Andrew Sullivan quotes

Is it not a rather fantastic historical irony that the torture techniques that the North Vietnamese used against McCain that forced him to offer a videotaped false confession are now the techniques the Bush administration is using to gain "intelligence" about terror networks. How is it possible to know that everything John McCain once said on videotape for the enemy was false, because it was coerced, and yet assert that everything we torture out of terror suspects using exactly the same techniques is true? (Andrew Sullivan)
How can you tell when a political ideology has become the equivalent of a religion? View quote
Andrew Sullivan
If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error? View quote
Andrew Sullivan
The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
Any president can start a war, and use the chaos of disorder that such a war creates as an indefinite argument for prolonging it. It's a war that keeps on giving. Failure means it's even more necessary to keep failing. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
Homosexuality is like the weather. It just is. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
What gay culture is before it is anything else, before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain, is a culture of friendship. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
It is not an opinion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are torture. It is a legal fact. And it is also a legal fact that the president is a war criminal. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
I like the pluralism of modernity; it doesn't threaten me or my faith. And if one's faith is dependent on being reinforced in every aspect of other people's lives, then it is a rather insecure faith, don't you think? (Andrew Sullivan)
When Bush says that Abu Ghraib was the work of a few, he forgot to mention that he was one of them. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
When you fuse Christianity with power, it isn't long before Christians start imposing the cross on others rather than taking it up for themselves. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
That's what torture does: it creates a miasma of unknowing, about as dangerous a situation in wartime as one can imagine. This hideous fate was made possible by an inexperienced president with a fundamentalist psyche and a paranoid and power-hungry vice-president who decided to embrace "the dark side" almost as soon as the second tower fell, and who is still trying to avenge Nixon. Until they are both gone from office, we are in grave danger - the kind of danger that only torturers and fantasists and a security strategy based on coerced evidence can conjure up. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
When I was about eight, I asked my mother if it was true that God knows everything about you. When she answered yes, I said, "Then there's no hope for me, Mum." View quote
Andrew Sullivan
Even if it's deep unhappiness, it's your unhappiness. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
I enjoy being around people who disagree with me; and I enjoy being in non-political contexts and activities. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
The dirty little secret of journalism is that it really isn't a profession, it's a craft. All you need is a telephone and a conscience and you're all set. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
I purge compulsively. I'm constantly shedding things. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
No American should be forced to choose between their spouse and their country. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
If you are a gay couple living in Alabama, you know one thing: your family has no standing under the law; and it can and will be violated by strangers. (Andrew Sullivan)
Although I never publicly defended promiscuity, I never publicly attacked it. I attempted to avoid the subject, in part because I felt, and often still feel, unable to live up to the ideals I really hold. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
When I first started talking about gay marriage, most people in the gay community looked at me as if I was insane or possibly a fascist reactionary. View quote
Andrew Sullivan
The relationship of black Americans to Obama is sociologically riveting. View quote
Andrew Sullivan