
... let me mark the end of a decade in which, globally speaking, man's inhumanity to man increased and much suffering in the name of God was inflicted on the world. A world where teenagers in Iran are hanged because they are gay; a world where gay men and women are disenfranchised, criminalized, persecuted, and written out of history. A world where women are mutilated and murdered because they are women. A world in which the word inappropriate denies the voice that still crieth in the wilderness; where warfare is accomplished; where a highway is made straight in the desert, but not for our God; where the hungry are not satisfied and where no mercy is obtained.
What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.
Voltaire.