quotes of the day: "the witness stand is a lonely place to lie"

via Pam's House Blend.

Chris Wallace [Fox News]: Where is the right to, you talk about the right to marriage, where is the right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution?

Ted Olsen: Where is the right to interracial marriage in the Constitution, Chris? The Supreme Court has said that marriage, the right to marry a person of your choice is a part of liberty, privacy, association, and spirituality guaranteed to each individual under the Constitution. When you say same-sex marriage, you're saying a particular type of marriage, which the Supreme Court has looked at marriage and has said that the right to marriage is a fundamental right for all citizens, so you call it interracial marriage and then you can prohibit it? No, the Supreme Court said no. The same thing here. The judge, after hearing three weeks of testimony and a full day of closing arguments and listening to experts from all over the world, concluded that the denial of the right to marry to these individuals in California hurt them and did not advance the cause of opposite-sex marriage. This is what judges are expected to do. It is not judicial activism, it is judicial responsibility in its classic sense.

And

David Boies: Right. Well, it's easy to sit around and debate and throw around opinions appear-- appeal to people's fear and prejudice, cite studies that either don't exist or don't say what you say they do. In a court of law you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions. You've got to stand up under oath and cross-examination. And what we saw at trial is that it's very easy for the people who want to deprive gay and lesbian citizens the right to vote, to make all sorts of statements and campaign literature or in debates where they can't be crossexamined. But when they come into court and they have to support those opinions and they have to defend those opinions under oath and cross-examination, those opinions just melt away. And that's what happened here. There simply wasn't any evidence. There weren't any of those studies. There weren't any empirical studies. That's just made up. That's junk science. And it's easy to say that on television. But the witness stand is a lonely place to lie. And when you come into court, you can't do that. And that's what we proved. We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost.

Happy Monday!