During a House Judiciary hearing this Tuesday, things got a little heated as lawmakers discussed the role of religion and God when interpreting the Constitution.
According to Steve Cohen (D-TN), the notion that "all our rights are God-given" doesn't make sense.
"I just wonder, when God decided to give women the right to vote, and why God didn't give women the right to vote back in the 1700s," Cohen said. "And when God decided that slavery would be illegal -- God was okay with slavery until we had a war millions of people were killed, then God changed his mind? That's hard to fathom."
Cohen went on to provide the same analogy for abortion and interracial marriage. He clarified that he has respect for people's belief in God, but added that he doesn't believe the notion that every right is "God given." "God did not decide to keep African Americans as slaves until there was a Civil War, and then God changed his mind," he said.
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Ken Buck (R-CO) then chimed in, saying that in the view of the Founders, and his view as well as other Americans, the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were given to us by God. "That doesn't mean that God makes a decision on every single law that is passed in this country," Buck said. "That doesn't mean that God doesn't frown sometimes when there are horrible historical actions by human beings, like slavery, like the denial of the right to vote and some other things."
"But life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are recognized in our founding documents as given to us by God, and those rights are the rights that everything else flows from," Buck said.
Dan Bishop (R-NC) then accused Cohen of not caring about the rights endowed in the Constitution. "He embraces that modern Democratic Party's view that it's not about God, it's not about God's will or what God has created in mankind, you cannot trace rights to the existence of God ... that's all passe ... Okay, that's what we're up against," Bishop said.
Bishop declared that he is "absolutely certain that Thomas Jefferson and the other authors of the [Declaration of Independence] were correct." He continued with his rant before being cut off, but he refused to yield his time.
"I'm not gonna yield! Because I'm gonna make this statement really clear."
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