Walter Cronkite: The most Christian of virtues

A majority of our people identify themselves as Christian, and many of the faithful believe that they have a mission to pass on the word of God to those who do not believe with the same fervor as themselves. Their faith is admirable: Indeed, this might be a better world if we all obeyed our religious lessons with similar devotion.

But that, of course, is not the case. And the zealots who follow the leadership of the so-called religious right are threatening us with religious war, fought on the battleground of the presidential election.

The zealots are determined to make a political issue of their conviction that same-sex marriages are so immoral as to threaten the well-being of the nation, if not civilization itself. The more fanatical among them even claim that same-sex marriages would encourage homosexuality to the degree that the nation's birthrate would be endangered. They also fear that children adopted by same-sex couples will choose to follow the lifestyle of their adoptive parents and thus perpetuate, even exacerbate, what they see as the "problem" of homosexuality


There are many of us Christians who recall our Sunday-school teachers and later our ministers dwelling upon the sympathy and respect - indeed, the tolerance - for others that, they taught, was basic to our Christian religion. As the prophet Isaiah summed up this need for tolerance: "Come, let us reason together."

We who believe this are compelled to ask: Where is the tolerance, where is the Christian spirit in the effort to criminalize the personal choices of our fellow citizens, personal choices that do not physically threaten others? Where is the Christian tolerance in the conceit of those Christian leaders who dare suggest that they alone can be trusted to properly interpret the lessons of their Bible, and who would impose that belief on this nation's highly diverse peoples by threatening to throw them in jail if they don't agree with the Christian right's version of God's wishes?