By Tom Krattenmaker
Should a student religious group at a public university be allowed to bar a certain group of students from membership — gay students, to be precise — without losing its official student-group status, and the funding and other benefits that go with it?
You've got to really admire the humility of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The former Nobel Peace Prize Winner, not to mention the former chair of South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has a pretty unbelievable way of seeing the humanity in everyone, from former child soldiers to patients with HIV/AIDS to brutal officials in the South African apartheid regime. When he speaks, particularly about human rights, there's a certain sense of gravitas that comes with his words.
Hate has no place in the house of God. No one should be excluded from our love, our compassion or our concern because of race or gender, faith or ethnicity -- or because of their sexual orientation. Nor should anyone be excluded from health care on any of these grounds. In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights. We knew this was wrong. Thankfully, the world supported us in our struggle for freedom and dignity.
