Leonard Pitts, Jr. discusses VP Pence’s commencement address
… when Pence warned the graduates about being derided for their beliefs, he obviously had neither the poor nor the outcast in mind. So, as everyone who heard him surely understood, what he was tacitly telling them is that they should expect to be condemned for being hostile toward the LGBTQ community and blaming it on God. That’s what faith devolves to for so many these days: a requirement to oppose gay rights.
How was Mike Pence wrong?
A nation where the stranger is demonized and the poor exploited, a nation where justice is obstructed in plain sight and public lies hammer public confidence in public institutions, a nation of nonstop emergency and commonplace crisis, a nation that has retreated from the high ground of ennobling ideals and sacred creeds, is a nation with far more to worry about than whether men have sex with men.
And a nation facing all those challenges would seem to be a nation where there is plenty of work for the faithful – indeed, for all people of conscience – to do. Such a nation stands in dire need of the energy and inventiveness of the rising generation. This critical juncture is a time for all hands on deck. This is not a time for some of us to hunker in foxholes.
It’s too bad the vice president didn’t say something like that to the graduates. He would have been right to do so.
Another thing that isn’t right in my opinion is for a Government official to use his position to promote specific religious beliefs.
New NY 23rd 
Lately I have been wondering how Jews view this new quest for “religious liberty.” Fighting for the freedom NOT to bake a cake for an LGBTQ couple must seem like a comfortable middle class problem compared to what the Jewish people have gone through.
It seems that people who want religious liberty are those who most want to influence the State. Jews firmly believe in the separation of church and state and just want to be left alone. The don’t seem to scream for Liberty or seek to change the state.
My theory, however, probably won’t hold when we consider the state of Israel.
Tom Loid
LikeLiked by 1 person