Quote

If a person is homosexual by nature - that is, if one's sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one's identity as gender or skin color - then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.

Jon Meacham

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jon Meacham
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: May 20
Biographer
Editor
Editor-In-Chief
Historian
Journalist
Chattanooga
Tennessee
Jon Ellis Meacham
Rights
Gender
Reinstate
Religious
Skin
Intrinsic
Society
Skins
Crow
Nature
Gay
Sacraments
Part
Deny
Homosexuality
Persons
Access
Homosexual
Person
Identity
Secular
Color
Sexuality

More quotes by Jon Meacham

Image
One of the central memories of my childhood is of hunting - not well I am a terrible shot - quail and dove and grouse on a farm on the Tennessee River.
Jon Meacham
Image
Given that religious faith is an intrinsic element of human experience, it is best to approach and engage the subject with a sense of history and a critical sensibility.
Jon Meacham
Image
Scripture is not inerrant believers are called to interpret biblical texts in light of tradition and reason.
Jon Meacham
Image
We often talk too much & listen too little. The surer route to winning a friend isn't to convince them that you're right, but that you care what they think.
Jon Meacham
Image
I've been accused of being old before my time more than once. It's true that I've always felt an affinity for, and been comfortable around, older people. I attribute this to a childhood spent around my grandparents - and even a great-grandparent or two. I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything.
Jon Meacham
Image
The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.
Jon Meacham
Image
Without education, we are weaker economically. Without economic power, we are weaker in terms of national security. No great military power has ever remained so without great economic power.
Jon Meacham
Image
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
Jon Meacham
Image
In the fullness of time, I suspect that bigotry against homosexuals will seem as repugnant as racial prejudice does today. Or so one hopes.
Jon Meacham
Image
An epic subject requires a writer of epic skill and scope, and we have a perfect pairing in Cleopatra and Stacy Schiff. Absorbing and illuminating, this new biography will endure.
Jon Meacham
Image
I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.
Jon Meacham
Image
The way to put oneself in a position to take the harder, more honorable political path is to argue for one's virtues in a vigorous way.
Jon Meacham
Image
Liberty is precious. But so is life. It should not be so difficult for men and women of good will and good heart and sound mind to find the right balance between the two.
Jon Meacham
Image
Cynically but accurately put, Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them - take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.
Jon Meacham
Image
In America, now, let us - Christian, Jew, Muslim, agnostic, atheist, wiccan, whatever - fight nativism with the same strength and conviction that we fight terrorism. My faith calls on its followers to love one's enemies. A tall order, that - perhaps the tallest of all.
Jon Meacham
Image
It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.
Jon Meacham
Image
Given that sexual orientation is innate and that we are all, in theological terms, children of God, to deny access to some sacraments based on sexuality is as wrong as denying access to some sacraments based on race or gender.
Jon Meacham
Image
As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom - not least freedom of conscience.
Jon Meacham
Image
Whenever there is news of a terrible shooting, I wonder why America has so miserably failed to enact even common-sense gun legislation.
Jon Meacham
Image
Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological.
Jon Meacham