Republican Senator Lindsey Graham's reaction to Virgil Goode's comments

Transcript of remarks made by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me turn to a domestic issue, Senator Graham. A Republican congressman from Virginia this week, Virgil Goode of Virginia, raised a lot of controversy with a letter he wrote in response to the idea that the newly elected Democrat from Minnesota, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim in Congress, was going to take the oath, the ceremonial oath, on the Koran.

He wrote to his constituents saying -- "If American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

Now, Democrats have risen up and said that Republicans ought to denounce Congressman Goode. Do you find anything wrong with what he said, and will you denounce him?

GRAHAM: I don't think that's the appropriate line for a congressman to take when it comes time for another congressman to take the oath. Why would you swear allegiance to a document outside your faith? In our legal system, people can take the oath in a variety of ways.

Religious diversity is a strength, not a weakness in this country.

We need immigration reform, but not for the reasons that Mr. Goode cited. What would happen in this country if a Christian were elected in Lebanon and he had to swear allegiance to the Koran when it came time for them to take office? There would be an outcry in this country.

So I embrace religious diversity. I welcome this new member of Congress. I'm glad he's swearing allegiance to a document that is consistent with his faith.

And what I would like America to do in 2007 is understand that the war on terror is about intolerance, that Syria is a dictatorship that has no interest in seeing a representative democracy in Iraq, that Iran, the president of Iran hosted a conference denying the Holocaust in December 2006, has avowed to destroy the state of Israel. We don't need to be talking to these people. We need to be standing up to their agendas and bringing them in line with the world, a world of tolerance. And Iran and Syria are not tolerant states, and the statements by Virgil Goode do not represent the best of who we are as a nation.