Trying to avert foreclosures, once you can't just force the banks to do it as a condition of getting aid, means that you have to put some public money into it or you have to do other things that are politically unpopular. From the macroeconomic standpoint there is overwhelming need to help people reduce what they owe so that we don't get the foreclosures and we don't get people kicked out of their homes. On the other hand, there is great resistance politically to helping people, not all of whom would be worth recipients of the help.

The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth.

For the trustees to turn away from the entirely reasonable request of the students that a hearing-impaired individual be made president of the college is a very unfortunate expression of insensitivity.

When I was here there was still a requirement that students had to swim 50 yards to graduate...because Harry Elkins Widener had drowned with the sinking of the Titanic. And it made me very grateful at the time that he had not gone down in a plane crash.

I do not believe that the federal government should treat adults who choose to smoke marijuana as criminals.

Martin Luther King said, and it is sadly still true, that one of the most segregated times in America is the hour of worship.

I was still closeted, but from the day I decided to run for office, knowing that I was gay, I decided that I would, of course, still be closeted but that I would work very hard for gay rights. It would be totally dishonorable, being gay, not to do that. So I had that as kind of a secondary agenda.