○  truth and tolerance in america  ○

eas, the right to record them, and the right to have them accessible to others is unquestioned -- or this isn’t america.” and if that right is denied, at some future day the torch can be turned against any other book or any other belief. let us never forget: today’s moral majority could become tomorrow’s persecuted minority.

the danger is as great now as when the founders of the nation first saw it. in 1789, their fear was of factional strife among dozens of denominations. today there are hundreds -- and perhaps even thousands of faiths -- and millions of americans who are outside any fold. pluralism obviously does not and cannot mean that all of them are right; but it does mean that there are areas where government cannot and should not decide what it is wrong to believe, to think, to read, and to do. as professor larry tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars has written, “law in a non-theocratic state cannot measure religious truth, nor can the state impose it."

the real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. the failure of prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to disagree. some questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they are. in such cases, like prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

but there are other questions which are inherently public in nature, which we must decide together as a nation, and where religion and religious values can and should speak to our common conscience. the issue of nuclear war is a compelling example. it is a moral issue; it will be decided by government, not by each individual; and to give any effect to the moral val

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