Word: rankins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...John C. Rankin, president of the Theological Education Institute in Hartford, argued that gay marriage would undermine the moral and religious foundations of American society, while Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus, focused on marriage as a “legal gateway” to essential rights...
...Rankin, a 1991 graduate of Harvard Divinity School, said the “inalienable rights” guaranteed to Americans are essentially based on the teachings of the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis, which he said define marriage as “one man, one woman, one lifetime.” Without a biblically-rooted legal and moral system, he argued, there would be chaos...
...don’t have an anchor,” Rankin said, “then it’ll be ‘might makes right...
...hill above the Ohio River, the Rankin house--where a defiant lantern hung each night as a beacon--became a fabled destination that fleeing slaves struggled and sometimes died trying to reach. One of them was a woman who dared to cross the melting ice of the Ohio with her 2-year-old after learning that her master planned to sell the child. Rankin's sons helped her along to the next safe town, whence she eventually made her way to Ontario. Though her name remains unknown, the woman's story, by way of Rankin, reached the ears of Harriet...
Hagedorn's book could have offered more background on the slave empire and the workings of the Underground Rail-road beyond Ripley, Ohio, Rankin's town. But the ground-level focus gives Hagedorn's story the flavor and fire of an era when even the newspapers had names like the Agitator and the Castigator. And the Rankins turn out to be a redoubtable clan. After a gang of armed men demanded to search her house for a runaway slave, the minister's wife Jean did not bat an eyelash. "If you do not hereafter keep away you will feel...