from Washington's American University (who was himself elected as a Maryland state senator later in the year) over the influence of the Bible on modern law. The exchange was memorialized in a viral email: The Baltimore Sun's reporting of the debate was slightly different: Based on the Sun's account, we note that the version of events quoted in the viral email was somewhat altered and compressed to make the exchange more direct and personal (i.e., Senator Jacobs' statement about marriage and the Bible has been simplified, and she did not issue a What do you have to say about that? challenge; Professor Raskin's response referred to people in general, not to Senator Jacobs specifically; and although some spectators applauded, the room did not erupt into applause), but the setting and gist of Professor Raskin's statement are correctly reported. Professor Raskin wasn't the first person to employ this form of quip, however. Comedian Bill Maher said the following (in reference to the Terry Schiavo case) during the 1 April 2005 broadcast of his HBO television program, Real Time with Bill Maher: And a 1997 article about Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois reported him as offering a similar sentiment: (en)
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