Bill Keller Quotes
I do care if religious doctrine becomes an excuse to exclude my fellow citizens from the rights and protections our country promises.
Keller, Bill. "Asking Candidates Tough Questions About Faith." The New York Times, 25 Aug. 2011.
The then current example was with same sex marriage. Some people who claimed that their religion declared same sex marriage as a sin and prohibited their aiding and abetting that activity. As a result, they claimed that their right of religious freedom allowed a county clerk to refuse to issue the marriage license or a hotel to refuse to allow a gay couple to rent their facility for a wedding, or a retail store to refuse to sell the couple bedding.
The early legal meaning of Civil Rights was very narrow. It referred to rights in normal non-governmental activities---shopping, education, social interaction, etc. However, it was the government who was depended on to enforce these rights. Later activities operated by state and local government were included like public education or the right to use a public bathroom, and for many even includes voting rights. Modern definitions consider civil rights to include all those rights to which an individual is entitled by virtue of his citizenship—including voting rights and others having to do with government—especially those of the 13th and 14th Amendments.
This was a very courageous speech for the President to give. Senator Hubert Humphrey had proposed civil rights legislation. At the time most of the racial conservative members of Congress were Democrats and not Republicans as they would become after Civil Rights legislation actually passed in 1964. There was little possibility that the civil rights law would pass as the Southern Democrats could filibuster it in the Senate. None the less Truman supported the legislation and the principle of equal rights despite the fact that he was a Southerner and he knew he would lose the support of the conservative wing of his party.
Porush was one of the Haradi--ultra-orthodox Jews. In the land of the Jewish people, he argued against religious freedom for Jews unless they were Orthodox Jews, while ironically, the majority of Jews in the world and even in Israel followed the Conservative or Reform branches of Judaism or were secular. At the time the Orthodox Jewish movement was the only one that was recognized officially by the government. Porush and some of the more fanatical Haradi were determined to keep the Conservative and Reform Jewish branches unrecognized and unsupported by the government. (Israel does not have separation of church and state and economically supports the Orthodox Jewish establishment but not the other majority branches of Judaism.) The "Women of the Wall" is one of the major groups in Israel advocating equal government treatment for all citizens o0f Israel. Orthodox Judaism, like many other orthodox religions are very sexist and women were actually banned from praying at the holiest of Jewish places, the Western or Wailing Wall. Women of the Wall had won a major decision of the Israeli Supreme court that women could not be denied the right to pray at the Wall. The orthodox rabbis who the government allowed to control access to the Wall, set aside a small area for women at the "Dung Gate" where the garbage was carried out. Women of the Wall were back in court and this prompted Porush's outburst. He was cebsured by the Ethics Committee of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament).
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Bill Keller is an American journalist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project, a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice in the United States. Previously, he was a columnist for The New York Times, and served as the paper's executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, he announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer. Jill Abramson replaced him as executive editor.
