Bush, Quayle and GOP Convention

I have just heard the Rev. Pat Robertson, on the Republican Convention floor, condemn the Democrats because they championed the “rights” of “the criminal” over the rights of the “innocent,” and the rights of the “diseased” over the rights of the “healthy” (an obvious reference to AIDS). What a long way the “Christian right” (Robertson’s phrase) has come from the Christ who dined with publicans and sinners, who blessed Mary Magdalene, and who healed the lame, the blind, and the leprous!

My father was a Lutheran pastor in Iowa in 1936, and (to my embarrassment, not his) voted for Alf Landon, but I am sure that he would not have voted for a Landon who championed the rights of the “healthy” over the rights of the “diseased.”

We have heard a great deal lately about “The Last Temptation of Christ”: a temptation, after all, to live a “normal” life of “health” and conformity. Nikos Kazantzakis’ Christ resisted that temptation, and chose to die the death of a common criminal. Robertson’s Christ gave in.

PETER L. THORSLEV, JR.

Encino