Here are some of the week’s most notable quotes culled from news reports from across Texas, and beyond.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson in a 2004 interview with the Adventist Review. Carson’s statements on both evolution and Muslims have recently come under fire.
Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires.
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Attorney General Ken Paxton in a request to the Supreme Court to allow a 2013 TRAP law — requiring clinics to upgrade their facilities to expensive new standards - to be upheld.
The abortion industry is not acting in the interest of women’s health — it’s acting in the interest of preserving their bottom line by avoiding new health and safety requirements.
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Houston Mayor Annise Parker in a post on Facebook, explaining several tweets she made in response to an anti-equal rights ordinance ad featuring former Astros star player Lance Berkman.
For me, this fight is about how much I love this city. I don’t want anyone to ever disparage Houston. That someone who made his name in our city would inject himself into this debate by taking to the airwaves to discredit an effort to ban discrimination in all forms did upset me. This ordinance protects all Houstonians and [Lance Berkman’s] remarks diminished it to something trivial.
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Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, on her experience at last week’s Congressional hearing about the organization.
[I was] stunned by the total lack of civility and raw use of power, particularly against the women that we serve. You had folks who really knew very little either about women’s health, or what we do, and apparently didn’t even want to know.
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The editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, endorsing the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.
Houston is a big city, a big-hearted city. To allow small-minded arguments, fraudulent claims and cynical tactics to prevail on Election Day would be a repudiation of core values that are intrinsically Houston. This great city is bigger than that.
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AARP Texas director Bob Jackson, writing in support of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.
With nearly 700,000 households in Harris County headed by someone age 50 or older, Houston should build upon, and do nothing to damage, its growing reputation as a livable community. Proposition 1 (HERO) will be a stand against discrimination and also help protect the financial security of older persons assuring that they are not discriminated against in the workplace and in housing.
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City Council member Ellen Cohen, on Houston Texans owner Bob McNair making a donation to the group opposing the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance.
He’s one man who happens to own a sports team but the organizations involved in attracting business and conventions support the ordinance. The Houston convention center and visitors bureau, GHP, the Houston sports authority — just to name a few — have come out in favor of the equal rights ordinance.
