Ryan T. Anderson > Quotes

“We need to respect the dignity of people who identify as transgender, but without encouraging children to undergo experimental transition treatments, and without trampling on the needs and interests of others. And we need to acknowledge that taking our sexual embodiment seriously in public policy is not discriminatory.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment

“Pretending as a matter of law that men and women are interchangeable, that “monogamish” relationships work just as well as monogamous relationships, that “throuples” are the same as couples, and that “wedlease” is preferable to wedlock will only lead to more broken homes, more broken hearts, and more intrusive government. Americans should reject such revisionism and work to restore the essentials that make marriage so important for societal welfare: sexual complementarity, monogamy, exclusivity, and permanence.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“Explaining why marriage is the union of a man and a woman is like explaining why wheels are round, but it has to be done.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“In the decades after the introduction of no-fault divorce, the divorce rate more than doubled.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“Only ideologues think their side has all the arguments and the other side has none.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“marriage equality” was a great slogan for the Left. It fits on a bumper sticker. You can make a red equals sign your Facebook profile picture. It’s a wonderful piece of advertising. And yet it’s completely vacuous. It doesn’t say a thing about what marriage is.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“How can the law teach that fathers are essential, for instance, when it has officially made them optional?”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“How much domestic stability do we expect when a man is under a more serious legal obligation to his plumber than to his wife?”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“Abortion strikes at the bond between mother and child, turning it into a conflict between adversaries and a justification for violence- a relationship not of love but of antagonism and mutual destruction.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“In the midst of that suffering, pro-lifers have spent decades working to help women of all races and all social classes, in all types of difficult situations, encouraging them and supporting them so they can avoid abortion and choose life for their unborn children. They do this important work often without praise, yet at every turn they face harsh opposition from abortion businesses and abortion-rights activists, whose hatred of pregnancy-resource centers can be explained only by the reality that they are pro-abortion, not pro-choice.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“These thinkers might describe themselves as “personally opposed” to abortion, but they are also politically in favor of giving women the choice to abort.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“(T)here is no right not to be offended.” (p. 237)”
― Ryan T. Anderson

“...it isn’t simply that the benefits of liberty barely outweigh the costs. It’s that the benefits to people’s integrity or livelihood are great; and the costs vanishingly small. -p. 119”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination

“What Is Marriage?1 You have to answer that question before you talk about recognizing marriage equally.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“Though the United Kingdom limits elective abortions later in pregnancy, a woman may obtain an abortion at any point until birth if her child is diagnosed with “such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped,” a category that includes nonfatal disabilities such as Down syndrome, clubfoot, or cleft palate.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Government exists to (at the very least) protect against lethal violence. The denial of personhood undergirding the defense of abortion entails another ugly position, with grave political consequences: the belief that might makes right. If we accept the framework of moral dualists, someone or some group must be able to decide which human beings count as persons. This belief means that stronger people, by virtue of their capabilities, can rule over the weaker- or the wiser over the dumber, the older over the younger, the prettier over the uglier, and so on. This view rejects a fundamental truth about human nature that government exists to defend, the truth that all human beings are created equal.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Surely no one would say that he is personally opposed to slavery but in favor of his neighbor’s right to choose to own a slave.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“NARAL affiliates have conducted undercover “investigations” into pregnancy-resource centers called “Unmasking Fake Clinics,” accusing pro-life centers of misleading women with “lies” such as this one: “More than 67% of the locations intentionally referred to the fetus as ‘baby’ and told our investigator she was already a mother because she was already pregnant.”65”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Every abortion is discriminatory. Every time an unborn child loses his life in an abortion, it is because something about him has been deemed unworthy. He’s not treated as the equal of the adult who kills him. Perhaps the argument is that he’s too small or underdeveloped to count as a person. Perhaps a worker at an abortion clinic has dismissed him as a “clump of cells.” Perhaps his parents have decided they’re not ready for a baby or that finances are tight; he has to be eliminated because his life is an inconvenience.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Only ideologues think their side has all the arguments and the other side has none. And of course, lawyers can be ideologues too. The ideologues in the elite levels of society want to penalize and coerce ordinary Americans who hold traditional beliefs about marriage.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“Abortion injects violence into that sacred relationship. It tells women that, at least in some cases, her child is her enemy. By striking at the heart of that most foundational human relationship, a society that allows abortion risks compromising”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“If the law teaches a falsehood about marriage, it will make it harder for people to live out the truth of marriage.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“Denials of personhood to categories of human beings have been used throughout history to subjugate, oppress, and extinguish groups of people that those in power wanted to eliminate. History gives us little reason to believe that denying personhood to some human beings has ever been used to further justice or equality. In fact, in every instance it has been used in precisely the opposite way.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Abortion advocates often receive help from politicians in their crusade to discredit pregnancy-resource centers and limit their reach. In California, Democrats passed the “Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act,” which was drafted with the assistance of Planned Parenthood and enforced by two successive state attorneys general, Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra.66 The law required pregnancy-resource centers to post large advertisements for the state’s free or low-cost abortion program. These centers eventually won a challenge against the law at the Supreme Court, which returned the case to a lower court, ruling that California’s statute likely violated the free-speech rights of the pro-life citizens operating the centers.67 California wasn’t alone in this project. Progressive cities across the country have tried to enact policies requiring pregnancy-resource centers to make disclosures that make them sound illegitimate and unqualified to serve pregnant women.68”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“In 2017, two former Planned Parenthood employees appeared in a Live Action video, revealing that the organziation imposes abortion quotas on its clinics and incentivizes workers to convince women to choose abortion.70 Sue Thayer, former manager of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Storm Lake, Iowa, told Live Action that executives would reward clinics with pizza parties or extra paid time off if they met their abortion targets. Clinics that didn’t offer abortions were given quotas for abortion referrals made to other Planned Parenthood facilities. “I trained my staff the way that I was trained, which was to really encourage women to choose abortion and to have it at Planned Parenthood because it counts towards our goal,” Thayer said.71 Former Planned Parenthood nurse Marianne Anderson told Live Action, “I felt like I was more of a salesman sometimes, to sell abortions. We were constantly told we have quotas to meet to stay open.”72”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“You can pick your projects at will, but not your moral and religious convictions… If one option (project) is off the table but enough alternatives remain, you can pursue another without seeing your self-determination suffer. To protect the latter, the state need only leave you a rich range of options. Not so with religious and moral integrity. - p. 138”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination

“we must ensure that the government does not discriminate against citizens or organizations because of their belief that marriage is the union of husband and wife.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Liberty

“The law isn’t about siphoning evil out of every heart. It’s about setting up and keeping up the conditions under which everyone can adequately pursue the basic goods of human life. -p. 176”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination

“Its logic pits mothers and fathers against one another instead of preserving love and solidarity between them. The ready availability of abortion enables men to more easily justify abandoning their children and their children’s mother.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“One standard limit on our liberty is that we aren’t allowed to intentionally kill innocent people.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing