TED OLSON

The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is one of the most fundamental rights that we have as Americans under our Constitution.

The calls that I have received from President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the fact that there are other people that are suffering every bit as much as I am, and that our whole nation is going through a tragedy together, I think we have to think about those things.

You have to take strength from the people that love you and the people that love Barbara and the huge number of expressions of sympathy and compassion and support. That has been extremely moving.

I immediately called the command center of the Department of Justice to let them know that my wife was on a plane that had been hijacked. I mainly wanted them know there was another hijacked plane out there.

Well, she managed to - Barbara was capable of doing practically anything if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed to get collect calls through.

The very idea of marriage is basic to recognition as equals in our society; any status short of that is inferior, unjust, and unconstitutional.

My wife had taken off on a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course, like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.

The plane took off at 8:10 in the morning - or that's when it was scheduled to take off. And that's when I believe it took off. I had been in my office at the Department of Justice. Someone told me that there had been the two strikes that occurred at the World Trade Center.

I wanted it not to be true. I wanted it not to be her plane. I wanted it - I wanted, if it was her plane, to have somehow survived because she was in the back of the airplane. But we know that doesn't happen, not with those sorts of things.

She said it had been hijacked shortly after takeoff. By this time, the plane had been in the air - again, I'm presuming that it took off on time - for over an hour.

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples?

Every time you make a guess of what a judge is going to do... you're wrong, so I try to stay away from that.

I've been strongly opposed to racial discrimination and anything like that my whole life. Maybe it's thanks to my parents and where I grew up and that sort of thing, but particularly with gay and lesbian citizens, I've seen that people can be cruel, and it's very distressing.

There are libertarian conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and social conservatives. I feel conservative in terms of limited government, individual responsibility, self-sufficiency - that sort of thing.

Ultimately, the reason we have a Constitution, the reason we have separation of powers, the reason we have the Fourteenth Amendment is to provide the courts with the opportunity to override the will of the people when the will of the people discriminates against a segment of our society.

Horrible things can happen to you, and horrible things happened to us on September 11. But if we look for love and happiness and fulfillment, we will find it.

I do believe that people of all religions have a right to build edifices or structures or places of religious worship or study where the community allows them to do it under zoning laws and that sort of thing, and that we don't want to turn an act of hate against us by extremists into an act of intolerance for people of religious faith.

I grew up in California, and when I read that Proposition 8 was on the ballot, I was disappointed because it seemed to be inconsistent with the spirit of the state, with the independence and diversity of the frontier that California has always been.

I'd always felt from as far back as I can remember that where the issue of marriage is concerned, individuals should have the opportunity to marry and not be discriminated against.

The more gays and lesbians come out - the more people realize that they have a friend who's gay, which they may not have known before, and they realize this person has the same aspirations and desires and need to be committed and to be part of a community - then they become more accepting.

Voters, whatever their political views, should rise up against politicians who want to dilute the Bill of Rights to perpetuate their tenure in office.

The right to marry is vital in society. It's a right that's older than the Bill of Rights because it goes back to the common law.

HB2 discriminates against fellow citizens because of who they are. This law directly challenges the legitimacy of the identity of transgender persons and then compels them to deny it every time they use a public restroom.

When politicians seek to restrict political speech, it is invariably to protect their own incumbency and avoid having to defend their policies in the marketplace of ideas.

The reality is that our independent judiciary is the most respected branch of our government and the envy of the world.