The Wiesenthal Center

As a 1st Amendment lawyer, I can attest to the fact that the Simon Wiesenthal Center is devoted to freedom of expression, even for ideas it abhors (‘Opinions That Count for a Lot,” by Rachel Abramowitz, April 15). For the last decade, I’ve participated in dozens of programs and workshops at the center’s Museum of Tolerance that have condemned anti-Semitism and bigotry of every stripe, including virulent Aryan Nation and skinhead Web sites, while simultaneously opposing government censorship.

I’m convinced that Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper genuinely understand that the answer to everything from hate speech to Holocaust deniers is not boycotts or bans. The response is the one Justice Louis Brandeis, the first Jew on the Supreme Court, urged: more speech, not less.

STEPHEN F. ROHDE

Los Angeles

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Certainly no one could question the social-conscience credentials of Marlon Brando, yet because he once expressed an honest opinion that was not politically correct, he was burdened with the onus of having to prove that he was not some loathsome bigot. This attempt at un-diverse, lockstep thought control was from those same prissy phonies who claim to have invented the word “diversity.”

Similarly, one of Brando’s fellow actors and social activists has taken great personal and financial risks throughout his career, standing up and fighting for what he believes is right. He, along with Brando, was one of the Hollywood contingent who marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in those very dangerous days. He and his wife offered his fame, home and money to host fund-raisers for Planned Parenthood, despite personal threats for those beliefs. When he was president of the Screen Actors Guild, he successfully campaigned to do away with racial segregation in that oh-so-correct union, and he used his clout to try to integrate the movie craft unions, again despite threats of financial ruin and physical harm.

In more recent years, his uncompromising support for the Bill of Rights has once again made him the target of lies, deliberate, outlandish misquotes of his beliefs, and general character assassination by the Thought Police goons who want only their side of things heard. His name is Charlton Heston.

TOM BURNS

Tucson

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According to the article, the center is building a $120-million Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem-this going on while the Israeli Army is blowing up the homes of the Palestinians. “Tolerance” indeed!

JEAN O’CONNOR

Los Angeles

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Isn’t it amusing that on the same day leaders of the Simon Wiesenthal Center deny being “Jewish Thought Police,” they are partially responsible for pressuring newspapers to withhold Johnny Hart’s “B.C.’?

GENE R. TOUCHET

Cathedral City