UNITED STATES
Religion News Service
Brian Pellot | September 8, 2015
(RNS) Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig made good on a promise to run for president after crowdfunding his $1 million goal from more than 8,000 donors in the month leading up to Labor Day. Lessig wants to be America’s first “referendum president,” holding the top job only as long as it takes to pass his proposed Citizen Equality Act of 2017, which would reform the voting process, campaign finance rules and Congressional representation. Achieving that, his Veep — candidates include comedian Jon Stewart and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson –would take over as Commander-in-Chief.
Lessig may be a long shot, but with the improbable Donald Trump still dominating polls, we’re not ruling anyone out… Here are five faith facts:
1. He was a choirboy.
As a kid, Lessig sang for his church choir in Williamsport, Pa., and went on to attend the nonsectarian American Boychoir School in Princeton, N.J., where a choir director sexually abused him and other classmates. In 2006, Lessig defended before the New Jersey Supreme Court a fellow alum, succeeding in stripping some immunity from nonprofits that fail to prevent abuse. Lessig criticized the Catholic Church in 2008 for defending its own immunity, a move he said “will guarantee more kids are abused in the future,” and accused the church of protecting its own self interest during the clergy sex abuse scandal.
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